Guest blogging: is there a safe way to do it?
-
Following Google's nuking of My Blog Guest, is there any way of doing (high-quality, small-scale) guest posting safely?
Specifically, do the tips from Neil Patel here (written Jan 22) still stand up?
- Only post on relevant blogs – ideally these blogs should also be larger than your website. In other words, do it because it will help with branding, traffic, and sales. Posting on bigger blogs that are also relevant will provide you with more good exposure than posting on small, unknown blogs.
- Avoid using rich anchor text – rich anchor text will become a huge red flag and will probably cause your site to get penalized eventually, especially if you are building these links through guest posts.
- Share the love – you won’t be able to link out to your site only. From Wikipedia to your competitors, you’ll have to link out to whichever site benefits the reader the most.
- Build up your author rank – with Google Plus becoming more popular, it will be easier for Google to determine how good of a writer you are. So, you’ll have to focus on publishing only valuable content as you won’t want crap tied to your author account.
- Co-citations are valuable – even if you don’t get a link from a guest post, just having your site mentioned in the article can help with rankings. I think Google will place more emphasis on co-citations in 2014.
-
Cheers!
-
This is excellent advice.
-
Hi,
Guest posting, or seeking PR on third party websites, is still going to work well for a high number of people, especially as Google gets better at determining what is natural and what is not. I believe the issue currently is that determining intent with guest posts is very difficult for Google, hence one reason why they have taken out a sweeping penalty on sites that have even looked sideways at My Blog Guest in the past few years.
The point about going for a piece whether you get a link or not is quite important, although be aware of some other points as well. If you get a post written about you on a site, in a newspaper or magazine:
- Does that site / newspaper offer advertorials / paid posts for other people? If so, are you going to be swept up in that and assumed to have paid for your post?
- Would you guess that any of the other posts on the site have been sought by SEOs? If you have any suspicion, best to stay clear.
- Is there an "advertising" page where you can contact the site about links (not affiliate / banner ads that go through redirects)? Check out that such advertising isn't a red flag for SEO.
- Do sites place "sponsored" disclaimers alongside posts by external authors? There is no evidence or proof that Google crawls for these types of disclaimers, but it wouldn't be hard to do.
There are plenty of awesome businesses that have built good rankings off of PR and will continue to do so. Google's primary challenge is also that many people who are doing guest posting for SEO really well are continuing to do it and it's impossible for Google to detect at present because it looks just like PR. In some ways, this is what Google kind of wants anyway - some "SEOs" are now producing content for links that is good enough to add value to the web, basically meaning that Google's stringency has made those posts no longer part of the problem.
-
I saw people tweeting about this and it intrigued me. However, Google has not said that ALL guest blogging is unnatural. If you check out Matt Cutt's post on guest blogging, he says:
"It seems like most people are getting the spirit of what I was trying to say, but I’ll add a bit more context. I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there.
I’m also not talking about multi-author blogs. High-quality multi-author blogs like Boing Boing have been around since the beginning of the web, and they can be compelling, wonderful, and useful."
It's not wrong to publish a guest post and allow a link. The sites that are currently getting manual penalties because of a connection with My Blog Guest primarily used guest post links as a way to manipulate Google.
-
Rhetorical question: but surely these guys shouldn't be allowing followed guest post links?
-
First, I'd forget about doing guest blogging for the sole purpose of gaining links. Matt Cutts, Google's head of web spam, told us in clear terms that online marketers should stop doing this. (I'd add that people should not have been doing this in the first place.)
Rather, I'd focus on contributing to online publications for the purpose of increasing awareness and coverage of your company, website, product, and/or service among a specific, targeted audience. Don't worry about the links. They'll come naturally themselves as long as you do online PR in the right way.
For more, I'd suggest looking at my Moz post on the topic: http://moz.com/blog/an-introduction-to-pr-strategy-for-seos
In short, I'd focus on the websites from whom you would want links even if Google did not exist. If you sell widgets, then you want a mention -- with or without a link! -- on a website that is read by people who are interested in widgets. Think about this issue like this and don't worry too much about getting links directly.
-
My rule of thumb for guest posting...
If you start with the intention of adding in highly targeted anchor-rich links, you will fail at the first hurdle. You can get away with a URL link, click here, co-citation, but I would only guest post now if I were getting credited as the author. This link would follow through to my Author page on G+.
Co-citations are great you can add surrounding text to a link, but even though the link isn't live, there is still a benefit, and one that isn't going to see you get a penalty.
-Andy
-
What I mean by "improve my branding" is that I am making people more aware of my brand. So, in my case, my brand is either me (Marie Haynes) or my company (HIS Web Marketing). When I post an article on Moz, lots of people read it and my hope is that they say, "Oh, that's Marie Haynes. She's really good at Google Penalty Stuff". I have branded myself in this way.
If I was managing SEO for a company that makes greenhouses and I managed to get an article published on the Better Homes and Gardens website, the main purpose would not be so that bhg.com links to me for SEO value, but rather that people who regularly visit that website see my company's brand and recognize them as a leader when it comes to greenhouse design. I would also hope that people will click on my link and come and buy some greenhouses. If you're guest posting in places where no one is likely to click on your link then there's a good chance that you're placing unnatural links.
