Undoubtedly, guest blogging is a favored strategy for those looking to acquire links from top quality niche sites. Prominent blog owners are usually inundated with emails asking whether they accept guest articles. Since guest blogging or guest posting is a popular means for self and blog promotion, Google is keeping a close eye on how blog owners and authors If operate with their posts. While guest posting is beneficial and powerful as the site owner receives fresh content while the guest blogger receives a link, it comes with its own set of pitfalls.
If you aren't too familiar with guest posting and the key principles behind how to operate, it’s easy to make mistakes. In fact, you could easily become a spammer if your guest articles are poorly constructed.
So, when does guest posting become spam?
Here are four ways which can turn your guest posting efforts into spam which not only harms your online reputation, but also your business.
#1. Crank Out Guest Posts (One After Another)
The first and foremost point of guest posting or guest blogging is that it isn't another form of article marketing. When you are either invited or accepted to do a guest blog post, you are expected to bring something of value to the table.
No blog owner wants to see recycled, poorly constructed content which adds zero value to their audience being sent for review. There are a number of ‘would be bloggers' who mass produce low quality articles and class them as guest posts with the view of pumping them out to as many blog owners as they can in the hope someone will accept.
This is when guest blogging starts to become spam. If you want to make the most of your opportunity (and so you should), you should take the time to study the site owner's blog, the type of audience they receive by reading through their comments and of course, the niche they are focused in.
#2. Manipulate Anchor Text
The true weight of anchor text on SEO results has diminished since our favorite animal updates late last year. Google reduced the relevance of anchor text because it was being heavily manipulated by a number of online marketers. Yes, on the back of Google's Panda and Penguin updates, you need to maintain a variety of anchor text links. If you draw your attention entirely on money keywords and manipulate the anchor text through guest posting, you are a perpetrator of spam activity which is damaging to your site's health. I don't need to remind you about this, the results will show in due course (and they won't be good).
When guest blogging , choose and use anchor text in a way that looks natural to Google and the other search engines.
#3. Create a Fake Guest Posting Author Account
This one drives me crazy, even when operating my personal blog – I receive countless guest posting requests from individuals who don't have established author accounts set up. In fact, some lazy guest bloggers set up fake Google+ accounts for the primary hope of being accepted as a guest blogger.
Guest posting is not child's play – it's for real authors who are looking to establish a personal brand for themselves. If you want to maximize the benefits of guest posting, why not establish yourself as a real author and try to set up your personal social media profiles in the process. 8/10 times I personally turn down guest posting requests if the author doesn't have an active Google+ account – social proof is too important in today's world.
Are you familiar with the concept of AuthorRank?
#4. Buy Social Shares
Last but certainly not least, another infamous method of turning guest posting into spam can result off the back of purchasing hundreds of social shares for your guest articles. If your guest post truly adds value, there is no need to purchase fake social shares – the blog's audience will share the article openly! Instead of consuming your energy on guest posting strategies to manipulate the fame of your poorly constructed guest post, why not divert your attention to writing a top quality guest post which will naturally be a success with this new audience you otherwise wouldn't have reached.
Is Guest Posting Included in Your Overall Online Marketing Plan?
Use your guest articles to provide real value to readers. In this way, you’ll showcase your knowledge in a particular niche and build your brand in the process. This can lead to further opportunities to guest post or potentially a situation where a reader employs your services – the opportunities are simply endless.
Are you spamming the web too, in the name of guest posting? Feel free to share what you feedback via the comments section below.
Hey Kapil,
Thanks for taking this topic from a different angle
I think SEO agents are making this activity a waste. The worst quality contents I have ever received is from SEO companies. Most of the writers have to idea what blogging is. All they want is 1 or 2 links back to some poor site.
I don’t accept their content even if I’m paid a bunch. I love working with fellow bloggers
Exactly!
Companies like SEO Agents making guest blogging a dirt.
Mostly I have been receiving content just for the sake of keyword links. And, I usually ignore by not replying to their email.
