The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

Hey everybody! Hope everybody had a great bank holiday weekend (memorial weekend if you’re stateside), and apologies if I appeared to disappear over the weekend. I had internet problems and only just catching up.

I returned on Monday to find my previous post – Google Wages War on Guest Bloggers – with a number of comments & mentions. It has been rather impressive, which I’m very thankful for . A few questions arose, and I felt I should clarify my position.

This Advice Surrounds New Blogs, Surely?

Yes the question did say “New Blogs”, which meant that by definition established blogs are likely okay for promotion by guest posting. I disagree, I think any real blog is okay to promote with guest posting. Sure thin sites are likely to not get as much benefit from established sites, but by goodness, if you’re building other people’s sites whilst sacrificing your own, leaving your blog lying dormant, then that’s not just bad SEO, that’s being a bad webmaster.

An Aside #1 – Thin Websites That Are Pushed

One example that I see time and time again where thin websites are pushed with guest blogs are sites that are sales pages for ebooks etc. Of course, by and large people aren’t pushing SEO with this, more pushing for sales, but by definition of above, you’re pushing a thin website, therefore it won’t rank highly in search.

Of course, one way to get around it is to put the sales page on your main blog domain. I’ve not yet seen examples of sales & ranking performance between a separate domain for an ebook & one on a content rich blogging domain, but it’d be interesting to see.

Aside #2 – Where That Post Arose From…

The post arose from a discussion on Skype with a couple of other bloggers, who pointed me in the direction of that post. They were particularly concerned about the Guest Blogging Question, which is why I wrote that blog. So even if “new bloggers” were targetted, established bloggers were a little concerned too.

You are Spreading Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt

I wouldn’t say – as some people have suggested – that I am myself spreading fear, uncertainty & doubt. Like everybody who knows at least a little with SEO, I was stating my opinion and why if Google takes that approach to discredit the link passing nature of guest posts it would be a bad idea. I’m speaking as a professional SEO for 4 years, who has had great results. I’m in no way perfect, but everybody is entitled to their opinion.

The problem with the SEO Community (hell it’s the problem with any community) is that opinion often gets stated as fact. It’d be a far better place if before any rant or opinion piece people append it with “in my opinion” (which ironically I didn’t use in the last post, but that post did get put into the “opinions” category). as one thing I do know, no SEO, blogger, Internet Marketer, Google guru or Social media rockstar can state anything that Google does as fact, as we don’t know the inner working. Not my post, not the commenters, none.

In The End…We All Came To The Same Conclusion

Bloggers, SEOers & commenters were pretty much unanimous & agreed with what I was trying to say in the blog – that Guest Blogging on other blogs is a great way to promote your blog. Even if there is absolutely no SEO benefit for guest blogging, it does help build your brand, network & generally become a better blogger.