Category: Blogs

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Is Guest Blogging Dead? Part Two

Today we’ll talk about when you can and should guest blog for others to improve your own organic placement.

First, I have to say that I do guest blogging on a regular basis for two sites in my own industry: the Bing Ads Community and SiteProNews. I personally find guest blogging in certain parameters authority and visibility building.

Here’s when I feel that guest blogging can be a workable strategy for you:

1. If you have an industry or trade publication that shows articles to the public (not locked behind a gateway) online I would consider the opportunity to write an article that would include links back to your website writing as an authority a great opportunity. I would highly encourage you to see out and write in these types of situations. Make sure that before you write you have your personal Google+ profile set up and that you link to this profile in the article bio block using the rel=”author” syntax. This discreet action will tie the article to your Google+ profile which you in turn link to your website. This type of guest blogging article may help with your own business exposure.

2. If you have been approached by someone in your industry outside of your geographic area and they are willing to allow you to guest blog on their quality blog and you have vetted them as a respectable business, I would consider a once a month guest blog post a wonderful opportunity for you. However, I would properly vet them to make sure that the link from their site to yours is not tainted by other types of activities they may be participating in that would be a high negative for Google which would bleed into your own site’s Google profile.

When would I steer clear of guest blogging:

1. If your SEO firm says “we’ll charge you $XXX a month to send out guest blog posts and they’ll be placed on hundreds of sites so you’ll get a high number of links”, I would be very cautious. In a recent analysis I did for a client we queried exactly where the content was placed and were shocked when the blog post for a medical call center was found on a hemorrhoid medication website and numerous off-topic/no name blogs. There is NO VALUE to your content appearing on sites like this! In fact, links from sites like this you may actually need to disavow with Google.

2. If your SEO firm says “we will write one article but then slightly reword it so it is different for every site we place it on.” Steer clear! This is called article spinning and one clear practice that Google has very clearly disavowed and has stated it considers content spam.

Quality content and the right type of guest blogging opportunities can actually be very good for your own organic placement. Find out how my firm may be able to help you with special quality pieces to use as guest blog posts for your own business.

You’ll want to check out Matt Cutts full video on the topic of guest blogging in this webmaster video from the Google Web Spam department for more information.

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Is Guest Blogging Dead? Part One

The way most SEO’s have been using guest blogging to build links has really been disavowed by Google and appears to be considered low quality content. Here’s how guest blogging particularly impacts websites that use this type of blog content and those that send out guest blog content to others to post.

Today we’ll talk about using guest blog posts on your own blog and Wednesday we’ll talk about situations where you are sending content out to others to post to their blog.

Posting Guest Blog Posts to Your Own Blog

If you have been soliciting guest blog posts to build free content and to try to create value for your blog, here are a few tips to consider before you continue using this type of content.

1. Verify using Copyscape Premium that the content you have been using as a guest blog post is actually unique to your blog. If when you run the post through the plagiarism checker and you see two, five, forty sites that have this same blog post, I would stop using content from this source.

2. Take a look at the keywords used in the post and in the bio block footer. Would Google consider them to be a good match with your website focus? Let’s say for example you are an attorney and got a guest blog post but the footer content and keywords talk about nutritional supplements. I would not use that content any more. You want the keywords and bio block information to be legal category keywords.

3. Take a look at the anchor text used in the blog post – that’s the keywords that are underlined and carry the hyperlink. Open the blog post in Word and see what site are you linking to in the post? Is is a quality site? Is it one you would like your own customers to visit? Is the site in your own industry?

Remember typically others that create and push out guest blog content are not interested in building their own author brand, they are trying to bleed off your search engine capital through a link back to their own website or to their own clients’ website.

Be careful and selective of what you use and how. Google will be evaluating who you link to and who links to you as part of the new organic placement ranking.

You’ll want to check out Matt Cutts full video on the topic of guest blogging in this webmaster video from the Google Web Spam department for more information.

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Guest Blogging for Links

What does Google (Matt Cutts) think about guest blogging and the links that are generated from doing it? This excellent video answers the question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IMxC3wQZOyc

This is the bottom line. If you did not sweat in creating the guest blog post Google will typically not give you link juice for it. That’s the hard cold fact. Write a light weight blog post of about 250 words, post it on a variety of sites, and maybe even use article spinning software in an effort to create unique content for each site and you really will not be getting link benefits.

Create a well written, informative, insightful blog post for a site that supports your industry and yes Google does like this approach. It’s all about the time you take and the insight you provide. Do not do guest blogging just for links with minimal effort on your part Matt and Google pretty much say in this video that it is wasted effort.

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Working with WordPress Backbone Websites

I am in the process of finishing up and readying for launch a new website built on the back bone of WordPress. I have to say the website has turned out nice, but I wanted to share with you a few of my thoughts on using website built like this for search engine placement.

I think that if you want to save money on webmaster services, like the control of being able to add and update your content at will; a well designed website using WordPress has no comparison. But for people, like me, who are used to full and complete source code control for SEO purposes a website built with WordPress leaves much to be desired.

Professionals in my industry know that template based websites (and that is really what a WordPress built site is-  a custom template) do not allow you full source code control. Although the designers that have worked with me on building this site have really done a great job, there are instances when I wanted to name my uploaded images my own way; I wanted to custom design my site architecture and be able to change the names and structure easily if I needed to down the road; I wanted to add special design or style elements to my pages without having to create hacks to make the page work the way I wanted it to within the template constraints. In other words, there is an element of control, subtle though it may be, that is simply missing with a WordPress site versus a custom created, built from the source code up, website.

I guess with all new improvements to allow customers to control their own content there are trade offs, but I’m not sure that I want to lose that control for every customer.