Such guest blogging is truly a SPAM.
Totally agree Enstine. I’m sure Ileane can also attest that most proposals for guest posts usually come about from agencies looking for a quick backlink in exchange for a poorly articulated piece of content. Thanks for your thoughts.
It seems that people doing poor quality will find a way to turn everything into spam; ultimately ruining for the rest of us that are serious about what we do. Guest posts are a great way to build exposure but if you are not adding anything valuable then you have missed the point entirely.
Thanks for sharing Kapil.
Kapil, I can’t believe people would make a fake account for guest blogging. What’s the purpose in that? I have done some guest blogging but only as myself. I also never heard of buying social shares, I’ve heard of buying likes but never shares. Don’t folks realize that this “black hat” stuff will get them penalized?
Hi Lisa, you’d be surprise at what lengths some of these companies or individuals go to artificially inflate the value of their article. Cheers for your comment.
No kidding, the more guest posts they can crank out – the more links back to their web properties they receive. Not a terrible strategy as long as they can keep cranking out valuable content… although, I think you mostly tend to see spun, and poorly written content from this crowd.
Great post with very informative posts
I hate that feeling when You find lots of Guest posts just spinned and brought to you
thanks for sharing 😀
Thanks Anis – you’re right, it’s easy to spot a recycled post which adds no value. The prominent blog owners such as Ileane are quick to weed these out.
agreed one should accept only those posts which are relevant from his blog topic.i accept for my other blog where guest posting contains keywords related to my anchor text and try to avoid it becoming it as spam.thanks for sharing.
Relevant information. Need to keep it in mind. Guespost as a spam can be so big disaster that will rant all you effort to begin a successful web project.
Its really best post which helps me to know about things which i will not follow while doing guest posting.Thanks for writing this awesome post for us
Great post Kapil!
It makes sense that Google should look into this as it becomes more of a link building tactic, but it would be good to have some guidance from Google on what it considers ‘guest post spam’. The danger, it seems, is to the blogger who attempts mass guest posting. This seems fair in some ways, as mass posting does not suggest quality content. Good content just isn’t good enough anymore, there’s just too much competition out there to stand out. We should focus and consolidate our effort to create outstanding content campaigns and reaching out to high quality publications, rather than looking at a numbers game of link volume and guest post placements.
Good point Okto, although we might be hard pressed to get any official announcement from Google around this. I think good content comes off the back of producing your thoughts which convey a topic in a conversational tone and also offers an opinion which your readers can take action with. It’s easy to get caught up producing ‘article’ style content which simply isn’t engaging. Thanks for your thoughts.
I agree with what Enstine Muki said, But since some of the new bloggers are so lazy to write and see some SEO expert offering them post with 2 backlinks i know surely they will accept it without hesitating.
Please what’s the length of article you can accept if I want to be your guest writer?
Hi James, you can easily calculate the length by using “word counter”. Search in google and copy the 2/3 whole articles from this site to it to get an idea.
Hi James – are you referring to the length for Ms Ileane’s blog?
Hey Kapil, loved it. Gone are the days when guest posting were the most effective link building and relationship building strategy, It’s still. But what REALLY worse is that how people turn ruin this fantastic strategy by turning it into spam.
People should submit their best articles as a guest post to another top blog, and It shouldn’t be just for the sake of backlink or the few visitors, It’s all about showing your real talent and stealing the audience of another blog by impressing them with your writing.
Well, there are a lot of other ways people are turning guest posting into spam these days, you’ve shared the four common ones.
Hey Ehsan, great to see you here mate.
Guest posting should really be seen as an opportunity to impress an audience you otherwise wouldn’t have access to, right? I agree with you on submitting your better articles as guest contributions…you can afford to be a little lazy on your own site once you’ve established a decent presence. Cheers for your comment!
Thanks Kapil for such an informative articles. I am owning a blog which I am still considering a lot about allowing guest posting or not. I really wonder whether guest posting can creat quality post or it is just spam post which I could never use. Thanks for your tips which I find them really valueable for me. Cheers.
