Legit Editorial Placement vs Penalized Guest Posting

[Alaniz]

I'm planning to begin contributing to several different media outlets and blogs on the net, and hoping that I can get some decent placements for me and a few of my colleagues. Looking specifically at legit media outlets and corporate blogs with a structured and considered editorial process where we can contribute thought leadership pieces.

In light of all of the Google algorithm changes surrounding guest blogging, I am curious if this would be viewed as legit editorial placements, or as guest posts that would either carry no weight or be penalized?

Secondly, what are the considerations and value of including a high quality in-article link back to our site vs. a byline link, or both.

Does anyone have any data or experience with this? Thanks in advance!  Andrew

and wondering if anyone has any experience or insights

[MarieHaynes]

To continue this discussion, here is an interesting thing that happened today. It might be a little egotistical but I have a Google Alert set up for my name. I was thrilled to get an alert today that I was mentioned in Forbes. Woohooo. The article mentions my name and an article I wrote and then links to:

https://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelines

So, if I had published that content on my own site I could have had a link from Forbes. But...is that true? Most likely if I had published that content on my own site it wouldn't have had the authority to rise to the top of the SERPS and it wouldn't have had nearly as much exposure as it got on the Moz blog. So, I am guessing that I would not have gotten a link from Forbes and I would not have been mentioned by them either.

I think that as I get more authority there are some articles that I want to publish on my own site, but there are others that I want to publish elsewhere for the exposure. One thing that I find does well on my own site is if I do a study with unique information, or if I write an article on a very specific topic. But, if I am writing about a broad subject, at this point an article on my own site is not likely to outrank Moz and SEW.

[EGOL]

If one or two clients is an adequate reward for writing an article then you might benefit from sharing some content with another site.

But, here is where to be careful...   Let's say that I sell green widgets and each sale generates $5,000 in profit.  One sale.   If I write an article about green widgets and publish it on my website I will start to get some traffic for that topic.  Then if I write another, entirely different article on that topic and give it to another website, it is possible that they will outrank me for my own keywords.  Then, are the people who read that article on the other guy's website going to come to me to make a purchase after reading that article.  Perhaps people interested in buying green widgets will click an ad on that website instead of coming to my website.  They might not even recognize that I was the author and also a seller depending upon how obvious that is made to the reader.

Rarely, I publish articles given to me by other people who are experts in a topic area related to my website's industry.  My site is more powerful than all but a few in its industry.  So, when these folks give me an article it often goes straight to the top of the SERPs for the keywords that it targets.  I have received complaints from the "guest authors" about that and about me not wanting to remove their articles after my site ranks above theirs.  When they offered the article I told them that I was going to produce photos and graphics that will illustrate it better than any other website.  They agreed and thought that was a good idea.  Now that my site outranks theirs they change their mind about wanting their article published.  They wanted to be #1 for this topic but they are not.

[Alaniz]

Good perspective.  I can see you have a very different economic reason for keeping your content on site and it would have to really make sense to give it to another publisher so that they can monazite it.

We're probably along the same lines as Marie in terms of what we're looking for.  We're a marketing company - traffic is great and would love to have tons of it, but ultimately we're looking to attract a moderate amount of high quality middle/bottom of the funnel traffic and gain one or two clients from our effort.

[EGOL]

If you are searching for information on Penguin or manual penalties, you're certain to see a lot of stuff written by me on several different sites.

Flooding the SERPs ?

[MarieHaynes]

Exactly.

When I post on SEW and Moz, here are the benefits for me:

-People who have a specific problem and are reading this article might recognize me as someone they could hire to help them solve that problem. That's worth a lot to me if that happens.

-I get name recognition. If you are searching for information on Penguin or manual penalties, you're certain to see a lot of stuff written by me on several different sites. I'm trying to build up authority as a person who knows her stuff in these areas.

But do the links in those posts actually help? I don't really know. I think I probably do get some benefit from having a link from high authority sites like that. Sure, my rankings have increased over time, but is that because of those links? I've attracted links too and perhaps some of those came about because people discovered my content after I shared it on Moz or SEW. It's a hard metric to measure.

[EGOL]

I think that Marie's situation is quite different from mine.  I think that one client for her is worth a lot more than the value of one article on my website.  Pageviews on my website generate pennies, often less.  One client from her shared article can be worth millions of pageviews on my website.

The economics are different.

[EGOL]

**If you had the capacity to do both,..... **

That is an interesting question...  I do all of the writing for my site with the exception of a few articles per year from paid authors who have expertise in subjects where I do not.

If I was able to double my productivity I would continue to place all of that content on my current site.

