Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Spam, recently caused a stir in the global SEO community with his take on the widespread practice of guest blogging. Cutts answered several questions suggesting guest blogging as an illicit link building activity on his personal blog. His message couldn’t be clearer that Google will not appreciate low quality guest blogging, and perhaps stringent measures would be required to combat the spamming.
What exactly did Matt Cutts convey to guest bloggers and SEO professionals on his blog?
In his blog aptly titled “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO”, the Anti-Spam King challenged people involved with rampant guest blogging to wait for Google’s action plan. Cutts used both new and previous video posts to put the search engine giant’s perception of spammy guest blogging in the spot light.
What most people are not getting is that Cutts didn’t put a full stop to guest blogging. He advised putting an end to low quality guest posts as a back link earning activity. Evidently, there are many individuals and organizations that are actually paying websites to post their blogs in order to earn a back link. This has created a flourishing business of hosting websites that publish multiple guest posts without putting any thought towards the value they are providing to the community.
Consider Matt Cutts’ tone in his blog – “So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy.” If one critically interprets his take, a clearer perspective emerges, which Cutts underlines further by commenting to this user below on his blog.
Source – www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/
Matt Cutts, exactly like the founders of Google, firmly believes in providing the best value information to a user who is looking for something on the World Wide Web. There is nothing wrong being a contributor to different blogs and websites, but the practice of putting worthless low quality content on the internet is just unnecessary, and limits Google’s ability to dig for value to an extent. The bad content will eventually get caught by Google for providing no value to the reader. Consider Cutts’ reply below for the same.
Source – www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/
Impact of Matt Cutts’ words on the global SEO sector
There is no doubt that Cutts’ blog has created a widespread panic among the content marketers, freelancers and digital marketing evangelists who were active extensively in the guest blogging circuit. However, content quality wise, we could expect some growth and low quality blogging will drop down to some extent. In all fairness, it is still too early to say the real impact, but we surely could look through certain scenarios.
Scenario I: People stop writing and accepting guest posts on their blogs
Verdict: Not Possible
This is clearly not Cutts’ point and isn’t expected to see daylight at all. Guest blogging is a great conduit to engage with new audience and promote your cause, which Google itself implies in a way.
Scenario II: Guest blogging continues as before
Verdict: Not Possible
There is no way this is going to happen. Post Cutts’ blog, content writers and SEO professionals have become more alert while asking for authorship and writing a guest post. The back link earning practice still remains tempting, but online marketers will have to focus more towards cleaning up their link profile and impression in the eyes of Google. Guest posts will see less exploitation, and thereby, possibly making it easier for Google to crawl and index unique and quality information.
Scenario III: Writers, SEO professionals and digital marketers become picky around websites accepting guest posts
Verdict: Most Likely
Matt Cutts’ has laid the foundation for incorporating more value to the content, while removing spam from guest blogging activities. Top professional bloggers who like to share their thoughts and insights with the world will continue to write guest posts, but they must consider where to publish them. Personally I believe website that accepts less posts (once or twice a week) will be contributing more value than those who publish five or six articles on a daily basis.
Conclusion:
Matt Cutts’ blog has created widespread chaos among the writer community with both bloggers and websites linked with guest posts dazed and confused. There is a lot of debate going on regarding the advantages and disadvantages of guest blogging, but some things couldn’t have been clearer about what Cutts was trying to infer. Google doesn’t want people putting low quality and worthless content online, since it interferes with its efforts to provide value information to its users. Having your blog listed up on the SERPs on the back of your SEO efforts and not content value is something that Google is aiming to remove from the equation. Henceforth, guest blogging which was considered a good thing in past has come under the search engine giant’s spam radar and only content quality could help you escape a bad rapport with Google.