Hello Kapil,
You really did break the post and make it understandable because when i first saw the topic, I was gonna doubt but you did explain the tips well. thanks for the post and do have a lovely week
Thanks mate! glad the concept made sense to you 🙂
Hi Kapil,
This is probably one of the biggest problems with guest posting. It is something you need to make certain you are not doing to other bloggers (or soon their doors will be closed to you.) It is also something you need to be sure other guest bloggers are not doing to you. Thanks again to Ileane for sharing this with the BizSugar community.
Hey Heather,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts – Ms Ileane was also kind enough to introduce me to the Bizsugar community 🙂
It’s definitely a problem but great to see most blog owners have it in them to reject these posts as they value their dignity and the audience they have.
You’re still safe from Google if you use money anchor texts on guest posts but have other types of links such as blog comments, forum posts etc..? With a ratio of say like 500:1 (others:blog anchors)?
Another important point about guest post is that you must write as you do for your own blog and it must not be any continuation of your previous post on your own blog but you can write its follow up post on your own blog to send more traffic on it. This is called guest post follow up and if you write in advance and show to the blogger where you want to publish your guest post it may convince him to accept your guest post just to see its double advantage once after its publication and then after its follow up
yes nowadays due to these evil and bad practices guest post has already become half dead for SEO. One should verify the author’s Gravatar , and the content should be high. And monitor the blog to which the guestauthor links, as anything put up on your site, you are responsible for that.
Hi Kapil,
Great advice. At the end of the day, spammy content’s not going to get you anywhere and will only harm the reputation of the guest blogger and the host blog – it’s just not worth it.
Quality content takes time and effort, but it’s quality content that people want – it’s also what the search engines want – so it’s worth making sure you provide value in the long run.
Sue
G’day Sue
Couldn’t have said it much better. Google keeps releasing their animal updates to keep the search results clean and relevant. If you’re posting spammy posts, it’s a lose-lose situation. Good to see you here Sue!
Thank you! I spend a lot of time creating new ideas for blog posts and I feel that many people are searching for original content these days when it is very easy to repost what someone else has already written. Never underestimate the value of your original ideas!
Hey Kapil,
Nice post and Thanks for sharing this post with us. I never thought that guest posting also become spam but after reading this post I learned lots of good things.
Hi Kapil, this post is awesome dude. Because guest posting palys a vital role in blogging. So thanks for sharing this article.
Hi Kapil, Just first time to across here in your blog, but I want to share my opinion also. It’s great getting fellow bloggers in or through your community guest post. But, the most beneficial comment is the “relevancy” on the content and although guest posting works for SEO strategy, I think that it would only happen naturally in some industries.
mostly all bloggers get guest post request in their email and some of guest post looks just outdated. don’t know how those (trying to be smart guest posters) people share their stuff to publish. might be newbie blogger think they don’t want to write this day article so they published some Spam guest post and lose their ranking. rather than publishing some spam they should write them self something useful even if it took 2 days to research and write. hope they might learn with this post and move spam guest post into spam folder of their inbox.
Anyway nice work Kapil Jekishan
best regard from
Bharat sharma
I agree with everything. I guess these seo agents ruin it for everyone. They would pretend to be a guest blogger and when you ask them for their website, it’s always a commercial website. And most of the time, they have fake author profiles.
In my personal opinion, the fake guest author account, and social counts are enough to destroy one’s guest posting career. I have seen many people have setup fake profiles to get approval from different publishers.
My friend Doug and I created a blog in the health and fitness niche. We decide to start accepting guest blog posts to engage our readers. It’s been somewhat of a blessing and a curse. 🙂
Initially, back in 2010, the surge of guest content drove a ton of traffic to our site–we were average over 250,000 monthly page views. However, over the past two years, we’ve seen our search traffic continue to erode–despite the site having 3x the content (around 2300 original posts now vs 800 in past).
We’ve been generous with link anchor text and now try to encourage guest authors to link naturally. I’ve heard rumours from SEO’s that Google sees guest posting as the “new spam.” What are your thoughts on this?
