Would you utilize an industry blog you own in linkbuilding and outreach activities for the same industry?

CaddisInteractive

Much of my company's client base is in the same industry. They are not direct competitors, but do function in different parts of the same industry overall. My company also owns a blog that has been dormant for the past several years with great content that spans the industry's topics

I'm interested in revamping this blog as a place where we can do some blogging on behalf of our clients sites and also invite other industry experts to contribute in exchange for contributions to their sites and links back in their content from time to time.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on doing something like this. We would maintain a totally white hat approach to the content by avoiding over-linking and probably nofollowing a lot of our links in most cases. I believe it's an excellent resource in our ever-expanding link building and outreach capacity, but I also don't want to do something that's going to be looked at poorly by Google.

Please don't rip into me for this being a blackhat or unnatural tactic as it will be fully moderated by our team and will only publish high quality, industry-relevant content. What are your thoughts on how we could pull something like this off and what some of the dangers might be?

EGOL

Your original question mentioned using it as a source of linkbuilding several times. It sounds like a place to "guest blog" and Matt Cutts is on the warpath against guest blogs these days.

I think that such a blog would be fine if all of the outlinks were nofollowed and the posts were placed there to drive a little traffic and to get some brand mentions. I think that traffic and brand mentions are valuable.

But, if it were my company, we would not be using our valuable content creation time producing content for a satellite site. The only way that satellite site will have valuable links is if there are links given to it from outside websites - and if I can produce content to attract that kind of link it would be better placed on my own website. That way any link that hits it will directly power my own domain and deliver traffic to my own domain. Traffic and links going to an outhouse only have fractional value.

If you have a couple of colleagues who can help you diversify your content do an article exchange. They write a nice one for your site and you write one for their site. There is only one link on the page going to their site and it is a nofollowed link in their bio space. That way both of your primary sites get a blog post and both of your sites get brand mentions and a bit of traffic exchange. No link manipulation. This is superior to posting your content on a satellite site because any links that are given to the articles benefit your main site instead of the satellite. Makes it look like you have colleagues in the industry.

That's how I would do it.

Andy.Drinkwater

"a place where we can do some blogging on behalf of our clients sites and also invite other industry experts to contribute in exchange for contributions to their sites and links back in their content from time to time"

This sounds an awful lot like reciprocal linking and something that would not gain favour with Google.

Dangers? Yes, don't do it. You can't really ignore the fact that this is a very unnatural way to build links and there is no ethical way to pull this off.

-Andy

CaddisInteractive

Thoughts on why not if it's an equal opportunity blog for those that want to create great content whether they endorse your clients or competitors? If everything is above board, no links are sold and things are appropriate nofollowed and our clients just get to participate like all other participants what are the drawbacks?

EGOL

Please don't rip into me for this being a blackhat or unnatural tactic as it will be fully moderated by our team and will only publish high quality, industry-relevant content.