A few weeks ago Matt Cutts came out and basically said Guest Posting is OK as long as the blogger is high quality. Now, a few days ago he’s come out with another webmaster help video and basically let us know that low quality guest posting won’t be tolerated.
I’m gonna go over (real quick) what he covered and then embed the video when I’m done.
I actually just noticed that everything he mentioned about when guest posting can be bad – is the same stuff that was/is going on in the article directories and I think we all know how that worked out.
Article Spinning
I’m particularly glad he mentioned article spinning isn’t allowed – because I saw an SEO claiming that spinning is white just the other day and actually mentioned it in my last post.
It just makes me think that SEOs that actually know what they’re talking about maybe aren’t being vocal enough about what is spam. I think my next post I might make a list of every black hat trick in the book just to bring people up to speed.
Low Quality Syndication
Again, the same thing that was going on when article directories always ranked well. People would write a 500 word article that says NOTHING and submit it to every article and web 2.0 site there was(and some people still do).
I remember one time my sister’s kids broke her recliner chair and I found an article called ‘How To Fix A Broken Recliner’ and the author somehow managed to figure out how to write a 500 word article – telling me to check the warranty and call the manufacturer.
Letting Anybody Guest Post
Like he said in the last video about guest posting, you should only be accepting guest posts from bloggers who write high quality content like Danny Sullivan.
Linking To Spammy Sites
Matt’s been warning us for years that linking to spammy low quality sites can negatively impact your search rankings and obviously guest posting wouldn’t be any different. When someone sends you a guest post, you need to check all the links in the article to make sure they aren’t going to spammy sites.
Will Users be happy if they land on that page?
Before you publish a guest post on your site, please ask yourself if users will pleased with this content. And just like with the article directories, most of the content was generic and untrustworthy. Don’t write that kind of content and don’t let others publish it on your site.
Anyway, here’s the video if you want to watch it.