Hi Jarrett – sometimes more is less when the quality of content is compromised. I can’t say this is the case for you but it seems like you’ve been hit with this. It doesn’t hurt to cut down the number of posts so you can focus on quality content which is fresh and engaging. Have you considered pausing all guest posts for a period to focus on your own writing? Try doing that for a period and monitor the results.
Hi Kapil,
It’s a lovely post with true alarms. Every SEO tools are happily exploited by the experts to the extreme that Google needs to come up with a new animal.
After the article directories are hit by Google’s former animals, ‘the experts’ have turned towards the personal and niche blogs. It is pretty obvious, Google is prepared with a new animal soon again.
Hope your article spreads some awareness and inspires people to take right course than to panic later. Thanks for this.
Hi Suresh
You are absolutely right. Penguin 2.0 is right around the corner which is expected to continue the devaluing of link spam initiated by the first Penguin update release last April. If you play it right, this shouldn’t be of any concern though. Thanks for your kind words.
Really nice article with helpful tips. This article should help people to improve there blog’s ranking. Thanks for share your knowledge with us.
Hi Kapil
I feel like I’ve only just started blogging myself and it’s been 12 months. For me guest-posting is something I’d like to do in the future but not until I feel comfortable with my own blogging.
Equally, I feel I’d need to have made a connection with another blogger before I suggested a guest post.
I get requests for guest posts on my blog from people I’ve never had any communication with previously. That’s not a way to get a guest post slot!
Good stance Tim and hasn’t 12 months passed by so quick? It helps to have a relationship with the site owner of the blog you are targeting but even if you don’t, just take the time to read their material and understand the blog’s proposition, type of readers who comment before you formulate your proposition to the owner. Tim, I’d recommend looking into guest posting…you’ve got enough experience now 🙂
this was a very intresting article. ya some times guest posting becomes spam. i like that image too.
Hi,
Thanks for this post. For me it’s a mind-opener. There are so many things I don’t know about guest posting … . It doesn’t matter. I’ll learn them, in time. It is very important to know about the dos and don’ts of guest posting. Posts like this one can save you a lot of time and keep you out of a lot of trouble. I didn’t know about author rank. I’ll check it.
I think the most important thing is to provide value to your readers. This is the hardest thing to do. The rest is easy to learn.
Thank you for taking the time to write this post.
Have a nice day
Hi Kapil,
very interesting post. I have read some guest posts recently that were not worth anything. But I think the responsibility falls to the blog owner. If they allow poor guest posts to be published then they are doing disservice to their readers and to their blogs. In the end it is going to hurt them as their traffic will suffer, their bounce rate will go up and their rankings will go down.
I think it is the responsibility of the owner to read and even approve guest posts. I would never want anyone to post on my blog if I would not approve it first. I strive to give value to my readers and the guest post should not be different from mine.
For the moment, I am not thinking of guest posting myself. With respect to accepting guest posts I would entertain that idea as I can see how it could bring some new information or perspective to my blog.
Thanks for sharing
Dita
So true Dita which is why Ileane has a strong process with vetting a guest blogger and their blog post before it goes live. She’s worked hard to get her blog to where it is now…it would be reckless to allow sub-par posts to be published which would only boost your bounce rate and put off your readers. Cheers for your comment.
Guest blogging should be the showcasing of what you got.
Meaning it should always be the best that you write. Always!
When you guest blog, it is setting the first impression to those new fans that you got out there.
Think such way!
Samuel from Internet Dreams
I guess it is one of the protocol to check when guest posting-the background of the account. I mean, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being new or having a new guest posting account, but to create a fake one is, I believe, way wrong and deserving to be spammed. Thanks for sharing!
I hate being spammed or labeled as spam. And I guess it can be avoided if we only know how to avoid it. Thanks for sharing!
Kapil,
This is a terrific post about guest posting. One thing to realize about something that works (in this case, guest posting for exposure, backlinks, brand awareness, etc.), it tends to get abused overtime.
