Google Guest Blogging Penalty
Impacts that Result in SEO Industry Outcry
Recently (19 Mar 2014) Google penalized publishers and bloggers who were actively guest blogging on what Google deemed as spammy blog networks.
Here is the tweet heard round the blogging SEO world.
Notice the very large number of re-tweets associated with Matt’s announcement.
Today we took action on a large guest blog network. A reminder about the spam risks of guest blogging: http://t.co/rc9O82fjfn
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 19, 2014
Now, exactly one week later, the outcry from those impacted and those fearing impacts has been loud and resounding. To illustrate just how loud, let’s review some sentiment signals from the SEO industry around these latest Google penalties for publishers and guest bloggers. One good proxy of the sentiment is to check out this thread on inbound.org, an industry site frequented by digital marketers, and in particular, SEOs:
Thread Link: http://inbound.org/discussion/view/this-is-insane-period-matt-cutts-on-why-doc-sheldon-s-penalty-was-valid (notice that there is no keywords in anchor text 🙂 Reading this thread, which had over one hundred comments at the time that I discovered it by accident this afternoon, led me to the #seopub twitter chat.
As one can clearly see from the volume in the Tweet Archivist Chart embedded below, this particular topic on Google’s new link penalties aimed at guest bloggers and the publishers that use them regularly, garnered over 4.6 times the number of tweets (753) than the #seopub chat the week before (162).
Maybe it was Ann Smarty and her extensive following of nearly 40k twitter users.
Something tells me the topic has a lot to do with it. Here is a sampling
SEOPub Time, today’s topic: Google’s new Link penalties
SEO Pub Time, today’s topic: Google’s new Link penalties. First I want to introduce our guest @annsmarty and @portentint #SEOPub
— #SEOpub Chat (@SEOpub) March 26, 2014
Here is a large sample of the Tweets from a twitter custom timeline to preserve much of this epic #seopub chat
Why Such an Industry Backlash to the Google Guest Blogging Penalty?
Aside from the fact that SEOs and Google penalties are like oil and water, it’s beginning to feel like SEO is becoming a losing battle. From a digital marketers point of view, investing in SEO feels like prepaying for traffic that we hope to get.
Guest blogging, which was once considered a white-hat tactic in line with Google Webmaster Guidelines, the industry rule book according to Google, is now being dealt with as a spam tactic impacting many.
Google Guest Blogging Penalty Foreshadowing From Matt?
If you asked Matt, he might say you should have known better (just speculating). Guest blogging has been long viewed as a cause of concern as highlighted by the following three Google Webmaster videos.
This first video from Matt was to address the following guest blogging question:
I predict that in future Google will penalise guest blogging sites. Any insights on guest blogging as spam?
Google baba,
Mumbai, India
The essence of Matt’s answer is Do not use the same guest blogging sites repeatedly and always write unique content, never spun.
This second video from Matt was to address the following guest blogging question:
How can I guest blog without it looking like I pay for links?
Ben Holland,
Phoenix, AZ
The essence of Matt’s answer is keep it natural and avoid spammy posts/site.
This third video from Matt was to address the following guest blogging question:
Currently, guest blogging is the favorite activity of webmasters for link acquisition. Due to its easy nature, lots of spammy activities are going on like article spinning etc. Is Google going to hammer websites for links acquired by guest blogging?
Nandita B,
India
The essence of Matt’s answer in this video is YES!
Conclusion
What is frustrating to bloggers is that Guest Blogging has long been used as a successful way to gain exposure to new audiences while being able to drive relevant referral traffic to a website.
An unintended consequence of these penalties and manual actions will be to impact the link graph where natural links feel risky to webmasters.
To emphasize that point, while writing this post, I decided not to link to some quality resources in fear that somehow linking to them may seem unnatural or spammy.
It seems somewhat counter product to opaquely penalize publishers and make them heavily scrutinizing their linking practices.
The result of these actions could cause publishers to be overly conservative in their linking stratgey and unintentionally destroy the very signals that recent tests confirm that Google they rely on the most.
Penalty avoidance hinges on an SEO/publishers ability the interpret quality content and links. Specifically, quality as perceived by Google, and Google’s interpretation of user’s perception of quality.
I will close with a quote from Matt, which much like the Fed’s testimony to congress on monetary policy in that it is subjective and requires careful interpretation to avoid risk of penalties.
“A guest post is something that a fantastic author has thought deeply about, labored over, polished, put a lot of work into and then publishes on a highly reputable domain name.”
-Matt Cutts
Tell us about how this latest penalty has impacted your organic search traffic from Google and if penalized, what steps you are taking to get out of the penalty box?
Rick Noel is an experienced digital marketer enabling businesses and organizations to grow through the Internet, while maximizing marketing ROI (Return On Investment). Rick is the CEO and Co-Founder of eBiz ROI, Inc., a full-service digital marketing agency located in Ballston Lake, NY.
Leave a Reply