Guest blogging on a "network" of sites. Good or BAD?

[brettcohen]

Hi guys!

We have the opportunity to guest blog on a network of sites. Basically, this is a syndicated network of sports blogs (around 200) that all link to each other. They own and operate a blog for each major sports franchise. They each average a DA around 60, but almost all of their link equity comes from blogs they own and operate....

My question is this, should we take the opportunity to create editorial content with links back to our site. This would not be paid side or footer links, but real content relevant to their blog and our industry.

On a side note; All of these site have a very decent DA and show up well in Google...

Thanks for any advice!!!

[Jinx14678]

That is currently a pretty loaded question - and I think most everyone has a different take in the current climate.

To make a truly informed recommendation; Quality of content, Linking Practices and amount of posts to be made per week, month ect.. would be needed.

The fact that you used quotations on "network" was correct in my opinion, as it appears this "network" serves a legitimate purpose, as it was explained - so not sure it would be considered a 'Blog Network" which can hurt you and has gotten so much heat from Google over the past month or so.

As if we started classifying everything that links to eachother as a "network" then pretty much the entire web could be considered a network! As in one way or another we all link to eachother in a six degrees of kevin bacon way....

(LOL has anyone every tried to produce a "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" of linking!

That would be a funny blog post!

As a side note, personally - If you content is really good! I would not put it on another persons site, put it on yours!!!!

[EGOL]

This is either a great opportunity or great danger.

Think about it.... 200 blogs that link to each other and that are linking out to a ton of other sites.

I am imagining a  lot of crappy articles and copyright infringing images.  If that is true then don't do it.

[brettcohen]

Hi there! From what I can tell, its all organic, very relative content. Nothing spammy. We are dealing with professional sports franchises, so I can't really say if the images they are using are infringing on copyright issues.

We would be write about 3 paragraphs per post, and include 3 links at most per post (we would use one word anchor text as well). Like I said, all of the sites rank very well with google. The only thing im worried about is out of the 300ish links each site has, 200 of them are from their own network....

[brettcohen]

We are an e-commerce site. We have good content on our site now, this would just be a good way to get a word out; and also get high quality links.

[EGOL]

We would be write about 3 paragraphs per post, and include 3 links at most per post (we would use one word anchor text as well).

Based upon that, my personal opinion is that this is an activity being done for rankings manipulation.  So, I would not do it.  Different people may have different opinions.

[brettcohen]

Let's say we sell sports jerseys, hats & apparel. We are writing a guest blog post on a LA Lakers blog and write about their last playoff game.  What would you recommend for a guest blogging strategy with the implementation of links? Should we just post the content with no links & have a bio about the author with a link to our site? Thanks for the help, EGOL.

[EGOL]

What would you recommend for a guest blogging strategy with the implementation of links?

My recommendation would be to blog on your own site and do it well enough that people who see your posts will email the URL to their friends.

[Jinx14678]

Yeah...

Sorry,

Just cause it has a high moz auth, and is in Google does not make it a "High Quality Link"

I am still with Egol on this, it sounds like manipulation, in theory so subject to risk - So if the ROI of traffic justifies.. go for it, but if this is solely for a "Link" on a "Network"

Still gonna say, it is a... low maybe - probably not at this time. I would personally wait out penguin aftermath to get a little more data on that first.

Shane

PS. Also no matter which way you slice it a 300 word post with 3 links ( 1 link per 100 words) is most definitely a common blog network footprint. Just an FYI

[Delete2012]

It's a risky situation. When you're letting user add content on their own what you get is a large editorial team going through grammar issues, and making sure that you're not being spammed and that your content isn't duplicated (<-- probably the most serious case). You lose quality control. You won't know if a user is spamming this content after it's been published on your site in 10 other network sites.