More guest blogging penalties coming?
-
Does anyone foresee any future guest blogging penalties coming from google if the guest blogs are high quality blogs? I'm wondering if a future google update is going to hit even more sites that have used guest blogging as guest blogging continues to grow. I like guest blogging to drive traffic to my site but am scared to used it for fear of future updates in the algorithm.
Thanks mozzers!
-
I can only hope that we'll see more penalties for guest posting. It's a tactic that I truly want to die because "guest posting" is just an amateur form of marketing and public relations that deserves to get penalized. It's trying to shortcut the traditional marketing process in order to get higher rankings quickly for a brand that probably doesn't deserve them in the first place. Nothing good comes quickly.
Why do I mean when I say "guest posting"? As Jen Jopez wrote here on Moz, it's "trying willy-nilly to get your posts on every blog for the sole purpose of building (probably bad) links." Google, after all, doesn't want to give websites credit for links that they build themselves.
In this and this post of mine here on Moz, I outline the proper process for obtaining the best links naturally through the traditional practices of public relations and publicity. Two of the parts are audience and channel research: determine the websites, blogs, and news outlets that are read by your target audience, and then aim to get news coverage from them or quality articles published on them. One of those links is better than 100 or 1,000 links on random guest-post websites that no one even reads.
Just do good marketing, and the good links will come just as natural by-products without you even needing to think about it.
EGOL, thanks so much for the kind mention -- you've got an upvote!
-
I'd like to say "no, high quality guest blogging won't affect your SEO" but we've seen youmoz links penalised so I'd say the answer is "yes, any site is at risk if the link itself is risky."
Matt Cutts did directly answer on why YouMoz may have been targeted and you can read the full discussion here.
Matt Cutts: ...That said, with the specific instance of Moz.com, for the most part it's an example of a site that does good due diligence, so on average Moz.com is linking to non-problematic sites. If Moz were to lower its quality standards then that could eventually affect Moz's reputation.
The factors that make things safer are the common sense things you'd expect, e.g. adding a nofollow will eliminate the linking issue completely. Short of that, keyword rich anchortext is higher risk than navigational anchortext like a person or site's name, and so on."
-
Check out Samuel Scott's recent YouMoz post... and be sure to watch the Copyblogger video. Samuel's post and the copyblogger video are a fantastic pair. (I am really surprised that the post has only gotten a few thumbs up so far.... but like most things that require very hard work and talent, people either "don't get it" or "ain't got it"... and a gem goes unappreciated.)
http://moz.com/ugc/how-to-approach-owned-and-earned-media
(To fully understand the Copyblogger video you got to know about "The Guiding Light"... "Marvel Comics"... and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and how content creation, content ownership, content revenue generation and retail products can form a constellation - wikipedia articles are recommended but you only need to pay attention to who owned the content and how movies, TV programs and comic books were used as enormous advertisements.)
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Benefit of Guest Blogging with weak relevancy
No - not that awful kind of guest blogging Matt Cutts called time on - but legitimate blogging on quality websites. Just thought I'd get that out of the way first 😉 I work for a legal services provider as a Content Marketing and PR Executive, and I have a regular spot guest posting on Search Engine People which I acquired in my previous role at an SEO agency. As I'm still working in the industry (in-house rather than for an agency) I thought I'd carry it on, not only because it's good for me personally, but because it'd also be a nice link building quick win from a good site with a strong DA. My question is, with next to know relevancy between domain-domain, page-domain, page-page, is there much value in the link? To be clear, I'll be doing it anyway, but the answer might inform whether I do it under the guise of an employee of my company or just as myself. Thanks all!
Link Building | | NAHL-14300 -
Is it a good idea to create a blog that offers quality content but also passes PageRank to sponsors
I am a part of a business networking group that has lots of members who services home owners (a/c repair, plumber, home inspector, etc.). I am thinking of starting a blog to help home owners be better informed how to care for their homes. I would like to ask for sponsorship from the people in my group. I would also like to invite them to post on the blog as a way to improve their SEO. Would posting on this kind of blog hurt, help or not affect their SEO? Would this violate Google's policy of selling links that pass page rank as described here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en.
Link Building | | aj6130 -
Alternatives to Guest Blogging Please
Now that Matt Cutts seems to have sounded the death knoll for guest blogging for SEO, what are some good alternatives?
Link Building | | aj6131 -
Blog posts with currently no links question
Hi, If a blog has 100's of quality blog posts all with PR 1-3 but has no internal linking going on, what kind of affect would it have if someone was to go through all the pages using mixed anchor text (where it fits) back to money pages. Would generating 100's of internal links from a blog in a matter of days cause problems / flag up to SE's. I'm guessing it would be best to stagger it over a long period of time. Cheers
Link Building | | Bondara0 -
Recently recovered from Link Spam Penalty
Our ecommerce site recovered from a manual link spam penalty about a month ago, but the organic traffic is still very low. We are working on getting high quality links and high quality content for our site. Some people are saying that even if you recover from the penalty and build high quality links, etc.. the site will never recover. Is this true?, we are very discouraged by what others are telling us. ? I d appreciate any help or suggestion we can get here. Thank you.
Link Building | | orion680 -
Any good site for Blog Submission (without any waiting/approval) ??
Is there any good blog submission site which does not have long waiting period before article is published and which allows followed link from blog? I have a list of such blog submission sites but they all either need weeks delay till it gets approved or never gets approved. So I would really appreciate If you can tell me some of such sites that you are aware of..
Link Building | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Have I suffered a keyword specific penalty?
Hi all, We've been working on improving our ranking for a specific keyword for the past couple of months. Progress has been steady if not spectacular (it's a very competitive keyword). Last week we obtained (not bought!) a site wide link from a partner (nothing fishy, they are business partners in the same industry) as well as a link each from a relevant resource site and a directory with good PA/DA. The anchor text used on the new links is keyword rich. This week our rankings have fallen dramatically from page 2 to page 39 for our targeted page although other pages on our site still rank well for this keyword. The targeted page is still indexed by Google. Could Google just be reassessing our ranking for this page and it will return to its previous rank or is it likely it has received a keyword specific penalty? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Do you think it's a good idea to try to find synergy between clients for blog posts/citations/links, or should you keep clients away from each other?
Say you have for example three (in this case) clients, and: Client A sells red widgets Client B is a doctor Client C sellls blue widgets With some research, you find that: Red widgets (A) can make the process of blue widget creation (C) even more effective. Red widgets (A) can protect you from harmful things that doctors (B) are qualified to recommend that you stay away from. Furthermore, there are things that doctors (B) recommend that you do in order to maximize the benefits of red widgets (A) Blue widgets (C) carry with them certain potential health risks, which according to doctors (B) can be minimized using the following means Sometimes blue widgets (C) can be used to effectively repair red widget (A) factories ...and so forth. Sure you're really writing these articles to generate links and exchange authority, and frankly you started with "how can I find synergy between these clients?" rather than a with a great article subject that needed a citation which luckily happened to be another client, but the citations are legitimate and the clients are qualified to speak on the subjects where their expertise and interests overlap. Would you consider going ahead with this? Does anyone have any experience doing it? I could see potential pitfalls if clients were to interact with each other, but keeping yourself as the intermediary might well work and overall it seems like a decent way to grab low-hanging fruit as they say. What do you guys think?
Link Building | | PathMarketing0