Sharing of expertise on another person's website to expose your brand to a wider audience is only one of the many perks of guest blogging. Guest blogging is not a new technique. In fact, business leaders and marketers have been guest blogging on high profile websites for years. However, guest blogging becomes a problem when the motive behind providing a guest post is wrong: you are out there for link building.
Building inbound links is not necessarily bad. After all, to boost conversation rates, businesses first need to funnel traffic to their sites. However, unnatural spammy links have been the order of the day. Hence, Google issues warning about guest posts for the sole purpose of link building and boosting SEO rankings, a tactic Google finds unfair and unbeneficial for users.
Can Google recognize guest posting?
There are myriad of contents appearing on high-quality new sites. Determining if the content is a guest post or any other type of content through algorithm processes can be a tough task for google. Google most times do not know the real intention of guest bloggers.
After Google recently express his feelings about unnatural links. These and many more are the natural Discourse revolving around guest posting.
John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google turn to Twitter to explain that identifying a guest post is pretty easy.
Well, for a post that is tagged guest post. No one needs to beat around the bush when it has easily been stated as a guest post.
Now, the question is, what if the content isn't tagged as a guest post? In the wake of a Penguin filter that recognizes spammy content, figuring out if a guest post is done to boost organic search or not shouldn't be a hard nut to crack. However, this might not always be the case and Google doesn’t always recognize if the content is guest post ...that is if done right. With that, Isn't it better to play safe than to get flagged by Google?
Does google frown against guest posting?
Google clarifies that guest blogging is fine. It is only bad if the main aim is to boost your organic search by building links to your website. From branding to increasing visibility to building a community, the importance of guest blogging cannot be overemphasized.
However, Google is simply saying there have been many who have been abusing this guest blogging to outsmart the SEO game. While writers have been obsessively writing low quality, content on different websites. Publishers, on the other hand, have been accepting these guest posts. All a technique to improve their search engine rankings.
What exactly does Google want? Rich content, written to educate the audience on another person’s website, and to pass useful information to users, while still creating awareness of your purpose or company.
Does google penalize for guest posting for link building?
Not only has there been a surge in the number of bloggers seeking contributors, but there has also been an outburst of marketers and people pitching contents at different sites for guest posts. This is now growing at an alarming rate, polluting the guest posting system.
If you are receiving guest posts for the purpose of SEO ranking, Google might hammer down your efforts. Google stated that they have been devaluing guest posting links in order to smash down the ranking for years.
Moreover, there have been several reports of unnatural link building penalties. This means manual actions against a website have been taken by Google that can devalue these sites. Although there is no official statement made by Google as of the time this article is written, however, there have been many reported cases of penalty.
What's the way out?
With all these, it is safe to say Google is saying;
If you publish content with unnatural links on other websites, it will affect your SEO ranking
If you accept spam content on your website as a publisher, it will affect your SEO ranking...worst still, penalized.
Hence, as a writer:
Write high quality, unique content, and get it posted on a high-quality website. Don't just guest blog to get more links. With Google’s recent warning, your website might be at risk. Instead, focus on building stronger relationships with the audience. Avoid keyword stuffing or posting on multiple websites, this might label your content easily as spam.
As a publisher:
You don’t need to necessarily label content as a guest post. Be strict with the requirements, and accept nothing less than high-quality content. Have a strong control over the guest posts and thoroughly scrutinize the author to ensure they aren’t just pushing out spamming content.
The guest posting goes nowhere, its here to stay and it’s more important than ever. However, let’s go back to how it’s all done years ago. Writing and posting high-quality content that people will love and watch your rankings improved.
