Semrush Named Leader in SEO Solutions Analysis
New analyst report recognizes Semrush’s competitive intelligence, robust analytics, and vision for SEO as the “engine of digital discoverability”
July 2, 2025
Yesterday we faced controversy surrounding our guest blog post editorial/outreach service, offered in Content Marketplace. We apologize for any stress or confusion. Some people on Twitter and in other channels accused us of selling links. This is untrue. The service was about content development, editorial coordination, and outreach. We did not pay publishers for placed articles and were not selling links. We understand that our product launch communication could have been better.
After launching Content Marketplace, we surveyed our clients as to what other services they most wanted to see in Marketplace. Guest blogging, content creation, and outreach support were by far the most popular answers. Guest posting can be a complicated topic. We recently flagged potential pitfalls ourselves with research.
If done wrong, guest posts can cause manual penalties. However, this in itself doesn’t mean that any type of guest blogging violates search engine terms of services.
Our team made a decision to follow customer feedback and we are proud of those efforts. We found partners to provide honest, high-quality writing and outreach to ensure our clients get what they have asked for in a transparent, “white-hat” way.
Early this week we audited the first batch of guest posts and came to the conclusion that the service would require more time to implement, given the volume of orders received and our commitment to excellence.
As we were exploring potential solutions, we started seeing negative comments on social media. We also received more and more new orders that would be difficult to properly fulfill. We made a decision to pause the guest blog post editorial/outreach offering and refund all orders.
We are proud SEMrush can react to customer wishes so quickly and thankful to each customer who tested the service. We will continue asking our customers about their challenges and keep developing tools they love. We’re also committed to gathering feedback and listening proactively to the marketing community.
We encourage customers interested in backlinks to try our link building tool. This is the safest way to build links.
