Guest blogging??
-
Hi all! I heard that Google comes down on guest blogging. I did a search here on Moz with the terms "Guest Blogging" and not much comes up, as it relates to my question.
So I'm asking: I have a website with specific content where I can implement a "team blog" (stackideas - easyblog), and have industry professionals submit a blog article (once a month on their respective industry focus), and add Google Authorship (link to/from their Google+ profile contributors section), but not allow ANY follow links back to their site. There will be about 10 different blog categories, and there will potentially be several different authors in each category who will be writing specific focused content per category.
Any potential Panda (or any other animal problems with that?
Thanks all! BB
-
Did you see the post authored by Cyrus Shepard earlier this week (http://moz.com/blog/bye-bye-author-pics)? He concludes there are still plenty of good reasons to use Google Authorship.
Assess the quality of the publication you're considering writing for, and decide based on that. If it's a reputable site, I would set yourself up as an author. Look at the recent posts on Moz and other leading SEO blogs. They're still using authorship and follow links. Let that be your guide.
-
I'm wondering the same / similar thing.
I have been invited to regularly write for a blog. I am tossing up one of two options.
- Having myself set up as an author and attach it to a Google+ account to claim authorship.
- Having the site owner post under their name and give me credit at the end of the post as the author.
Either option better? If I choose option 1, do I need to nofollow the links because I'm the author linking back to my own site?
All posts will be original, relevant and helpful content, I'm just being overly cautious.
-
Hi BBuck.
Join the crowd! Matt spurred a lot of confusion and conversation with his "stick a fork in it" comment back in January. It's taken a while for a broad consensus to gel around what that really means. Search Engine Journal has a lot of solid observations and commentary on the topic. John Rampton at SEJ perhaps said it best "SEO isn’t dead.  Guest posting isn’t dead."
Here's what I've been able to gleen. It really boils down to intent.
Guest blogging purely for the sake of trying to acquire inbound links is not advised. If, as in your case, you're soliciting guest posts with the intent of helping educate and assist your audience, that's perfectly acceptable so long as you set and follow strict guidelines to ensure quality. Examples of "quality guidelines" can be found on sites like Moz and SEJ and include, in addition to those you have outlined above:
- publish original content that has not been published elsewhere;
- give credit where credit it due - use proper attribution; and
- write at least 300 words, more is better.
I think even follow links are fine, so long as they are relevant, on-topic references.
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
-
How to create a smooth blog migration from subdomain to subfolder main?
Hi mozzers, We have decided to migrate the blog subdomain to the domain's subfolder (blog.example.com to example.com/blog). To do this the most effective way and avoid impact SEO negatively I believe I have to follow this checklist: Create a list of all 301 redirects from blog.example.com/post-1 to example.com/post-1 Make sure title tags remain the same on main domain Make sure internal links remain the same Is there something else I am missing? Any other best practices? I also would like to have all blog post as AMPs. Any recommendations if this something we should do since we are not a media site? Any other tips on successfully implementing those types of pages? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19861 -
My company wants to set up some blogs - what's best practice in getting started from scratch?
My company wants to set up two or three blogs (on previously unused domains) with the idea being to disseminate good content that gets picked up in SERPs and acts as a lead generator, shows us to be authorities in our market, creates brand (or individual employee who's doing the blogging) awareness etc... From scratch, what are all the boxes that should be ticked to make this work from the outset? What are the must haves?With all the ideals in place, how long could it realistically take to make this work? What are some pitfalls to look out for? Any advice in general will be appreciated. Thanks, M
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Can internal links from a blog harm the ranking of a page?
Here is the situation: A site was moved from its original domain to its new domain, and at the same time, the external wordpress.com blog was moved to a subdirectory, making it an onsite blog. The two pages that rank the highest on the site have virtually no links from the blog and no external links, while all the other pages are linked extensively from the blog and have backlinks. Their targeted keywords are not so much easier to rank than the other pages for that to be the sole cause. To confuse the matter even more, there was a manual penalty affecting incoming links which was removed last month. The old site, which has many backlinks to the new site, is still in Google's index. The old blog however, has been redirected page by page and is not in Google's index. Most of the blog posts are short 1-paragraph company updates and potentially considered low quality content because of that (?) The common denominator among the two highest ranked pages (I'm talking top 3 in SERP v. page 3 or 4) seems to be either the lack of external backlinks or the lack of internal links from the blog. Could there be an issue with the blog such that internal links from it are detrimental rather than helpful?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
Best way to fix 404 crawl errors caused by Private blog posts in WordPress?
Going over Moz Crawl error report and WMT's Crawl errors for a new client site... I found 44 High Priority Crawl Errors = 404 Not Found I found that those 44 blog pages were set to Private Mode (WordPress theme), causing the 404 issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOEND
I was reviewing the blog content for those 44 pages to see why those 2010 blog posts, were set to private mode. Well, I noticed that all those 44 blog posts were pretty much copied from other external blog posts. So i'm thinking previous agency placed those pages under private mode, to avoid getting hit for duplicate content issues. All other blog posts posted after 2011 looked like unique content, non scraped. So my question to all is: What is the best way to fix the issue caused by these 44 pages? A. Remove those 44 blog posts that used verbatim scraped content from other external blogs.
B. Update the content on each of those 44 blog posts, then set to Public mode, instead of Private.
C. ? (open to recommendations) I didn't find any external links pointing to any of those 44 blog pages, so I was considering in removing those blog posts. However not sure if that will affect site in anyway. Open to recommendations before making a decision...
Thanks0 -
E-commerce Adding New Content - Blog vs New Page
I have an ecommerce site (www.brick-anew.com) focused on Fireplace products and we also have a separate blog (fireplacedecorating.com) focused on fireplace decorating. My ecommerce site needs new content, pages, internal links, etc... for more Google love, attention, and rankings. My question is this: Should I add a blog to the ecommerce site for creating new content or should I just add and create new pages? I have lots of ideas for relevant new content related to fireplaces. Are there any SEO benefits to a blog over new static pages? Thanks! SAM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SammyT0 -
Blog content - what to do, and what to avoid in terms of links, when you're paying for blog content
Hi, I've just been looking at a restaurant site which is paying food writers to put food news and blogs on their website. I checked the backlink profile of the site and the various bloggers in question usually link from their blogs / company websites to the said restaurant to help promote any new blogs that appear on the restaurant site. That got me wondering about whether this might cause problems with Google. I guess they've been putting about one blog live per month for 2 years, from 12/13 bloggers who have been linking to their website. What would you advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
High PR backlinking blogs
I have a few high pr blogs all setup on different ip addresses. Â Should I optimize these blogs for my chosen keywords I want to use as backlinks to my "money site". In other words if my keyword is "ice cream" and im sending links back to my money site with the anchor text "ice cream" and ice cream type keywords...wouldnt it be logical to make that blog optimized for ice cream as well? Â My thought is that google will find these links even more powerful if they come from a website that already appears to be ice cream related. ...man i want some ice cream now
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dcstover10 -
Are there certain times of the day that it is better to update content or blogs? How do I find out what time is best for a particular site?
Trying to figure out how to best optimize timing of new content... including blogs and other on page content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AaronSchinke0