"a blogger writing a piece on the wider industry contacts me for a quote and writes in his piece, "...Jeepster of Jeepster.com (followed link) said: "Blah, blah...""
I would say that that is a good link. But it could be easy for you to build that into a linkbuilding tactic and have it slip into an unnatural tactic. If a few sites contact you and quote you and link to you in that way, then that's fantastic. But, if you start offering to pay people to link to you that way or if you offer product in exchange for a quote and a link then that's not good. But, if people think you are authoritative enough to quote you in an article then this is great.
-
Thanks for the reply, Marie.
What does "improve my branding" mean exactly? That you use branded, followed links?
Also, what happens when, as is often the case in my industry, a blogger writing a piece on the wider industry contacts me for a quote and writes in his piece, "...Jeepster of Jeepster.com (followed link) said: "Blah, blah..." -
My rule of thumb is that I will only guest post in a place where I would have taken the link even if it was nofollowed. I guest post on Moz and Search Engine watch and those links improve my branding and bring me traffic and clients.
But, if the question is, "How can I guest post for links and still get away with it" then I might have a different answer. There are ways that you can probably get pagerank passing links out of guest posting for now but I wouldn't use it as a long term strategy.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My DA is got suddenly increased is it safe or not?
hello hope all of you are fine the da of my affiliate gaming website is got increase very quickly i mean 2 week ago it was only 1 da but now suddenly it reached 10 DA is it safe or not also there is 0% spam score that mean i am safe?
Link Building | | okseo420 -
The best way to engage with bloggers these days?
What's the most effective/least risky ways to engage with bloggers these days in order to build links, gain exposure and refer traffic? I'm in a competitive niche (weddings), and there's no shortage of high quality and unique content being offered to bloggers. Currently, I do a mix of sponsorship, product giveaways, promotions etc. But, also have some ideas in the pipeline, such as collaborating with other vendors on styled shoots, etc. The latter is very time-consuming and, again, is something that has been done LOADS. So, needs to be very unique to stand out. Want to avoid things like guest blogs and riskier tactics. For obvious reasons. Any fairly easy-to-do ideas that I've missed before I explore the more complex ones??
Link Building | | Coraltoes770 -
Best Blog Post Length to get Links
Okay, kind of silly question but i am looking for some help interpreting an analysis done by John Doherty almost a year ago: http://moz.com/blog/what-kind-of-content-gets-links-in-2012 In the document he mentions the correlation that longer posts on average receive more links but the graphs were really hard to interpret (for me). Based on the data what is the correct size we should shoot for (most graphs were missing labels). Any one have any insight? Should i shoot for 300 words per post, higher, etc? Thanks! Kyle
Link Building | | kchandler0 -
What is the best way to optimize website for more than one city?
This is my first post in the Moz Community and I have to say, it looks like an amazing place to learn - I am excited to be here. My question is this. I have a client who would like to optimize his local business website so that is shows up in several different cities. For example, he has an office in Ottawa, London and Woodstock. What would the best way to complete the on-page optimization so that Google knows this site is relevant for his service in any of these cities? Is it just a matter of including each of these terms in the title, content and headings? Should I create additional website for each location? Create a resource page for each city on the main site? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Link Building | | KickItDigital
Nathan0 -
Precautions for Linkbuilding with Mommy Blogs
If you are seeking links from blogs in a niche that is known for having a lot of commercial links from reviews or sponsored posts what precautions should you take? Should you avoid any blog with sponsored posts or that reviews products?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Need advices for my first and new blog. to do and not to do!
the increase traffic to my online store furnacefilterscanada.com I'm working on a new blog on a different domain. mervrating.org I found a good writer and will ask for good content to post on my blog. The content will be about a specific keywors relevant to my business. about each post, should they always have a link to my online store? when a guest is posting a comment on my blog and leaving is url, should I ask him if I can comment on is site to get backlink? what are the best things do to about using my blog to help my store rank better? how about on 'How to optomize' a certain keyword, can you give a example on how it is use in a blog and how it should link to the site you want to increase traffic? I guess if my blog can built high page and domain authority and it is linking to my online store often, it will help my store gain a higher PA and DA? Can it hurt if every post is linking to my store? last question, if guest comment and leave url and my site has a good D.A. it will be help full to them, but want about me? Is there a way to take advantage of this? I hope I can get help crom Mozers the me start my new blog with the best guideline and tips to make it a success. Thank you
Link Building | | BigBlaze2050 -
Guest Blogging
I am looking to get into guest blogging for our retail brick-and-mortar store to increase more local search traffic. 1. Any local SEO recommendations/tips you have? 2. Can you post the same article in multiple places? Or is this a huge no-no? 3. For local search, should we focus on article directories or guest blogs? Thanks in advance for your feedback, and sorry that it's a three-parter! 🙂
Link Building | | jpretz0 -
Guest blogging
several people have suggested that i try guest blogging as a way to improve my site's position but i am wondering how do i go about finding the right blogs to contribute to? for example, my clients are usually dentists. how do i know what would be a good blog to write to for that industry? also, how do i link back to the site, in the content or the signature?
Link Building | | dad7more0