I am fortunate to have lots of topics where evergreen an article on my site can bring in dozens to hundreds of visitors per day.  These are not commercial topics where sales can be made, they are informational topics monetized by ads - which makes a difference in the value of the traffic.

But, considering the value of the traffic and the return.  If the return was a lot lower for publishing on my own site compared to getting "fresh blood' traffic from another website then I would write articles for other websites.   I have some knowledge of what kind of traffic would be produced on these other websites because I often receive very visible links from their prominent articles.  Although they can send an immediate and massive amount of traffic for a short period of time  that does not compare with the traffic that an evergreen article on my own site can produce with year-after-year of dozens to hundreds of visitors per day.  New articles on my site can also get a blast of traffic as my own visitors share them on social sites and blogs.

So, for my site, I think that I have made an informed decision about sharing articles with other websites.   How this works on my site, with my content, in my industry and with my visitors could be very different from what you will see on your site.  So, don't assume that I have the "right answer".  I think that I have the "right answer" for my situation.  Your's might be very different.

[Alaniz]

Hi, Marie.  Thanks for your response and agree with everything you wrote here.  I am not looking at this exclusively as a link building campaign - I see a lot of potential benefits.  Our focus has always been more inbound oriented, with a focus on quality content, value, etc.

That being said, it is one of my goals to increase our site authority and I am looking at different ways to do that.  As Egol said, if we develop great content, it will eventually get shared, linked to, etc.  We have seen some of that over time, but I am wondering if the strategy of publishing some content externally might accelerate our efforts, and if so, I am really curious to see to what degree.

Do you see a correlation between your posts on Moz and SEW and your site authority over time? Very curious to hear your perspective on if/how it's helped.

Thanks much! Andrew

[Alaniz]

Hi, Egol.  Thanks for your perspective and totally agree with what you're saying in terms of giving away content for free and investing on your own site versus others.  In my mind there is some return for gaining exposure to larger audiences as well as building authority for my site through off page links.  If you had the capacity to do both, do you think that external posting would help accelerate the development of your site authority and ultimately traffic/following or do you just keep the content all internal and let it build?

[MarieHaynes]

In my opinion, it's all about scale and intent. You won't get penalized by having a couple of guest posts. But, if it becomes clear that you are using guest posting primarily as a means to manipulate Google then you can run into trouble.

A while back there was a situation where someone got a manual penalty and one of the links that Google gave them as an example link was from a byline in a YouMoz post. A lot of people freaked out saying that links from Moz were no longer good. But, in reality, this link was a keyword anchored link that went along with a whole whack of other keyword anchored links from other guest posts.

I guest post on Moz and Search Engine Watch and a few other places and I'll occasionally link to my site where appropriate. Because Moz and SEW are authoritative publications they have strict editorial rules. For example, if I tried to link to my site with the keywords, "Google penalty expert", I'm betting that my editor would either question this or perhaps nofollow this.

My purpose in writing for these publications though extends far beyond getting a link. My purpose is to improve my brand recognition (with my brand being me). The more I write, the more people recognize me.

If there is no purpose beyond SEO, for these guest posts, then they're probably not a good idea.

[EGOL]

I just thought of another situation where you might give your content away.... content that is time sensitive.

If you have an idea for an article that will only be valuable for a short period of time, that might be a good one to publish on another site.

Keep the evergreen content for your own domain. That is the content that will pull in visitors over time.  Something that pulls 50 visitors per day, day-after-day, year-after-year, is worth a lot more than content that will pull in a quick 20,000 visits and then go stale.

I have some content that brings in hundreds, even thousands of visitors per day.  If I would have given that away, I would have given away .... I am not going to say how much money.

(It is really rare for me to say anything to anybody about giving content away.  If certain people read this they will think that I have abandoned my principles.)

[EGOL]

I write on SEO forums as a hobby but my serious work goes exclusively to a couple of websites that I own.

I don't give any of that work away. It's too valuable.

If you think that you have what it takes to be a "thought leader" then that stuff should remain on your own website unless the place where you publish it has an absolutely enormous audience, and then you still have even better content on your domain for anyone who goes there.

Work to build your own audience instead of feeding the audience of another website.  It will be really slow going at first but as you gain momentum things will start chugging along at a faster rate.

Going back to that "thought leadership".... if you truly have that a lot of other people will want it and they will come to your webssite to get it.  If it is really that good and a few people find it they will tweet about it, share it, like it, link to it.... if you really have that just publishing it can be like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Lots of people think that they gotta give their content away.  They need to have the courage not to do that... or at least only do that in rare situations where they can get enormous bang in front of just the right people - and then only do that with a small fraction of their treasure.