Yesterday marketers and bloggers all over the internet had a mild freak out. Why? All because Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, announced that guest blogging was dead and you would no longer benefit from having them, in fact you may even be punished by Google.
Whoa! Yeah, it sounds a little scary at first but when you read his entire article it’s not so much. Especially after he went back and added a few paragraphs to his blog to clarify that people need to not be freaking out so much since he meant only spammy guest posts are the ones you should kill.
Ok...that’s not so bad then. Most of us marketers hate when we get an email that is asking to guest post for the mere fact of them being able to drop links to their website. So, in this fact most of us would agree with Cutts. I’ve sure been there where I was annoyed by one of these emails. Most of the time we delete them and move on, but Cutts must have had the final straw.
So, therefore not all guest blogging is dead. Accepting guest posts is a great way to display different voices/point of views on your blog. In addition, writing guest posts is also still a good way to increase your own authorship credibility and provide informational/educational content that people will find helpful. If you are doing these things you’re doing it right. However, if you only care about getting the backlink to your website and are not genuinely wanting to offer helpful information in your blog post—you’re doing it wrong.
Spammy guest blogging is how people used to sell links to use on websites for SEO credit. Since Google eventually punished those websites for doing that, they had to think of something else, right? Well, Google is onto them again. There is just no fooling Google.
Personally, I think peopled jumped to conclusions and took Cutts’ blog post way to literal. Guest posts aren’t really dead—the spammy ones are. You can’t blame the guy for coming up with a catchy title for his post. Oh and look, it worked. He had Twitter all a flutter and hundreds were commenting on his post (most of them not so nice).
Hey, you know what? How about you check out the post and decide for yourself. Is he correct when he says that guest blogging is dead? Comment with your thoughts.
Posted by Matt Cutts
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:
[Read the original article and see the email example: The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO]