Over the last year or so, I’ve worked with SEO companies, with solo entrepreneurs, with software companies as a guest blogging professional. And it saddens me when questions such as “Can you get the link higher up in the article next time?” or “Can you please limit the number of outgoing links in the article so that the juice to my link doesn’t get diluted?” come up. My first reaction is: After all the time and effort I expended to write that article, all you care about is the link placement?
But you know, sometimes, all these guys need is a little explanation. If you’re a guest blogger and you know the rules, and you insist upon them, they eventually see the point. I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re a guest blogger and even if you do work for SEO companies, stick to your guns and if they like working with you, they’ll keep you.
I think these SEO guys are NOT all bad. I’ve worked with a bunch of them, and there are a lot of them who play by the rules. Those who “only care about the links” are simply misinformed. What they need is some guest blogging 101. With Penguin 2.0 coming up, they’ll need a lot of that. 🙂
Maricel – thanks for taking the time to share your insights…I’m sure a number of blog owners wouldn’t have a negative perception of SEO companies looking to guest post if their primary motive wasn’t link placement – shame it is for most of them. The passionate bloggers who relish the opportunity are the ones which end up building a stronger, loyal following over time.
Hi Ileane,
I haven’t done much guest posting, but am hoping to do it some more in the coming year. Thanks for sharing this information because I certainly don’t want my efforts to be turned into spam. Sally
Half the guest post requests I get are spam, they are just rewrites to get more links, and the a few others are asking for paid posts which are not of great quality as well, but there are a few bloggers who give good content in exchange to get some new exposure for their blogs.
I can’t believe people would make a fake account for guest blogging. What’s the purpose in that? I have done some guest blogging but only as myself. I also never heard of buying social shares, I’ve heard of buying likes but never shares. Don’t folks realize that this “black hat” stuff will get them penalized?
Hey Kapil,
First things firsts, who would exactly want their blog post to be called spam? I guess no one does. This is why this post is very informative as well as helpful. It serves as a reminder for all of us not to do these common mistakes in order to avoid your blog post treated as a spam.
Very nice blog. it help in Good guest blogging. Thanks for sharing
I agree especially with point one. I am very selective on where I publish my guest articles at, after all, I don’t want to waste my time and efforts posting my valuable information on someone else’s blog unless it’s completely worth it.
Spot on James – you ought to be selective…after all, it takes longer to write guest posts given you need to ensure it hits the mark for the blog owner and his/her audience.
Love the article- essentially it comes down to: be honest, and use guest posting only for what it is supposed to be used for. There are a million ways to try to manipulate the system, or you can just run an honest upfront business and it looks like now Google will be rewarding sites for doing so.
Nice blog, guest blog is way that deliver huge traffic to website. it create many high quality backlinks.
This is a great article. Too many low-quality guest posts are out there obviously for the sole purpose of gaining backlinks and it’s sad.
Hello there,
this is Owais .
I really enjoyed reading this article . First Of all this article helped to understand why my several guest posts were rejected . Also I would , like if you add one more way that can ruin it that one should properly proof read the post 3-4 time before submitting . This was also the reason , But once again the article was great
I have not tried guest posting as yet – in fact, we have yet to implement google authorship on our site (a bit slack, I know!) We have on occasion requested for guest posts on our blog though and because our niche is very non-financial, we typically have not encountered much spam.
By the sounds of it AuthorRank is pretty important so will prioritise that when we relaunch our site later this month – hopefully the newer genesis themes make it easier to incorporate.
Hi there – definitely kick things off by establishing authorship. Here is a quick tutorial on how to set it up and I’m sure this will work on Genesis http://techpatio.com/2013/blogging/seo/google-authorship-learn-display-face-google
Good luck with the relaunch.
Doing guest posts should be like you’re doing it on your own blog not much anchor text and rather you should try to create a quality content, 2 posts in a month are enough to do on any other single blog..!!! Good schedule can make guest posting rock..!