Articles and Guest Bloggers

[Skinner]

Following on from someone else post gone bad...

Whats the SEO position on Guest Bloggers via Posts and Articles ?

I have a number of Articles which Credit the Author in a Box which says "Written by Bob Hope, RnDm, Ltrs" and the name links to his site, sone articles have a little bio, such as where its a specialist and they are qualified. Any links within the body are either my own aff links or links within the blog.

Quite often (80-90% of the time), these posts/articles are 1 way links, always no follow. I have the same when I have used someone photos, illustrations or fragment of an article/quote.

I have never considered this a bad thing.

So genuine question, is doing this that "toxic", I know its not quite the same as the other thread but the basis is similar.

 

[Murray]

So genuine question, is doing this that "toxic", I know its not quite the same as the other thread but the basis is similar.

Are we talking about accepting guest posts or writing them?

I remember a while ago there being a lot of talk about guest blogging and penalties

Matt Cutts wrote a post about it ~ https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/

I think the trouble is, like a lot of other "SEO strategies", there becomes an obvious manipulative pattern, posting on a lot of poor quality sites, keyword anchor text etc

If they're nofollow they're nothing to worry about at all btw

 

[Skinner]

When I have needed / wanted to post an article/blog post on a specific subject which I'm not confident enough to write myself, or I need authority I have either had an article/blog post wrote for me under the original authors name.

For example, I had a professor write a wall of text. The bottom of the article has the professors name, bunch of letters after his name, and a little bio, so as to add authority. When I write my own posts relating to it, I often link to that article, or quote it, so its used to tie my other stuff together.

Since I'm paying for the text, I can remove the links, and just reference by names, but if nofollow nullifies it, I guess it makes no odds.

I'll read the cutts post now

 

[martin-s]

The big factors here is the quality of the site the guest post is posted on, and the quality of the post itself.

Post on relevant sites with good audiences and it's all gravy, and by the letter of the rule book they should be no follow, but realistically? No big deal.

Post crap, or post on irrelevant or low quality sites and you only have yourself to blame. It won't necessarily get you penalised, but it's a high risk strategy. The bigger the reward, the more likely the penalty will follow.

The lower the reward (because the site posted on is junk), the less value in wasting your time.

As the hosting site, if the links are no follow, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

 

[Skinner]

The comments on the Cutts article are interesting, I'm only about 1/4 of the way through them. I also haven't watched the videos yet...

It seems, the line is between folllow/no follow, the quality of the content and how closely aligned the subject is.

 

[zehrila]

Links are big part of this echo system, it is not bad to link out. All of big sites frequently link out, question is what are you linking out to? it is perfectly okay to link out to authentic sources throughout your article, the focus should be on quality of writing and whether the outgoing link contains any value?

There are studies and split testings, which prove copies with good quality outgoing links have tendency to perform better in search results compared to the ones that contain no source. Think of it like a dissertation, you write a dissertation and if you don't add data points and link to the sources you will fail or score poorly. Linking out provides material for further reading.

Be generous, no need to nofollow, hardly any of top ranking sites nofollow their outgoing links, they just focus on quality of content and quality of outgoing link.

 

[accelerator]

Your focus should be on high quality content that is useful or entertaining to people. Make sure you have that right, and everything else is secondary. A link to another site is fine, but again, it needs to be of use and of high quality.

 

[Skinner]

I'm not so much bothered about in-content links which are generally not nofollow, and they are chosen to expand on the content of my posts or articles. I always choose these myself so I feel they are relevant. Often they are to medical studies, universities, magazines, journals, media outlets or what I consider respected sites in the field.

I were a little concerned with the little bio section, author credits/links (where I have purchased the article or asked someone to write me a post) etc. The author has usually chosen these links/bibliography. These people are what I would consider an expert in their field, however I wouldn't know if they put their name to loads of spam, so I could be linking into a cesspit.