Guest Blogging Is Bad for SEO

[daniel27lt]

I noticed across the interest that lots of people still today mention that guest blogging is excellent for SEO and building backlinks. Well, this is not the case anymore (not 100%, but in most cases).

This has been deemed bad practice and against Google's policies. You can read it here, directly for Matt Cutts, head of Goole SEO and Googles Webmasters:

https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/

I hope this has helped.

 

[arindamb]

Guest Blogging is not bad for SEO if it does right way on high quality sites and providing unique and quality content to the site that it has guest post.

That depends on each site, not all things Matt Cutts said are true.

 

[daniel27lt]

Yes, that's true. Not all guest blogging is bad, as you mentioned. But lots of people using this tactic to spam, and to get backlinks, unfortunately.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

What?

How exactly do you spam guest blog posts?


Matt put that video out several years ago, and it was in response to Google specifically targeting what was more or less a reciprocal link network. The network was run by Ann Smarty under the guise of being something white hat and totally acceptable under Google's guidelines.


Other than that, Google is not penalizing anyone for guest blogging.

 

[daniel27lt]

What?

How exactly do you spam guest blog posts?


Matt put that video out several years ago, and it was in response to Google specifically targeting what was more or less a reciprocal link network. The network was run by Ann Smarty under the guise of being something white hat and totally acceptable under Google's guidelines.


Other than that, Google is not penalizing anyone for guest blogging.

People add their links to others sites, and most of the time the articles are of low quality. That's why it's real important if you're the admin to check thoroughly the article and the links guests place within them.

The first line of the article that Matt posted in 2014 speaks about this.

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.

So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy. In general I wouldnt recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldnt recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.

And bottom line...

So there you have it: the decay of a once-authentic way to reach people. Given how spammy it’s become, I’d expect Google’s webspam team to take a pretty dim view of guest blogging going forward.

And to add to this... guest blogging is still good, but only for certain reasons...

And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

You are not talking about guest blogging. You are talking about sites that are created with user generated content. There's a difference.

Anyhow, this was 3 years ago, and there has been zero evidence that Google is penalizing anyone for guest blogging.

 

[Gh0st4unt3r]

The way google has changed from my research is that if you are going to post quick poor quality comments on blog posts this will be generally seen as spam and possibly be trashed by google and other search engines in essence could lower your overall seo score.

What google is mainly looking for now is top quality information and if you make a guest post should make it relevant to the article in question and respond with a quality comment and not a couple of 1 liners this way your content will be seen as good quality and related to the content on that page(s).

Im not normally a guest poster as i love to interact with other registered members and the sites teams this give you great credibility and a better stance in the web world today.

 

[daniel27lt]

daniel27lt

That's makes a whole lot of sense. Like I mentioned above, Googles basically has taking this more serious, as once it was deemed good, but as per usually, things get over abused in SEO. Thus, needing change. It's like a lot of things in SEO, where it was once good particle, but now it's not.

 

[davebusiness86s]

I always use guest blogging for my blogs. As long as you keep writing quality articles, it drives huge traffic to your site. On the other hand, if the article is low quality, I don't think the bloggers will accept those. But if they do, it create a backlink for you, and I don't think that's a bad think either

 

[daniel27lt]

I always use guest blogging for my blogs. As long as you keep writing quality articles, it drives huge traffic to your site. On the other hand, if the article is low quality, I don't think the bloggers will accept those. But if they do, it create a backlink for you, and I don't think that's a bad think either

Yes, I agree. It's still a very good way to drive traffic, only if it's of high-quality content. I would recommend only letting the guest blogger add a link within their 'about author' section, and that's it. A lot of article sites are starting to do this. Meaning, only allowing links within the author's box, not within the article itself.

You are not talking about guest blogging. You are talking about sites that are created with user generated content. There's a difference.

A bit of both I'm speaking off, but mainly guest blogging, where another blogger writes a post to be published on another's bloggers blog.

Anyhow, this was 3 years ago, and there has been zero evidence that Google is penalizing anyone for guest blogging.

Yes, this is true. When you look directly at guest blogging. But we all know Google has and is cracking down on low-quality articles. And links that have nothing to do with that article. And lately Google is becoming more and more secretive with their algorithm, so SEO companies stop finding the loop holes to get one over them and anyone else.

 

[Gh0st4unt3r]

Having that author box seems like good practice and a good way for an admin to control its outbound links, most blogs now i have noticed as well even though with guest blogging the site owners have set to review so they know that content going onto a site is of good quality and removing the poor quality posts. I have only noticed this from top quality blog sites though.

 

[daniel27lt]

daniel27lt

Yes, it would be good practice. I see a lot of high-quality blog sites and article directories following this suit too. As these days, these are so many articles about the same topic, so getting rid of the bad eggs is the only way not to flood the search engines.

 

[Contentgather]

The mistake here is the thread title and sweeping statements in the post that say "guest blogging is bad" and "guest blogging is dead". You immediately got questioned, and in your replies, you very quickly clarified. Guest blogging is not bad; spam and crap content is bad. There's a big difference.

Just like anything that could be worthwhile on the web or in marketing - it's only bad if you suck at it.

 

[vishwa]

Guest is blogging is not dead yet. Some people do guest blogging for gaining backlinks for their site. That's the reason behind the Matt cutts video. If you are doing quality guest posting rather than doing it for creating backlinks. I these most of the high quality blogs looking for quality guest post.

 

[Kevin Wolf]

If guest blogging is bad, how else is it possible to create quality and clean backlinks?

 

[Marc van Leeuwen]

Marc van Leeuwen

It is not bad but there are still having alternatives to this method such as creating PBN, web 2.0, buying links on high quality sites...etc
If you know SEO, there are many SEO techniques that you can apply for your sites to have quality backlinks.

 

[Kevin Wolf]

Kevin Wolf

Already tried all those techniques, but are those really effective in increasing the website's keyword rankings?

 

[hynds]

Guest posts is still an effective technique. But you should do it right, create and maintain relationships with industry news sources and blogs, produce high-quality content and make sure that you link back to your site in a useful and relevant way;

Matt Cutts has now quit the job from Google

 

[daniel27lt]

I'm just wanting to update this thread with an interesting new article that came out recently by SiteProNews. Check it out here...

http://www.sitepronews.com/2017/02/08/guest-blogging-a-positive-or-a-pitfall-in-seo/

Matt Cutts has now quit the job from Google

Yes, very fascinating. He took a new job at another digital firm at the end of 2016. I suppose there could be many reasons for his decisions.

 

[paul1129]

paul1129

Yeah, spammy guest posting is factor that can effect any rankings negatively.

But that doesn't changes the fact that guest posting is an effective technique for link building.

 

[daniel27lt]

daniel27lt

Yes, I agree with you.

 

[SamHeyerSeo]

Guest posting is an effective seo strategy but you must create valuable and unique content on High Domain authority websites. Although is not the only way to gain quality links. Spamming methods are getting penalized very easily today.

 

[DarioPV]

Way to use controversial statement to spark up some conversation