It’s fun when something that I predict will happen occurs. Usually it takes awhile between the prediction and the actual happening, but this time, it happened within a matter of just a couple weeks.
When Google announced their Link Disavow tool and Matt Cutts, Google’s web search quality czar, revealed that links from spammy article sites would no longer be a valuable ranking factor, I predicted that there would be a spike in guest blog post offers for those of us with existing blogs. As the owner of a popular business blog focused on Internet marketing topics such as search engine optimization and social media, I get a LOT of these requests, and they are now on the rise – to the tune of multiple requests via e-mail each day.
If you’re getting these requests for your blog, you might be thinking that this is the greatest thing to happen since blogging began. It’s no secret that creating content is a time-consuming task for most bloggers and it’s what prevents many from keeping a blog going and seeing success and ROI from their efforts. What could be better than to have a bunch of other people submitting content to you, where all you have to do is plop it in your blog?
While guest blogging can be a great thing for your blog, keep in mind that all blog post content is not created equal. Google looks for high quality content, and this became such a topic of discussion that Matt Cutts made a special announcement this week specifically addressing Google’s policies on high quality content.
The bottom line is: Google is willing to take action on low quality sites and those engaged in poor guest blogging practices. Check back here on Monday for my tips on what Google considers poor guest blogging practices that you should avoid at all costs!