Is Guest Blogging the Next Link Buying
-
I like the guest blogging idea for two reasons. One, it builds links, and two, it allows me to add content to a lot of blogs that are really interested in growing a lot of good content. But I often read articles that give credit to another article, that give credit to another article.
I have been offered plenty of documents for client blogs, but I am worried that at some point in the future Google will decide all this guest blogging is similar to link trading and selling.
What does everyone else think of guest blogging?
-
What worries me is that the easiest way to apply such a penalty is probably to devalue links that appear to be part of an author box (one of several easy to spot footprints of most guest blogging). This isn't the best way, but it would be incredibly easy to do. If that happens then it would really be a case of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater", but we've already seen this year that Google is happy to do this if it discourages manipulation.
I've always assumed that when the spammier end of guest blogging is addressed it would be through a wider algorithm. As Alice suggests, value could be removed from this as a result of a wider effort to tackle low quality sources - and this would be fair.
This year though I suspect that "fairness" in the algorithm has gone down a couple of places in Google's priorities and that the idea of "the greater good" has become a higher priority. If that is true then anything that is a link building strategy becomes a fair target - even if it causes wider damage.
As always - time will tell !
-
I think Alice is right, it has the potential to become manipulated as with most link building methods. I have often considered whether it's even worth trying to avoid using the term "guest post" for this very reason.
If you are selective about which sites you post on you shouldn't worry too much. You will find targeting higher quality sites will not only improve the value of the link and the size of the audience, but it will also ensure you are creating top quality content which is worthy of being published.
-
Hi Christopher, that's a great question. I was actually thinking about this earlier in the week. I think there's a lot of guest blogging that is spammy, low quality and manipulative, but I don't see Google imposing some sort of penalisation on all guest blogging.
That's because a lot of guest blogging is high quality, heavily shared and of high value. I think that done correctly, everyone can be a winner with guest blogging - the writer gets a new potential audience (and inbound link), the blog owner gets a quality piece of content and the readers get valuable information.
Low quality articles and articles with unnatural links will get hit by other algorithms. I would say that as long as the post is good, on a good website and goes easy on links, Google won't mind. A lot of journalists were using guest writing as a way to expand their readership before SEO existed, so it would seem a little unfair if Google decided that this was bad practice.
What's your opinion?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Can I post an article on my blog if it has already been published and taken down?
Hi Guys, A writer for my site has offered to let me post her article on my blog, however the article has already been published on another blog, but the blog has now been taken down. If I publish this on my blog will there be any harm to my blog? I want to stay clean and not be in trouble with penguin in any way shape or form! Cheers everyone appreciate some advice here!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Links and how they count?
We managed to get ourselves out of a penalty 6 months ago and 100 days later after the message of penalty removable we finally felt that we were moving back on track (not a lot of movement before and 50% down due to links being taken away), we have around 120 really high quality links but 95% of them are urls or the business name. Anyway we still have a couple of pages that I feel are fairly down on rankings and most of the links as mentioned above are high quality but they are either anchor text of the website name or url my main question is that when looking at my competitors I see that they have the same or less links and from much less powerful places (most I would not touch) but they seem to have a ratio of 5 - 10 % of the links are the keywords they are trying to rank for. My question is if you have 50 links from better places but they are unrelated terms such as the web site name or just urls and you have 50 links from average places but 5 - 10% are on related terms to what you are trying to rank for which ones would win out.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Getting links on competitor's blog
An SEO agency I'm working with has asked if we're okay with guest posting on a competitor's blog. What are the negatives of getting a link from a competitor's blog? Two things I thought of: They can remove the link at any time - why wouldn't you as a competitor? I generally don't want to alert my competition what I'm doing for SEO and how I'm doing it. Is that enough to not pursue those links? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Penguin link removal what would you do?
Hi Over the last 4 months I have been trying to remove as many poor quality links as possible in the hope this will help us recover. I have come across some site's that the page our back-link is on has been de-indexed, goggle shows this when I look at the cached page... 404. <ins>That’s an error.</ins> The requested URL /search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enGB482GB482&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fforom.eovirtual.com%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D4%26t%3D84 was not found on this server. <ins>That’s all we know.</ins> If goggle is showing this message do I have to still try to remove the link, or is it a case goggle has already dismissed the link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0 -
Link-Building - Directories
Hello, The SEO world is a bit confuse in the last months with the Google Antartic updates. Its normal since Google is trying to kill SEO to have more Adwords publicity results. My most recent doubt is about directories. I heard Matt Cutts from Google in a recent Google Hangout saying that registering a website in directorys was ok, but not the ideal method to become relevant in the internet world. However it seems that this procedure is not against the Google policies. Now, here in the forums, I already saw someone writing about adding your site to directories and how dangerous that situacion is. So, whats your opinion about adding your site to free and pay directories as first link-building strategy? If directories are out of the question, why SEOmoz as a huge list of paid directorys? Is SEOmoz outdate?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PedroM1 -
Can our white hat links get a bad rap when they're alongside junk links busted by Panda?
My firm has been creating content for a client for years - video, blog posts and other references. This client's web vendor has been using bad links and link farms to bolster rank for key phrases - successfully. Until last week when Google slapped them. They have been officially warned on WMT for possibly using artificial or unnatural links to build PageRank. They went from page one of the most popular term in Chicago for their industry where they had been for over a year - to page 8 - overnight. Other less generic terms that we were working on felt the sting as well. I was aware of and had warned the client of the possibility of repercussions from these black hat tactics (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-google-makes-liars-out-of-the-good-guys-in-seo#jtc170969), but didn't go as far as to recommend they abandon them. Now I'm wondering if one of our legitimate sites (YoChicago.com), which has more than its share of the links into the client site is being considered a bad link. All of our links are legitimate, i.e., anchor text equals description of destination, video links describe the entity that is linked to. Our we vulnerable? Any insight would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikescotty0 -
How to get rid of black hat links?
I have recently discovered that one of my clients has either been sabotaged or has done this himself. In the case that he didn't do anything, how do you go about getting rid of bad links? There is now over a 1000 bad links linked to his site, do I report them as spam or what is the best way to fix this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StrategicEdgePartners0 -
Good link networks?
Hey Mozzers, quick question about link networks. I've identified quite a few, like these: Build My Rank Unique Article Wizard Authority Link Network Article Ranks EZ Article Link Socialadr Linkvana SEO LinkVine Does anyone have experience using any of these? The basic premise is they own or their members own tons of different blogs. You write an article, give it to them, they publish it one one of those blogs. You include a link in your article. Done. They charge a monthly fee to use and all that, so is it worth it? Anyone had any success with them? Finding mixed things on forums online, and since many of their websites like awfully spammy, wanted to poll the Mozzers and get your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanDeceuster0