Could posting on YouMoz get you penalized for "Guest Blogging?"

[KempRugeLawGroup]

From my understanding, Matt Cutts hates guest blogging, so I told all of the attorneys here not to write anywhere but on our blog. However, I realized people are constantly "guest blogging' on Moz, and considering how smart these people are, it must not be hurting them or they wouldn't do it. However, what I don't understand is why?

Yes, I do get that the quality of what's on YouMoz is high and not spammy, but I got the impression that didn't really matter. Guest blogging would get you into trouble no matter what.

Can someone clarify for me?

Thanks,

Ruben

[KeriMorgret]

As I mentioned in my Inside YouMoz post, there are even some posts that I would have turned down if they didn't have links. I try to treat links as scholarly citations rather than votes. There's a post right now in the queue that I need to respond to and tell the author that they need to back up some of their statements with links to the source of what they are claiming.

[KeriMorgret]

I've actually approved a YouMoz that did link out to a gambling site. The post was about how to do white hat marketing for shadier industries, and linked out to a legitimate example of what the author was doing. It was a relevant link in the context of the post.

I've only made a couple of guest posts myself, but I do have a lot of links from Moz, Search Engine Roundtable, and other SEO-related sites to our business about model battleships. These have usually been attribution for liveblogging (on Search Engine Roundtable), or just mentions of my name in some other form, with a link to the site. If you look at my link profile for that site, it is not solely from sites about model warships or electronics, but I have yet to have any type of notice from Google, and some of those links have been there for years. That said, I didn't get any of them through blog comments, and most of them are just my name or business name for anchor text. This is my personal experience, and yours might vary.

[KeriMorgret]

To the best of my knowledge, no one at Google has replied to our questions.

[KeriMorgret]

We're certainly not afraid to decline posts. In the past several weeks, we've been averaging about 50 spam posts a week (pure spam, such as horoscope predictions), declining 20-30 posts a week, returning 5-10 back to the user for edits, and publishing 1-4 posts a week.

I've been doing this for about two and a half years now. We've never let pure spam through, but we were more lenient on anchor text in the past than we are now -- today, you're not going to get away with Springfield SEO company as the anchor text for a link back to your company in a post.

Last year, I wrote more details about the YouMoz process at http://moz.com/blog/inside-youmoz-how-to-guest-blog-for-moz. This is still what we do, though a couple of the people have changed.

[KeriMorgret]

I will! Had a few other things come up, but I do plan on responding, should be later today.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Keri,

Are you still going to add your comments? I think everyone would like to read them.

Thanks,

Ruben

[JaneCopland]

I know Moz has talked about this internally and perhaps sought clarification on how Youmoz "should" work from Google, so hang tight for Keri to get back to this one, everyone

[Travis_Bailey]

Sarcy contained in elipses. That's interesting. Though I'm inclined to agree.

The Matt Cutts talked about editorial oversight and materiality. Those are very interesting things, especially materiality.

[DonnaDuncan]

Great question. Great discussion.

Matt Cutts very specifically said "if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop" (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/). He didn't say "stop guest blogging altogether". Two different things.

Lizzie Borden murdered her parents with an axe. That doesn't mean axes should be outlawed for chopping wood. (Sorry, but it gets my point across.) As others above and elsewhere have pointed out, there are and remain very good reasons to guest blog. If you continue to provide value to your intended audience without trying to draw too much attention to yourself, you'll be fine. I know that's subjective, but EGOL gave concrete examples of what NOT to do.

[followuk]

My 2 pence.

I think its a relevance thing, guest blogging was being bashed by spammers - target was (from what I sore) moz stats basically, "this blog will take my article it has a DA/PA 50 mR/mT 6.0" and on it would go linking to a website which was completely irrelevant to the blogs content.

I think YouMoz is all good if your linking to a digital agency, linking to a payday loan site im not so sure. I've watched vids of Matt Cutts even stating the above about a relevance issue basically telling the same story as I above.

Traffic from a none relevant blog is spam, traffic from a relevant blog in my eyes is not.

[KeriMorgret]

We're just about to go into a quarterly all-hands meeting, so I can't write a long reply to this. I'll add my comments tomorrow morning. Looking forward to the discussion!

[MarieHaynes]

In my opinion, it has a lot to do with scale and intent to manipulate.  I still guest post on Moz and I'm not worried about a penalty.  But, let's say that I have guest posts on a large number of "high quality" sites and they're linking back to my site with keyword rich anchors...then I'm probably going to have a problem if I get a manual review.

In Matt's blog post on guest posting he mentions that some guest posting is ok.  My rule of thumb is that if it's a link that I would still get value from even if it is nofollowed then the guest post is a good one.  If I'm doing it just for the link then I shouldn't do it!

[EGOL]

Oh.... this is a great question.   I like it.   I'd really like to hear what the Mozzers have to say.

I think that you are going to get a bunch of opinions.

Honestly, I don't think that Google really knows what kind of guest posting is allowed because they have a hard time measuring "quality" and they have a harder time determining "intent".

I think that a lot of guest posting is done for links and links only.  People generate a bunch of crappy articles or even some pedestrian-quality articles and give them away with links in them.  I think that those could get you penalized if Google:

A) sees them on lots of websites,

B) the links are followed and have money keywords as anchor text,

C) the websites that host these articles have lots of obviously low quality articles on them (I know that it is hard for google to detect article quality but if they have lots of misspelled words, have very little formatting, no images then they are probably manipulative crap or crap that they don't want in their SERPs)

D) the websites that the links are pointing to have signs of manipulation (the smell of crap drifts downwind).

I don't think that YouMoz is any of those.   If you look at YouMoz, the post that appear there are generally quite good and the people who wrote them spent a lot of time.  I also think that Moz is not afraid to tell people.... "This ain't good enough!" or..... "Hey! This ain't a link farm".... in a cheerful kind of way, of course.

So, since you gotta work your butt off and have something that people should hear to get a post published on Moz, I don't think that Google is going to have a problem with it.

.... but, that's just an opinion.

[Kara.Wallace]

Hi Ruben,

I believe what Matt Cutts was getting at is that guest blogging, for the sole purpose of SEO is going to get you penalized.

If you are guest blogging to drive awareness of your brand, provide thought leadership, etc. is still something that is accepted an encouraged.

SearchEngineWatch.com has a great article regarding Matt Cutts' comments on guest blogs, as well as a quote from Ryan Jones, "Guest blogging can still work. You wouldn't turn down a column on CNN or an editorial in the Huffington Post if they said you wouldn't have a dofollow link would you?"

Hope this helps.

Mike

[LesleyPaone]

From my understanding and how I do things as well, guest blogging is not dead. Low to no value guest blogging is dead. The issue with guest blogging is people were over using it just to get a link, so sites would have hundreds of guest bloggers and really offer no value. They were basically like a link scheme. I still think high value guest blogging is still alive and well. I write blog posts for high value sites sporadically and the exposure and links help.

In your situation, I would advise the lawyers not to turn down high value sites. For example if the state bar association wanted a guest post about a case, I would do it. If some other local law blogger wanted a guest post, I more than likely would advise not to do it. One thing to keep in mind is that the high value sites rarely have guest bloggers, that is one thing that makes them valuable.