Google Launches Another Salvo in the Guest Post War

Google has been warning webmasters about guest blogging for quite a while, but now, the search engine is getting serious. Will going after “guest blogging networks” improve Google’s search results?

Head of webspam Matt Cutts tweeted early Wednesday morning that Google has taken action on a large guest blog network, and reminded people about “the spam risks of guest blogging”.

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

There was a bit of mystery at first but one network immediately came to mind was MyGuestBlog. Owner Ann Smarty confirmed that her site (or network) was indeed penalized.

[Official] Even though #myblogguest has been against paying for links (unlike other platforms), @mattcutts team decided to penalize us…

— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 19, 2014

h/t to webpronews.com.

This move shouldn’t be much of a surprise because Matt Cutt’s has covered quite a bit on his blog:

The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.

Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book. It’s not that way any more. Here’s an example unsolicited, spam email that I recently received:

Here’s a video:

Here’s another one:

Via mattcutts.com

Final Thoughts…

It will be interesting to see how the next few months play out for other guest posting networks.

I/we never participated in guest posting for link building. We always and still look at it as an opportunity to extend our reach and build our brand and awareness. The ability to gain a link was always an after thought… our first thought was providing value and persuading people with our content.

This latest move by Google seems to bring guest blogging inline towards what it really should be. Insight from someone that your audience will care about. I’ll have more thoughts on this in a bit but for now I have to sign off…