Author: Nancy McCord

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Is Guest Blogging Dead? Part Two

Today we’ll talk about when you can and should guest blog for others to improve your own organic placement.

First, I have to say that I do guest blogging on a regular basis for two sites in my own industry: the Bing Ads Community and SiteProNews. I personally find guest blogging in certain parameters authority and visibility building.

Here’s when I feel that guest blogging can be a workable strategy for you:

1. If you have an industry or trade publication that shows articles to the public (not locked behind a gateway) online I would consider the opportunity to write an article that would include links back to your website writing as an authority a great opportunity. I would highly encourage you to see out and write in these types of situations. Make sure that before you write you have your personal Google+ profile set up and that you link to this profile in the article bio block using the rel=”author” syntax. This discreet action will tie the article to your Google+ profile which you in turn link to your website. This type of guest blogging article may help with your own business exposure.

2. If you have been approached by someone in your industry outside of your geographic area and they are willing to allow you to guest blog on their quality blog and you have vetted them as a respectable business, I would consider a once a month guest blog post a wonderful opportunity for you. However, I would properly vet them to make sure that the link from their site to yours is not tainted by other types of activities they may be participating in that would be a high negative for Google which would bleed into your own site’s Google profile.

When would I steer clear of guest blogging:

1. If your SEO firm says “we’ll charge you $XXX a month to send out guest blog posts and they’ll be placed on hundreds of sites so you’ll get a high number of links”, I would be very cautious. In a recent analysis I did for a client we queried exactly where the content was placed and were shocked when the blog post for a medical call center was found on a hemorrhoid medication website and numerous off-topic/no name blogs. There is NO VALUE to your content appearing on sites like this! In fact, links from sites like this you may actually need to disavow with Google.

2. If your SEO firm says “we will write one article but then slightly reword it so it is different for every site we place it on.” Steer clear! This is called article spinning and one clear practice that Google has very clearly disavowed and has stated it considers content spam.

Quality content and the right type of guest blogging opportunities can actually be very good for your own organic placement. Find out how my firm may be able to help you with special quality pieces to use as guest blog posts for your own business.

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.

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Is Guest Blogging Dead? Part One

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.

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GMail and the Promotion Tab – What to Do and Know About It

If you are not a GMail user, you may be out of the loop when it comes to what happens to the nice e-newsletter you just sent out to your clients. With the new GMail inbox, your newsletter is now automatically sent to a tab in the inbox of users called the “Promotion” tab. For some website owners, this means that your carefully crafted message has just gone into “no man’s land”.

Although the promotion tab is not a junk mail folder, it is a place of less consequence and based on how heavily a user is entrenched with GMail, it may mean that your message is one of hundreds that may simply never be seen.

So what are website owner’s to do when it comes to getting your email message read by users of GMail?

1. Make sure your e-newsletter is interesting and provides value. Whether that be a special promotion or discount, to tips of real value to a reader, remember the following…

“Gmail’s filtering is smart, so once your subscribers engage with your email, the more likely they are to appear in the coveted “Primary” tab. Also, if your email subscribers are into doing a little up-front work, they’ll never miss one of your emails again. All they have to do is click and drag your emails to the correct tab, and choose to always filter those messages in that folder. ” Make sure to read this full article on this GMail issue as it is a good one.

2. Encourage your users to click in, and interact with your emails. You can even go a step farther and instruct users on how to move your mailings by drag and drop within the GMail interface to encourage them to put your e-newsletter in the “Primary” tab.

3. Make sure to use social media to point to e-newsletters you have done and archive them back on your website. This gives GMail users who may have missed your message alternative ways to find out about your news.

If you need help with your own e-newsletter program, we offer excellent writing services to make the articles and information you send out interesting and shareable. Find out more about how we can help you today.

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How to Opt Out of Google’s Shared Endorsements

I am not sure why we have to go down this path again, but we do. However this time it is not Facebook or Twitter that is using your name and face to sell services, but Google!

Plastered all over the home page of Google.com is a blue bar letting you know that in November Google will be starting to use any Google+ user’s information on +1’s, reviews, and comments in advertising around the Web to other people in your circle. Google calls this new brand of advertising Shared Endorsements.

For now, this really only impacts users who are on Google+, but I would not be surprised if eventually this will impact all users of Google. If you don’t want to share what you do and like in this way with others, you can opt out of this new program, and here’s how:

1. Visit this Google Page: https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements?hl=en&partnerid=gplp0 you will need to login to your Google account.

2. Go to the bottom of the page where it says “Based upon my activity, Google may show my name and profile photo in shared endorsements that appear in ads.” and remove the check mark from the box. If there was no check mark you are fine.

3. Make sure to click save. Google will pull up a comment asking you “are you sure you want to do this?” click “yes” and you are good to go.

Facebook took a huge black eye months ago when it rolled out it’s own version of Endorsement Ads when it revealed what people had bought in ads embarrassing users who maybe did not want others to know that they had bought certain items. Why Google has decided to go down this same path, one can only guess.

I for one have already removed my name and I encourage you to do so too. We already share so much online I don’t want my name and image to hawk products to others I may know.