Guest Posting At Scale - A Definition!

[Webpresence]

Hi, have just watched the latest Whiteboard Friday entitled 'Why Guest Posting and Blogging is a Slippery Slope'. Rand mentions '"guest posting at scale", but what does he actually mean?

For the purpose of building website authority and brand awareness we post around 1-4 blog posts per month for our clients, all on authoirty sites, some of which accept guest posts with little editorial restriction, some we have to jump through hoops for.

We don't use KW specific anchor text, instead we link to the clients site with semantically related, varied anchor text, as well as linking to other useful third party sources. We also publish regular useful content on our clients blogs in the hope of getting natural backlinks.

Would this be classed as 'guest posting at scale'? Do you think we could we be targeted and penalised by the upcoming guest post algorithm?

Many thanks in advance, Lee.

[Asjad]

Hi Lee,,

I think We just need to be smart in guest blogging.

You don't need to Post your Links in the author area going forward and just add links in the body of Articles and If We add links to some other sources then It will be even Good.

Just Make it Look Natural with images, links to other creditable sources thats all.

Thanks

[CommT]

Hello Lee,

Are you using Google+ Authorship? If you aren't then I think you should be.

Are you sourcing the sites manually, and maintaining a direct relationship with the site owners (as in you don't go via a 3rd party)? Are you adding value to the sites you guest blog on? If you are doing this things then I would have thought you'd be OK.

I think the slippery slope is when the link matters more than the content, the site it's published on, the audience who read it and something Rand didn't mention: if you paid for it or not. So long as your content is good and it is being published on sites that send you relevant (converting) traffic then it ticks more boxes than just being there for the links. I try and think of all links like this: If Google stopped counting this link, would it still provide value? If it's on a high-traffic site and is relevant to that site's audience then it doesn't matter whether Google gives credit for it or not because it still brings in traffic, hopefully my site does it's job properly and turns that traffic into customers. Because it's customers that make a difference to my business NOT rankings!!

I hope this is helpful.

Best wishes,

Amelia

[randfish]

Lee - I believe the best way to think about this is to ask whether, if you worked on Google's search quality team, you'd want those guest post links to help the site rank better. Nothing you're describing sounds awful (although posting on sites that don't have much editorial filtering/discretion could be more dangerous), but it also doesn't strike me as the type of practice that I'd want to reward if I were Google.

I liked what Patrick McKenzie said:

Google will eventually define any tactic which scalably allows ranking for arbitrary keywords as "black hat."

That strikes me as being correct. If there's a singular tactic you're using to get rankings (like link building through repeated guest blogging) that is exclusively or primarily for that purpose (manipulating the rankings), then it's probably in the danger zone, if not today, then at some point in the future.

This begs the question - what tactics should you be doing for clients to help move the needle on their SEO? I'm going to try to tackle that in an upcoming Whiteboard Friday, but for now, I'd think about things that help build their brand, get publicity, drive traffic, and show value that also happen to earn links. For example, hosting events, creating viral content, becoming a resource for data that others cite in their work, creating partnerships with others in your field or geography, earning press, etc. http://moz.com/blog/category/link-building has tons more good stuff, but all of them take serious elbow grease and are bigger than just "getting a link" (which is the whole point).

[Webpresence]

Many thanks for this Rand.. certainly makes sense!

Can't wait for the upcoming Whiteboard Friday you mentioned.. the sooner the better

[KeriMorgret]

This won't work on YouMoz. We will remove links to your own company in the body of the post if they are not related to the post, and ask you to put them in your author bio area. These types of links really stand out to readers, and if the links are left in, readers comment about it and also downvote the post.

[Webpresence]

Thanks kerry, appreciate the feedback.

Do you not think that links within an author bio may be a target for upcoming google updates? They seem too easy to get, and therefore could be classed as spam!

Thanks in advance, Lee.

[Webpresence]

Thanks Rand.. have just re-read this response and I totally agree with the SEO tactics you have mentioned.. but in my opinion you are assuming that the client has an endless budget for SEO.

Unfortunately this isn’t the case for a lot of ‘smaller’ clients, they have limited budgets in comparison to their nationwide ‘bigger’ competitors.. Creating videos isn’t cheap, hosting events isn’t cheap etc..

Google favours big brands who have the resources to make them happy.. it’s a lose lose situation for smaller companies.. how can they compete?