* Photo by Alan Bruce / CC BY 2.0
Matt Cutts has finally gotten tired of getting spammy guest post requests because he blew up on his blog today with the claim that “guest blogging is done.”
That’s quite the announcement!
Matt goes on to say “Given how spammy it’s become, I’d expect Google’s webspam team to take a pretty dim view of guest blogging going forward.”
This blog post freaked a lot of people out today and I think that was Matt’s intention. He wants everyone to know that Google is eventually going to scrutinize sites with a high ratio of guest post links and they might penalize sites that publish that content too.
How Not To Guest Post
If you read Matt’s post carefully, you’ll see that he’s really just saying the same thing he’s said before. Spammy guest posts on low quality sites is going to get you in trouble.
Look at the problems he describes.
- People are asking for dofollow links
- People are not researching their prospect (Asking Matt Cutts for a guest post?)
- People are trying to get guest post on a site that doesn’t allow guest posts
- People are asking to pay for PageRank links
- People are posting on low quality, spammy sites
How You Should Do Guest Posts From Now On
Matt later added an update to his post mentioning that guest posts really aren’t that bad, as long as they are done correctly. The old strategy of pitching a blog and hiring freelance writers with no expertise from content writing services isn’t going to work for much longer.
Here’s what you need to do to bulletproof your guest post strategy
- Write content that you have expertise in, or…
- Hire industry-expert authors to write for you
- If you’re an agency, require that your clients contribute expert content
- Avoid byline links. Get natural links in the content instead
- Don’t use keyword-rich anchor text
- Your link building strategy shouldn’t consist of a majority of guest posts
- Build relationships, and trust, with your prospects
- Reach out to only relevant websites
- Stick to some quality guidelines (for example DA >30, MozRank >2)
Thanks You Spammers, For Ruining Guest Posting
No really, thank you. I mean it.
I absolutely hate spammy guest posts and I hate articles full of fluff written by people who have no expertise in what they’re writing about. That’s not to say that a professional writer with no expertise can’t put something great together, but it requires a lot of research and that requires higher fees, which many businesses aren’t willing to pay.
That all changes now.
I think Google is going to start putting the hurt on sites that have lopsided link profiles with a large ratio of guest posts and/or guest posts that are placed on mediocre sites.
If you want to protect your business from the wrath of Google, you need to provide expert content to highly respected websites in your niche. Start by building authentic relationships.