Matt Cutts says more about guest blogging

[Dr.Marie]

I thought what wasn't said in this video was important:



This is a different video than the one he posted last month of guest blogging:



So in today's video, Matt says some obvious things:

-Don't do article spinning as guest blogging
-Don't use low quality article syndication to guest blog


I am surprised by this video. When I read between the lines, it sounds like he is saying that it is perfectly acceptable to guest blog for links provided you are not spinning articles or just republishing the same article on several sites for a link. This seems to go against what he says last month in the second video I posted where it sounded like he was saying you should not guest blog for links at all.


He also said that Google would take action if they saw your site was consistently linking out to low quality sites. (i.e. if you had a site that existed for other people to place spun articles on it.)

Thought this would generate some good discussion.

[DarrenHaye]

His webmaster videos are a bit of a damp squib.

Something he could talk about for 15 minutes and give a detailed response on different scenarios he only addresses the one obvious scenario..

Instead of most of the videos he could just tweet

"don't publish low quality content and link out to low quality sites"

Job done and no need for videos lol.

[Dr.Marie]

I'm going to disagree Darren. When MC posts a webmaster video I watch it several times. I find that often what is *NOT* said gives you more clues than what is.

So in this video Matt says some obvious things, but he repeatedly says, "don't do low quality article spinning and syndication." To me, this says that it is perfectly acceptable to find decent sites and get an original guest post published with a link back to your site.

Now, many will say that they knew this all along...that you are providing the webmaster with something of value and get a link back. I have always thought that the majority of guest posting was still manipulation of the SERPS and that Google would find a way to devalue the vast majority of it.

I think I am now comfortable with looking at something like MyBlogGuest and BloggerLinkUp and perusing them for places where I can write a decent article in exchange for a link. But, I've got a few things I would take note of:

-The site's got to be one that has decent quality and is not just made up of other people's guest posts.
-The site has to be in the Google index
-I'd have a look to make sure that they are not repeatedly linking out to bad neighborhoods.
-I'd be careful with my anchor text

[DarrenHaye]

I'm going to disagree Darren. When MC posts a webmaster video I watch it several times. I find that often what is *NOT* said gives you more clues than what is.

I just watched this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTjN9x-by-I

I would have liked more detail about a sidewide link to a site you own, widget sitewides, any difference between footer & sidebar, keyword anchor text vs non etc etc

All I find him saying is the most obvious answer.. I think even I could have comfortably fielded these questions in the same manne.

-The site's got to be one that has decent quality and is not just made up of other people's guest posts.
-The site has to be in the Google index
-I'd have a look to make sure that they are not repeatedly linking out to bad neighborhoods.
-I'd be careful with my anchor text

You already knew all that anyway I'm sure.

[Dr.Marie]

You already knew all that anyway I'm sure.

I've actually changed my stance on guest posting because of this video. I did a little bit of it in the past but was always thinking it would eventually be all wasted when Google figured out how to devalue guest posts. I'll do a bit more of it now.

[Belfast]

If you asked Matt whether using guest posting is a satisfactory method of building links I'd guarantee he'd say "no".

If it is a scheme designed to increase pagerank or SERPs... it's already covered in their webmaster guidelines.

I still think it's a pretty good way of manipulating Google, but I struggle to convince myself/deceive myself into thinking that Cutts and Co. think it's fine.

The reason he doesn't say it outright is because it's not currently a big problem and because it's going on with all the Google-butt-kissing 'top' SEO bloggers who watch, tweet and write all the Google-butt-kissing articles.

IMO.

[DarrenHaye]

The reason he doesn't say it outright is because it's not currently a big problem

It will be soon, I think instead of people submitting to article directories they are just now switching over to submitting to blogs under "guest posting" it's all the same thing really.

I might start a new thread and write a longish post on my views on guest posting.

[Test-ok]

I'm thinking Google is still on the war path for spam in all web aspects, blogs, articles, link farms etc.
Their not going to quite until they piss everyone off.

[Ann Smarty]

In reality, he never says anything new, no matter if you read between the lines or not.

Yes, there's no such a flag as "guest post" - i.e. Just because some article is a guest post, Google won't treat links in it any differently...

Yes, the usual rules still apply: spunn content is still bad (no matter if it's a guest post or not), if you keep repeating the same links / anchors in your guest posts, this is going to negatively affect your backlink profile, etc

[Dr.Marie]

Just because some article is a guest post, Google won't treat links in it any differently...

I think people have to be careful about how they use the author bio that's available for most guest posts. If you've got 100 sites across the web all saying, "Dr. Marie is a writer for a great blog about anchor texted keyword. You can read her posts at www.example.com." then Google is probably going to be able to pick that up as manipulative.

But if I am manually contacting webmasters and providing them with content that is good quality in exchange for a link then this is good.

It may be common knowledge to most of the members here, but I think a lot of people who used to do spammy article marketing are taking the same spam approach to guest blogging and that's just not going to be effective.

[Ann Smarty]

Yes, absolutely, agreed. What I mean to say, that's not specific to guest blogging. we should avoid identical link patterns...

[Glenn Kilpatric]

Um guessing this is why Im seeing an increase in contacts from people wanting to pay me to place an article on my site. I actually had one of the people write me the article. I took a look at it, it was well written, it was related to my neeche, but its was completely irrelevent to my readers and would have looked well out of context on the site so I ditched the idea. I get a couple of emails a week now from people wanting to put articles on the site. I dont even bother replying now.

[oseymour]

I think people have to be careful about how they use the author bio that's available for most guest posts. If you've got 100 sites across the web all saying, "Dr. Marie is a writer for a great blog about anchor texted keyword. You can read her posts at Example Domain." then Google is probably going to be able to pick that up as manipulative.

Generally I would agree with you but what about when users simply re-share something exactly as you have it on your website. And this also doesn't apply if you've got a large site and the links you gain from the example above are a small percentage of your overall links.