The death of guest blogging

[Tyson Downs]

I'm not sure if you are referring to me.

I don't care if Google penalizes every guest post from here on out. It doesn't matter to me.

I am tired of hypocrisy.

They 'say'

• They want the best results.
• They want the user to have a good experience.
• They want website owners and those on the internet to add value and contribute. (authorship anyone?)

Then they say:

Guest blogging is spamming. Stop it.

They don't say: Guest blogging can be very beneficial to the users and search results, but there are some who are spamming with their guest blogs. We won't tolerate that.

Instead they totally contradict what they have said in the past.

That's what gets up in my 'craw'. Nothing else.

It has nothing whatsoever about me or what I do.

Guys, you just need to accept the fact that our industry as a whole is not something Google wants to be around. Anything considered "link building" is gaming the system. Whether you think it's white-hat or black-hat doesn't matter. If you are building links, you're trying to game the system, pure and simple, and that's the truth, you can't run from
Google doesn't want you to game the system. They want you to leave the internet alone and let it evolve on its own. Which would actually probably make search quality soar if people quit trying to build backlinks and that's the truth also.

So, you have two options:

1) quit SEO
2) accept the reality that you're gaming the system and violating Google's policies

I hate to be that blunt but the writing on the wall was there long ago. Many people predicted Google coming down hard on guest blogging. Many white-hat enthusiasts said that would never happen.

Yet here we are.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Laurie,

Some people on the forum (whose opinion I deeply respect) will disagree with me on what I said. My opinion is just one side of the fence

If you want to play by Google's rules then yes. About all you have left is quality content. Any other aspect of Local SEO (reviews, citations, link building, etc) can be considered gaming the system in one form or another.

But the question you have to ask yourself about quality content is, as a local business, how can I create compelling content that people are going to naturally link to? It's very, very difficult to do this as a local business. You have to get creative.

Do you have time to be that creative or are you too busy running the business to sit back and think about those things? Do you have the money to hire a full time employee to do those things for you? What about outsourcing? As anyone in the content arena will tell you interesting outsourced content is hard to come by and when you do find it, it's expensive (truly creative and engaging content anyway) because a pro is doing it and they know their value.

So, what option is left to you?

I think people, especially SEO's are just going to have to break the illusion that they can still be on what they call the "good" side and accept the fact that the overwhelming majority of what we do is to game the system. Even building a citation is influencing how the system works and "gaming the system".

If you want to play by the rules, the only thing you can do that isn't gaming the system is create quality content (which you should be doing anyway). However, even by creating great content you're gaming the system to an extent because you're doing it at least partially to get links.

It's just become a difficult balancing act. I guess people are just going to have to decide how much more juggling they plan on doing with Google.

Again, Laurie, just my take. Read the rest of these replies for a balanced view of the opinions.

---------- Post Merged at 04:15 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 04:09 PM ----------

I wasn't referring to anyone Tyson. I don't write with any particular person in mind. I don't come here to start fights so I just write my opinion objectively

I'll go back and read your posts but everything you just said I 100% agree with. The discontent is growing and has been for a long time.

It just goes back to as SEO's we are trying to game the system. No matter how anyone looks at it, our job is to influence the search engine rankings positively for our clients. There is no line between influence and manipulate in our line of work. They are one in the same.

We are trying to manipulate rankings. Google doesn't want us to manipulate anything. They want us to leave the internet alone and let it evolve organically. And you know what? I agree with them. If SEO's disappeared, there would be much better search quality.

However, I would also be out of a job.

Ultimately, the question to SEO's is, "Are you going to play by Google's rules?"

If an SEO's response is "yes" then my response is, "Then leave the internet alone and quit your SEO job."

If an SEO's response is "no" then my response is, "Continue with your job."

I'm not sure if you are referring to me.

I don't care if Google penalizes every guest post from here on out. It doesn't matter to me.

I am tired of hypocrisy.

They 'say'

• They want the best results.
• They want the user to have a good experience.
• They want website owners and those on the internet to add value and contribute. (authorship anyone?)

Then they say:

Guest blogging is spamming. Stop it.

They don't say: Guest blogging can be very beneficial to the users and search results, but there are some who are spamming with their guest blogs. We won't tolerate that.

Instead they totally contradict what they have said in the past.

That's what gets up in my 'craw'. Nothing else.

It has nothing whatsoever about me or what I do.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Then they say:

Guest blogging is spamming. Stop it.

They don't say: Guest blogging can be very beneficial to the users and search results, but there are some who are spamming with their guest blogs. We won't tolerate that.

Instead they totally contradict what they have said in the past.

That's what gets up in my 'craw'. Nothing else.

It has nothing whatsoever about me or what I do.

Due to all the complaints about exactly what you said Ty, Matt later added an addendum to that post.

He says he’s not referring to “high-quality multi-author blogs”.

And he added “for SEO” to the title of his post. Matt added this:

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 changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I’m talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Due to all the complaints about exactly what you said Ty, Matt later added an addendum to that post.

He says he?s not referring to ?high-quality multi-author blogs?.

And he added ?for SEO? to the title of his post. Matt added this:

He's right about the other reasons to do Guest Posts for sure and everyone should take note. I don't do Guest Posts for SEO anymore. I do it for people in my niche that are going to help me spread my influence and send traffic back to my blog and create new readers.

 

[djbaxter]

Google Propaganda, SEO and Why Marketers Need to Wake Up
by SugarRae Hoffman
January 26, 2014

As the entire search world knows, Matt Cutts released a post last week – I’m paraphrasing – warning us that Google now considers “low quality guest posting” to be spam under their guidelines and will begin to take action in accordance with those beliefs.

I don’t plan to revolve this post entirely around that announcement. If you didn’t see Matt’s post coming at least a year ago, you were either oblivious or in denial.