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.