For a long time, guest blogging has been used as an SEO tactic to gain links to someone’s site from reputable, busy sites in order to help boost SEO rankings. When guest blogging first burst onto the scene, and for quite some time after, it was used for the exact intent for which it was invented- to create valuable, trustworthy content for your audience from a well-respected source, who could then, in turn, share with their audience. Then their audience could visit your site, boost traffic and hopefully become part of your target market as well. It was a beautiful thing.
Well, because people have abused the practice, guest blogging as we know it can be no more. Matt Cutts, Chief Engineer over at the Google has recently revealed that guest blogging for linking purposes is going to start getting penalized pretty seriously. In his blog, he explains why we can’t have nice things in SEO.
Basically, he explains that people are now spamming for guest blogs, and he shares a spam email he received doing just this. Besides the atrocious grammar and punctuation (yes, I am THAT person) the intent is pretty clear- the spammer wants Matt’s contribution just for the sole purpose of driving traffic to his site, which is likely rotten itself. Here at thirteen05 creative, we’ve seen the practice first hand: emails from “bloggers”, messages on Facebook asking us to contribute to a shady site’s content (the answer is always ‘we don’t think so’ and we move on). Matt explains that because there is so much of this happening now, they have no choice but to crack down.
What does this mean for your SEO strategy? Here comes my favorite term: Valuable Content.
Now more than ever, creating valuable content yourself is the most important thing you can do for your digital marketing strategy. It is the backbone for which every single possible marketing effort is balanced. Want to have a PPC campaign? Awesome- make sure that people who land on your site find what they just clicked your ad for. Want to partake in social? Super- make sure there’s a reason a community wants to interact with your brand. Want to optimize for that key keyword? Stellar- but we need to make sure that there’s a whole gaggle of content to back it up.
By creating valuable content, it also makes your site, your brand, your product more shareworthy and trustworthy to Google. So when someone does link to your site, and someone does want you to speak to their audience, Google knows you can be trusted, and it’s ok.
That content. It sure is king.
Tricia
