Could posting on YouMoz get you penalized for "Guest Blogging?"
-
From my understanding, Matt Cutts hates guest blogging, so I told all of the attorneys here not to write anywhere but on our blog. However, I realized people are constantly "guest blogging' on Moz, and considering how smart these people are, it must not be hurting them or they wouldn't do it. However, what I don't understand is why?
Yes, I do get that the quality of what's on YouMoz is high and not spammy, but I got the impression that didn't really matter. Guest blogging would get you into trouble no matter what.
Can someone clarify for me?
Thanks,
Ruben
-
As I mentioned in my Inside YouMoz post, there are even some posts that I would have turned down if they didn't have links. I try to treat links as scholarly citations rather than votes. There's a post right now in the queue that I need to respond to and tell the author that they need to back up some of their statements with links to the source of what they are claiming.
-
I've actually approved a YouMoz that did link out to a gambling site. The post was about how to do white hat marketing for shadier industries, and linked out to a legitimate example of what the author was doing. It was a relevant link in the context of the post.
I've only made a couple of guest posts myself, but I do have a lot of links from Moz, Search Engine Roundtable, and other SEO-related sites to our business about model battleships. These have usually been attribution for liveblogging (on Search Engine Roundtable), or just mentions of my name in some other form, with a link to the site. If you look at my link profile for that site, it is not solely from sites about model warships or electronics, but I have yet to have any type of notice from Google, and some of those links have been there for years. That said, I didn't get any of them through blog comments, and most of them are just my name or business name for anchor text. This is my personal experience, and yours might vary.
-
To the best of my knowledge, no one at Google has replied to our questions.
-
We're certainly not afraid to decline posts. In the past several weeks, we've been averaging about 50 spam posts a week (pure spam, such as horoscope predictions), declining 20-30 posts a week, returning 5-10 back to the user for edits, and publishing 1-4 posts a week.
I've been doing this for about two and a half years now. We've never let pure spam through, but we were more lenient on anchor text in the past than we are now -- today, you're not going to get away with Springfield SEO company as the anchor text for a link back to your company in a post.
Last year, I wrote more details about the YouMoz process at http://moz.com/blog/inside-youmoz-how-to-guest-blog-for-moz. This is still what we do, though a couple of the people have changed.
-
I will! Had a few other things come up, but I do plan on responding, should be later today.
-
Keri,
Are you still going to add your comments? I think everyone would like to read them.
Thanks,
Ruben
-
I know Moz has talked about this internally and perhaps sought clarification on how Youmoz "should" work from Google, so hang tight for Keri to get back to this one, everyone
-
Sarcy contained in elipses. That's interesting. Though I'm inclined to agree.
The Matt Cutts talked about editorial oversight and materiality. Those are very interesting things, especially materiality.
-
Great question. Great discussion.
Matt Cutts very specifically said "if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop" (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/). He didn't say "stop guest blogging altogether". Two different things.
Lizzie Borden murdered her parents with an axe. That doesn't mean axes should be outlawed for chopping wood. (Sorry, but it gets my point across.) As others above and elsewhere have pointed out, there are and remain very good reasons to guest blog. If you continue to provide value to your intended audience without trying to draw too much attention to yourself, you'll be fine. I know that's subjective, but EGOL gave concrete examples of what NOT to do.
-
My 2 pence.
I think its a relevance thing, guest blogging was being bashed by spammers - target was (from what I sore) moz stats basically, "this blog will take my article it has a DA/PA 50 mR/mT 6.0" and on it would go linking to a website which was completely irrelevant to the blogs content.
I think YouMoz is all good if your linking to a digital agency, linking to a payday loan site im not so sure. I've watched vids of Matt Cutts even stating the above about a relevance issue basically telling the same story as I above.
Traffic from a none relevant blog is spam, traffic from a relevant blog in my eyes is not.
-
We're just about to go into a quarterly all-hands meeting, so I can't write a long reply to this. I'll add my comments tomorrow morning. Looking forward to the discussion!
-
In my opinion, it has a lot to do with scale and intent to manipulate. I still guest post on Moz and I'm not worried about a penalty. But, let's say that I have guest posts on a large number of "high quality" sites and they're linking back to my site with keyword rich anchors...then I'm probably going to have a problem if I get a manual review.
In Matt's blog post on guest posting he mentions that some guest posting is ok. My rule of thumb is that if it's a link that I would still get value from even if it is nofollowed then the guest post is a good one. If I'm doing it just for the link then I shouldn't do it!
-
Oh.... this is a great question. I like it. I'd really like to hear what the Mozzers have to say.
I think that you are going to get a bunch of opinions.
Honestly, I don't think that Google really knows what kind of guest posting is allowed because they have a hard time measuring "quality" and they have a harder time determining "intent".
