During the past year, Matt Cutts – head of Google´s webspam team – has repeatedly discussed whether guest blogging should be used as a link building tactic, claimed Search Engine Land in a post I came across yesterday.
His opinion has changed over time. Initially he recommended that people should ´nofollow´ links in stories they write, especially when the stories are guest blog posts. Later he stated that guest blogging should be done only in moderation and should not be the sole tool for driving traffic. In a subsequent statement in December last year, he warned of the growing abuse in guest blogging and recommended that people should avoid low-quality, automated, abusive guest blogging with no merit or editorial value.
On Monday, Matt Cutts issued a new statement on his personal blog, entitled: “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO,” which contains a clear stance on the matter.
The expert said that guest blogging has turned out to be a rather ´spammy practice´ and should therefore no longer be used as a link building tool. His recommendation is that people should accept a guest blog post only if they want “to vouch for someone personally or know them well”.
His statement triggered a wave of comments, prompting Cutts to issue a clarification. He stressed that his post referred to guest blogging for SEO purposes, not to “high-quality multi-author blogs”. Cutts added that guest blogging could still be useful for purposes like branding and increased reach.
Although, according to Cutts, we should “stick a fork in guest blogging”, content is still king. Regularly-updated, engaging online content is more important than ever. Not only will this raise brand awareness and loyalty, it can also help with SEO. We all know how important it is to have fresh, unique content on our site, but finding time to generate it is easier said than done. M2 Bespoke are content creation specialists and write for all kinds of industry sectors. If you want someone to take care of all your content needs, give our friendly team a call today to find out more about our services.