The End of Guest Blogging

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.

Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book. It’s not that way any more.

– Matt Cutts

Google has been penalising bloggers and site owners repeatedly in the past several years and the Panda update clearly killed traffic on several sites. I’m not sure if it has killed sites that had frequent guest blogs.

Matt Cutts article clearly spells the end of guest blogging for SEO purposes only. Guest blogging to create high quality, genuinely written content is unlikely to go away. But, if you’re frequently accepting guest posts from unknown people, which end up trying to game Google and other search engines, then you’re most likely going to be in trouble.

And this follows in line with his video about a month back.

If you’re still intending to accept blog posts then ensure that they don’t violate Google’s linking guidelines.

What does this mean for Techtites?

If you’ve been reading Techtites for a while, you’ll know that we started a guest blogging program several years back. Since then we’ve received numerous posts from guest bloggers. Over the past year, I’ve rewritten the guidelines to ensure an improved quality of blog posts. I’ve also rejected numerous guest blog requests which were only to game search engines.

I will also be going back into the archives of this blog and deleting any posts that were targeted at spamming search engines. And, I suggest doing the same to your blog. What do you think about guest blogging?

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