I think that a lot of guest posting is done for links and links only. People generate a bunch of crappy articles or even some pedestrian-quality articles and give them away with links in them. I think that those could get you penalized if Google:
A) sees them on lots of websites,
B) the links are followed and have money keywords as anchor text,
C) the websites that host these articles have lots of obviously low quality articles on them (I know that it is hard for google to detect article quality but if they have lots of misspelled words, have very little formatting, no images then they are probably manipulative crap or crap that they don't want in their SERPs)
D) the websites that the links are pointing to have signs of manipulation (the smell of crap drifts downwind).
I don't think that YouMoz is any of those. If you look at YouMoz, the post that appear there are generally quite good and the people who wrote them spent a lot of time. I also think that Moz is not afraid to tell people.... "This ain't good enough!" or..... "Hey! This ain't a link farm".... in a cheerful kind of way, of course.
So, since you gotta work your butt off and have something that people should hear to get a post published on Moz, I don't think that Google is going to have a problem with it.
.... but, that's just an opinion.
-
Hi Ruben,
I believe what Matt Cutts was getting at is that guest blogging, for the sole purpose of SEO is going to get you penalized.
If you are guest blogging to drive awareness of your brand, provide thought leadership, etc. is still something that is accepted an encouraged.
SearchEngineWatch.com has a great article regarding Matt Cutts' comments on guest blogs, as well as a quote from Ryan Jones, "Guest blogging can still work. You wouldn't turn down a column on CNN or an editorial in the Huffington Post if they said you wouldn't have a dofollow link would you?"
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
From my understanding and how I do things as well, guest blogging is not dead. Low to no value guest blogging is dead. The issue with guest blogging is people were over using it just to get a link, so sites would have hundreds of guest bloggers and really offer no value. They were basically like a link scheme. I still think high value guest blogging is still alive and well. I write blog posts for high value sites sporadically and the exposure and links help.
In your situation, I would advise the lawyers not to turn down high value sites. For example if the state bar association wanted a guest post about a case, I would do it. If some other local law blogger wanted a guest post, I more than likely would advise not to do it. One thing to keep in mind is that the high value sites rarely have guest bloggers, that is one thing that makes them valuable.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best Practices for Recurring Blog Topics
Our site has annual articles (such as a payment calendar and an announcement of our annual conference). Is it better to keep all the old blog articles available and searchable, redirect them to the most current year's entry, or something else entirely? My instinct is to have a permanent redirect to the newest article.
Content Development | | GwenKestrel1 -
No URL for my blog?!!!
I use a website provider for my website. Sadly, although it has an integrated blog, the blog posts title does not get included in the URL. So now, with my limited knowledge of SEO I'm wondering if blogging is still worth it? Any thoughts Greatly appreciated! 🙂
Content Development | | MissThumann0 -
Duplicate Blog Content
Hey Mozzers! I have a client who is a dentist, with multiple offices, and wants to use an identical blog post (including images, alt text, text, tags, everything pretty much) from one of his office's website on his other office's website to save time and mimic the success of the original content for his other office. Everything I've researched says this is a HUGE no-no, but I'd love to hear if anyone else has tried to do something like this and if they were successful in doing so (implementing rel=cannonical or 301?). Also, if he is the owner of both sites and they both receive low traffic will Google even notice? My biggest worry is that if I did post the content on his other site, identically, that it would dilute the visibility of the original post, which has and is continuing to surpass our organic search goals... The main goal though, is to drive traffic to BOTH sites via organic search using the same content. Would love to hear everyone's opinions if this is possible or unrealistic... Thanks! -D
Content Development | | Derrald0 -
Posts vs Pages and Rankings Differ Greatly
I use wordpress for most of my sites and generally have a post 'news' section. What I've noticed is that just about every time a post will always rank much higher and much faster than a 'page'. As long as I don't let it get buried in the news archives it continues to rank well, better than if I were to create a 'page'. Is there any sort of reason this might occur? I'd like to be able to just create 'pages' but at this point in time it makes no sense.
Content Development | | GYMSN0 -
Personal and Company Blog
What are the correct methods for showcasing articles on your Companies blog as well as your own personal blog to avoid the content to be flagged up as duplicate content?
Content Development | | sat130 -
What is your favorite SEOmoz blog post of all time? And why?
I'll go with this post by Rand: White Hat SEO: It F@$#ing Works
Content Development | | ThomasHgenhaven1 -
Where can I find places to guest blog?
I have done a couple of guest blogs but I have come up dry as of late. Any tips on where to find blogs interested in linking for content?
Content Development | | ibex0 -
Corporate blog
We are starting a corporate blog and were discussing the best place to put it in terms of the URL. Would http://blog.companyabc.com be OK, or is another structure better? Like http://www.companyabc.com/blogtitle/?
Content Development | | KnutDSvendsen0