Guest Blogging Is Pretty Much Done
Matt Cutts, head of web spam at Google made a post today on his personal blog concerning guest blogging. Matt basically said that if you are guest blogging for links, just stop it.
From the article:
Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.
Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book. It’s not that way any more. Here’s an example unsolicited, spam email that I recently received:
Matt went on to list several videos he made on the topic over the years, the last one I will include below, but basically Matt has said that he had been warning people in each video to stay away from spammy type guest blogging agreements.
His blog post today has over 100 comments, so many are reacting to his post.
No surprise here. Google has been working for some time, tweaking algos, to retrieve sites with the most relevant content (not necessarily the highest quality, although quality is a data point). “Guest Bloggers” may trigger short-term gains with more user adoption, views, visits, but this strategy will not enhance search results. & without relevant & compelling content, there will be attrition.
Facebook also is modifying its algos to deflect viral-worthy feeds, in favor of “higher quality” content-driven offerings. Probably a reasonable change, considering the average age of a FB user is 41 and rising, notwithstanding the continual popularity of Instagram with the Youth market.
the real question is why would an ultra force like google need to rate relevancy by something as stupid as backlinks,
i mean if back links are so easy to create why would google not have know this from the start and rated relevancy by some other standard.
oh mabye google isn’t god after all, just some dictatorship that gained control over search and with it the last remnant of freedom, the internet.
Hello MHB,
Google is becoming nothing more than a Tech Wonks Swan Song. Its techniques are fast becoming obsolesced and realized as being the weakest link in the Online Marketing strategies Success. The Marketing Strategy, Tech disconnect Syndrome of the early 2000s till now is being derailed by the smarter Online Marketing leaders. Bridging the gap between Online Marketing Strategy and technology is critical to implementing Online marketing success.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
yeah, sure, great logic.
lets ignore google and pretend it doesnt exist even though its a EXTREMELY popular search engine..
yet lets all hold hands and ONLY use .COM – reason being its the most popular, normal, and going with the grain.
makes sense.
My hope is that this won’t just end up a blanket penalty any time you happen to have a blog post on another site and instead just be a means of weeding out more of the bad & spammy. There are more than enough sites that do legitimate guest posts that shouldn’t get slapped because others are ruining it for the rest of us. In which case I’m wondering if the smart course of action is to just NoFollow all links in any Blog post that don’t point to destinations on the root domain of the blog itself so as not to invoke the ire of potential future penalties for guest posting