You may find it does the opposite of what you intend if your visitors don't use social media - they'll feel left out of the party and nobody likes that! There are many many reasons why someone would choose not to be on social media, and forcing them to have an account just to read an article is never going to work - they'll just leave and find the content elsewhere on the web.

Check analytics to see how socially engaged your visitors are. If they are, then I'd test it as a tactic - it may not work for long though, because it's the sort of thing Google doesn't like ('Don't do as I do, do as I say!!!!')

I bet Mr Cutts is thinking of a way to thwart your plan as I type this

Good luck whatever you do, and please let us know what the outcome is!

Amelia

Yes, try looking at the server response. Screaming Frog will tell you this.

Hi there,

You can use your robots.txt to noindex the incorrect URLs, then via webmaster tools you can request to have the incorrect pages removed from Google's index. (Webmaster Tools > Google Index > Remove URLs). There is a help document here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/59819?hl=en

Good luck!

Amelia

I've found WN before and thought it looked quite good due to the domain authority. However, like you say, it's just a scraper.

Hi Josh,

I'm doing a similar thing - not exactly the same as we are merging 2 websites into one and then just for the fun of it putting the whole lot onto a new domain...

We've not done this yet as our new site is being built. Anyway, I found this webinar really useful: http://moz.com/webinars/domain-migrations-lessons-from-the-moz-transition and this blog post: http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons

I hope they help!

All the best,

Amelia

But how are they going to do it?

I wouldn't have thought they could distinguish between a guest blog and a normal blog post unless it's labelled as a guest blog (and let's face it, if Google goes after guest blogs, then all those sites promising to publish guest blogs will change their message pretty quickly).

Additionally, if a publisher agrees to publish a guest blog on their site, aren't they endorsing (voting for) the guest blogger? Wouldn't it then be a 'natural' link because the publisher has agreed for a guest to publish content on their blog and therefore must believe that whatever the guest blogger is saying is worth sharing with their visitors?  Also, the blog editor (or owner) will have to review the guest blog before publishing it, so again, it's been verified by a human. To me this seems to be perfect content, and what we want and need more of online.

One more thing. The 'problem' with guest blogs is usually down to quality, and I would agree with you that there are a load of rubbish guest blogs published on similarly rubbish sites. These are the problem, not people employing professional writers and researchers to generate useful and informative content that people actually want to read.

I just can't see how it would help the index to remove sites that provide useful content. Or, am I missing something here?

I've read this as well, but I just don't quite get how or why Google would want to go after all guest blogs! I get that some are rubbish and spammy and I guess those are the ones that cause a problem, but a guest blogging campaign should be as much about gaining traffic from referral sites rather than using if purely for link building.

I think about it like this: if a guest blog brings me traffic by itself then the SEO benefit of the link is the cherry on the cake. Without the SEO benefit, I still get targeted traffic to my site that converts.

Hi Studio33

We use My Blog Guest (http://myblogguest.com/) for our guest posting activity.

I recently petitioned my boss to be allowed the paid version, and it's well worth it! We have the most basic plan (can't remember what it's called, but it's the cheapest one there) which allows us to post 10 articles in the Articles Gallery. I think there are other plans, but I couldn't say how good they are or not because I haven't used them!

Before using the paid version we'd spend ages on the my blog guest forum trying to get guest posts from relevant sites, but it just wasn't time-effective for us. But, if you're not 100% sure if you want to pay for it or not, then go for the free version to test the waters - especially if your budget is tight (though I do think the price is fair for the service they offer - which is excellent).

I also send out tweets on a fairly irregular basis with the hashtags #guestblog and #guestbloggers if I really need something quick, and that works pretty well (we got a regular guest blogging spot on a very influential and high trafficked blog in our niche from sending out tweets).

Good luck with your guest blogging - it is worthwhile.

Amelia