Guest blogging??

[BBuck]

Hi all! I heard that Google comes down on guest blogging. I did a search here on Moz with the terms "Guest Blogging" and not much comes up, as it relates to my question.

So I'm asking: I have a website with specific content where I can implement a "team blog" (stackideas - easyblog), and have industry professionals submit a blog article (once a month on their respective industry focus), and add Google Authorship (link to/from their Google+ profile contributors section), but not allow ANY follow links back to their site. There will be about 10 different blog categories, and there will potentially be several different authors in each category who will be writing specific focused content per category.

Any potential Panda (or any other animal problems with that?

Thanks all!  BB

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi BBuck.

Join the crowd! Matt spurred a lot of confusion and conversation with his "stick a fork in it" comment back in January. It's taken a while for a broad consensus to gel around what that really means. Search Engine Journal has a lot of solid observations and commentary on the topic. John Rampton at SEJ perhaps said it best "SEO isn’t dead.  Guest posting isn’t dead."

Here's what I've been able to gleen. It really boils down to intent.

Guest blogging purely for the sake of trying to acquire inbound links is not advised. If, as in your case, you're soliciting guest posts with the intent of helping educate and assist your audience, that's perfectly acceptable so long as you set and follow strict guidelines to ensure quality. Examples of "quality guidelines" can be found on sites like Moz and SEJ and include, in addition to those you have outlined above:

• publish original content that has not been published elsewhere;
• give credit where credit it due - use proper attribution; and
• write at least 300 words, more is better.

I think even follow links are fine, so long as they are relevant, on-topic references.

[sparrowdog]

I'm wondering the same / similar thing.

I have been invited to regularly write for a blog. I am tossing up one of two options.

1. Having myself set up as an author and attach it to a Google+ account to claim authorship.
2. Having the site owner post under their name and give me credit at the end of the post as the author.

Either option better? If I choose option 1, do I need to nofollow the links because I'm the author linking back to my own site?

All posts will be original, relevant and helpful content, I'm just being overly cautious.

[DonnaDuncan]

Did you see the post authored by Cyrus Shepard earlier this week (http://moz.com/blog/bye-bye-author-pics)? He concludes there are still plenty of good reasons to use Google Authorship.

Assess the quality of the publication you're considering writing for, and decide based on that. If it's a reputable site, I would set yourself up as an author. Look at the recent posts on Moz and other leading SEO blogs. They're still using authorship and follow links. Let that be your guide.