Guest Posting is Dead (Again)

Is Guest Posting Dead?

Google has issued a warning about guest posting to build links but how relative was it? The warning was a reminder to site owners about the possible dangers of publishing content on other sites for the purpose of building inbound links.

That is not to say that Google necessarily disagrees with syndicated or guest posts as a rule, but there have been an increase in spam type links contained in such posts, that is what Google was trying to get at.

Other Practices Google Frowns Upon

There are other distribution practices and article writing techniques that Google also states that are against their guidelines.

Utilizing blog writers that do not understand the content they are writing about.

The cramming of keywords-rich links on a site.

The publication of content across multiple sites, or by the same token having a large amount of blogs of a few larger sites.

Using the same type content across these articles, or duplicating the complete content of the articles found on your own site. If this is the case the advice is to use rel=canonical, in addition to rel=nofollow.

The Dangers of Spammy Links

Google states that being caught publishing content with spammy links could distinguish the quality of a site and directly affect its ranking. Owners should take full responsibility of policing their site and vett the guest posts, and any suspicious blogs with links should have nofollow.

Google can and regularly does take action against sites that violate these guidelines.

Clarification of Guidelines

Following the Google warning against using articles for link building, many people were under the impression there were going to be mass link penalties.

A few days later, Google stated that the post was just a general reminder for site owners to be vigilant. So there is no expectation that a new wave of manual actions or algorithmic penalties concerned with this “general reminder”.

The feedback from many forums on the topic was that you might get caught by google if you automate the process on a large scale with spam bots and are completely lazy about anchor text and duplicate articles and content.

Basically Google wanted to get a particular point over with the warning, it wants to reward sites that have “earned” links, rather than sites that have gained links without any real effort. Sites that publish anything submitted to them as “guest posts” are just one example of links that are not really earned.

If you are confused by any of this then really a good place to get advice would be a digital marketing expert. Voova Digital has a dedicated, multi-national team with a broad base of knowledge and experience in all aspects of digital marketing. They keep abreast of all Google’s latest advice and recommendations and will keep you the right side of the Google guidelines.