No, guest blogging is not dead. In fact, it’s alive and well, and it’s a great marketing tactic to open up your business and personal brand to opportunities and audiences that you normally would not have a chance to reach. Recently, Matt Cutts, the head of web spam for Google, declared that guest blogging for SEO was dead. And there has been a lot of publicity lately because of his statements about guest blogging.
OK, I get it. Mr. Cutts, the “talking head” of Google who talks publicly to webmasters and website owners about complying with Google’s “best practices” and “acceptable webmaster guidelines”, had to come out and let website owners know Google’s stance on guest blogging.
If you’re hiring a cheap “writer” to “write” low quality articles and get those articles posted on low quality blogs just because you think your site will rank better, then you probably deserve to get slapped by Google. These are exactly the types of “articles” and blog posts that I’ve been trying to get removed, time and time again, in order to get a website back into Google’s “good graces” because of Google Penguin. Even though Penguin may not be all about links.
Low quality articles, as guest blog posts, on low quality blogs, can result in getting hit by Google’s Penguin algorithm, and then you’ll need Google Penguin Recovery services. Guest blogging with low quality articles has been something that the better SEOs have been staying away from for years now.
But that doesn’t mean that guest blogging as a whole is dead. In fact, as I said before, it’s alive and well, and can really help your business. But it will only help if it’s done right. And it shouldn’t be done for “SEO purposes”. You should be guest blogging for the traffic and publicity: not for SEO purposes.
I am sure you’re probably surprised that I’m saying this, as a long-time SEO professional. But, if guest blogging is going to work for your business, then you need to selectively choose your blog topics and where your guest blog post is going to appear. Choose a blog where you’re going to get visibility. Choose a blog where you are going to get traffic. If your guest blog post gets traffic and visibility, then the “SEO part” is going to fall in place naturally. And that’s what you want.
Let’s take, for example, a great opportunity for those in the SEO and inbound marketing industry: YouMoz. YouMoz is your opportunity to guest blog on a popular internet marketing site, Moz.com. In fact, you are encouraged to be a guest blogger on YouMoz. If your blog post gets popular there, it will be promoted even further. And if you’re in a search marketer, you’ll get more than just a link from Moz. You’ll get publicity and traffic for your business, and probably a bunch of leads if you offer SEO services.
What about Guest Blogging Services?
There are guest blogging services and sites that put bloggers together with sites that need guest blog posts. Sites like My Blog Guest and PostJoint, if they are going to continue doing business, need to respond quickly to Matt Cutts’ blog post about guest blogging. They need to send their users an official statement, and they need to update their standards. The only way My Blog Guest and PostJoint are going to continue to be successful is to get higher standards and continue to police their own communities and sites. No more low quality articles, and absolutely no low quality blogs should be in their systems. If I’m going to use My Blog Guest or PostJoint to post an article as a guest blog, then I had better be assured it’s going to go on a site that has traffic and will offer publicity for my business. It needs to be verified somehow. And low quality blogs need to be turned down or removed from the system completely.
History of Guest Blogging
Guest blogging has been around for a long time. In fact, even before we had the internet we had guest blogging (of a certain sort). Authors have been publishing their “guest posts” or “guest articles” in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and even the Dallas Morning News for decades. It’s nothing new. And I bet it will continue to be something that will benefit both readers, businesses, and the websites themselves well into the future.
So, is guest blogging dead? Absolutely not. It might be in the eyes of Google, who takes a dim view of someone posting a “guest blog post” just for the SEO value or search engine ranking value. And, of course, if the blog post is a low quality article on a low quality blog or site. Especially if it’s done in a bulk manner.
But one well written (or several well written) articles on high-quality blogs is just fine. I have no problem writing an SEO-related article about domain names for a popular domain blog. That brings me a unique audience that I probably won’t have a chance to get in front of. And posting an article about social media marketing or domain names on my own blog from a guest blogger is just fine.