Guest Blogging is where you, as an expert or commentator on a subject, write articles that are then posted on an external website or blog. We have talked quite a bit about Guest Blogging as a web marketing tool and generally our stance is that if you are using the technique to demonstrate your expertise & capability and your articles are appearing on relevant websites, it can be a valuable tool. So how does this sit with the news that Matt Cutts (SEO Guru at Google) has declared the Death of Guest Blogging as an SEO tool? It fits perfectly! People have often used guest blogging as an easy way to add new, keyword-rich content to their own site while the guest bloggers are primarily concerned about getting links back to their own site – this has been the quid-pro-quo. You now need to stop thinking about keywords and links and focus instead on what you are actually saying. Content is king! We have always advocated that the first priority of a guest blogging campaign should be to effectively engage with readers of the blog you are guesting for, and that any SEO benefit should be secondary (see this post: Guest Blogging Best Practice). Notwithstanding Mr Cutts’ latest briefing on the subject, guest blogging can still deliver significant ‘real-marketing’ benefits, even if the technical SEO benefit is now significantly reduced. A recent post on Econsultacy sums up the situation perfectly.
So is Guest Blogging Dead?
- As tool for generating spammy links focussed on technical SEO – YES
- As a tool for getting your high quality, relevant message directly out to a wider audience – ABSOLUTELY NOT
Google want people to get good, meaningful results from their searches. They want to promote relevant, useful content. They will not be working to keep it out of their listings. We are about solid sustainable, effective web marketing. If you want a marketing strategy that does not live or die by Google’s next algorithm change, we would love to talk to you!
