Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team shook the internet on January 20th when he said that he’d “expect Google’s webspam team to take a pretty dim view of guest blogging going forward.” (you can see the post on his personal blog here)

If you are posting articles and guest posts as a way to grow SEO rankings and links, you could be toast.

So who is affected by this?

It’s the low quality blog networks that feel the impact.

A lot of SEO companies will use blog networks and link farms as a way to get links to gain SEO rankings. They have built a number of sites, or have relationships with people that have a number of sites, and they use those sites as places to put articles (that no-one will read) for the sole purpose of getting a link back to the main site being promoted. The more links, the higher the ranking. Well, that’s how it used to work. Not anymore.

If you are doing this – stop. If your SEO company is dong this – stop. Like Panda and Penguin updates that devastated many businesses, this impact is being felt by many.

So what should you do?

The people that get into trouble are the ones that look for shortcuts to game the system. The people that win are those that know that the shortcut is to provide quality information and content in places that people will read it.

Quality blogs that are careful with link text are doing fine. We have not seen any negative impact with our SEO.

Search Engine Land, from their post “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging is Done”, added this: In response to a couple hundred comments on his post, and perhaps to the discussion on social media, Cutts has added some extra information clarifying the intent of his post. He says he’s not referring to “high-quality multi-author blogs” and that he added “for SEO” to the title of his post:

“There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I’m talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.”

I’m personally happy that Matt Cutts and Google are getting rid of the spammy kind of articles & guest posts. It will help those that write real content and put it on real blogs to provide real value and build real relationships with real people.

Immediate steps you can take:

• Write high value content that people would be thrilled to put on their sites
• Make sure the sites the content goes on has a following of real people that you would want to educate or have as clients
• Have a way for people to get to your site to connect with you to get more information if they are interested (it’s ok to have a link back to your site)
• Avoid any and all SEO’s that do article submissions and guest posts purely for the sake of getting links
• Be VERY strategic about your SEO

Last point: the purpose of SEO is to get ranked high on Google in order to get more leads and customers. If you are doing a guest post on high quality blogs that are read by high-quality prospects that reach out and ask for more information or inquire about using your services, that’s accomplishing your end goal. No?

Blessings,

P.S. If you have questions or want help with your situation, SEO, or want more leads or customers, then email me at Chris@ChrisGoegan.com or Click Here to Request a Free Consultation

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