The Problem
Let’s face it. SEOs across the globe have been panicking. They were spoiled by all those public blog networks and cheap directories and ultimately got their date with destiny. Well, more like a date with the Penguin. How did they get spoiled? They were allowed to rank high in the serps without providing any real value. Sure, their main site might have been decent enough but, all their off-site efforts weren’t meant to impress anybody but the Google-bot, and because of the high demand for links that actually have some Pagerank, those soul-less articles were showing up in the serps far more than they should have been.
What do I mean by soul-less articles? They wrote lousy articles that didn’t have any heart or personality. Why should they put their heart into their link spam? It’s not like anybody was ever going to read that stuff. Seriously, that’s what most of those SEOs seemed to think. There was definitely enough of them that said it. As if all that wasn’t enough, many of those articles had more than their fair share of grammar mistakes because they had been run through an article spinner – and I’m the first to admit that spinning articles is exhausting.
So now, we’ve got a bunch of guys flooding the inboxes of bloggers with their so-called guest posts that are really nothing more than the same junk they were giving to the blog networks and, as is to be expected with this sort of thing, some bloggers have taken their contact information down entirely, because they’re so tired of all the blatant spam that for some reason, these “SEOs” think will get published with flowers, sunshine, and smiley faces. Of course many more bloggers(like this one) are expressing their outrage.
The craziest part(for me anyway), is when these guys submit articles that aren’t even related to the site they want to get published on. WTF? We’ve got full grown men acting stupider than the robot they’re trying to trick because somehow they got it stuck in their mind that they would get more done if they indiscriminately just blast articles(full of spammy links to spammy sites) all over the internet.
The Solution
Guest post with nothing on your mind but providing a good user experience.
Seriously, almost every guest post I’ve ever read had a link in the byline. It’s like going out on a date. You both know why you’re out together and if you don’t provide a good experience and give her the signals that she’s looking for, you’re not going to get the results that you’re looking for. Guest posting works the same way. If you don’t give the blog’s owner the signals he’s looking for, he’s not going to publish your post and you’re not going to get the link that you shouldn’t really be worried about anyway because, if your post doesn’t get published, you’re not going to get that link.
Instead of worrying about the link,
- Worry about the type of content that the blogger’s readership is looking for.Can you solve a problem that they have?
- Worry about how well you may need to get to know the blogger before he’ll even open an email from you. Does the blogger even have a “Write For Us Page” or something similar?
- Worry about the quality of the content that’s already on the site. Are you skilled enough to create content of that caliber?
- Worry about the linking behavior of the blogger you want to write for. If he doesn’t link out a certain way, what makes you think he’ll let you do it?
- Worry about whether or not the post you’re writing will earn some links and shares from that blog’s readership. It makes your byline link more powerful if people link to it and share it.
- Worry about whether or not your post will build some positive familiarity. Familiarity is a powerful thing. Why do think large companies pay just to have their name on the sides of buses, and pay to have football stadiums named after them?
- Worry about whether the pages you want to link to look spammy and ask yourself: “Is there’s any natural reason for the article I’m writing to link to that page?”.
Quick Summary – Provide value and don’t do anything spammy. Worry about making people happy.
Focus more on making your site worth visiting again and again.
I could write a really long post about this but, I’m just going summarize it for now. Are you capturing leads with your site? Are you capturing email addresses and social subscribers? Are you providing content and/or services that people are going to want to continue receiving? Would people want to recommend your service to their friends? Would people want to share you content with your friends? If you’re not, your problems are a lot bigger than SEO.
I don’t recommend black hat, but I’ll give you a black hat tip anyway.
Let’s get something straight. Blog networks still work. Blog networks like BuildMyRank was don’t work all that well because anybody could join them for a low fee and they were very effective. This mean Google will find them and destroy them. If you find a blog network, ask yourself this, “is everybody going to know about this in six months?”. If the answer is no, it’s a far safer bet than BuildMyRank was and believe me, there’s plenty of blog networks out there that sill work. Seriously, if I can find the blog networks that still work and don’t attract too much attention, why can’t you?
Always remember, never point dirty links at a page that you can’t afford to lose, like your homepage or any page that’s earning links well enough without wearing a black hat. Sometimes, the only way and easiest way to recover from a penalty is to delete the page the dirty links pointed to. It’s hard to believe people are just now figuring that out.
Final Thoughts
What do you honestly think is going to get you quicker results? Sending out a bunch of guest posts that get rejected because you didn’t even try to provide any value to that site’s audience? OR, learning about that site and their audience and doing your very best to make them happy when you guest post?
I wrote and spun enough articles for blog networks to know that providing value for people gets better results and is a lot more stimulating, and I’m saying that as someone who’s sites still haven’t caught a penalty. The rankings for my keywords are gradually falling now after several months because they are competitive keywords and I haven’t promoted for them for months. Honestly, I’m amazed they stayed on the front page this long with the amount of people that actively chase those keywords.
It’s not like black hat doesn’t work but, I think that when you do black hat seo it’s easy to get distracted from the most important thing: providing value. I really think that by providing value to other people’s sites as well as yours, it makes you a better webmaster because you’re always gaining more experience and feedback from the webmasters that you’re guest posting for. This is extremely important to me because I want to focus on making sites that people want to type into their address bar, share with their friends, and link to naturally. In other words, I want to focus on building sites that don’t depend on Google.
Image by Bill Burris with License
