Goodbye from Search Results, MyBlogGuest
Yesterday, Matt Cutts announced that his team took manual action against a prominent guest blogging network. MyBlogGuest turned out to be the ‘lucky one’ picked by Google. There’s already been a lot of talk about this. Here’s Matt Cutts’ tweet:
Today we took action on a large guest blog network. A reminder about the spam risks of guest blogging: http://t.co/rc9O82fjfn
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 19, 2014
Google is Playing Scare Tactics
I don’t personally do a lot of guest blogging. I don’t know how much I plan to do in the future. But when it comes down to it, guest blogging must be working as an SEO ‘tactic’ like all of the tactics of days gone by. If it weren’t, Mr. Cutts wouldn’t be so dead set on making a statement. As far as I know, none of the publishers involved with MyBlogGuest have been penalized, and I don’t believe they will. Google is trying to scare us all into straightening up and flying right from here on out. John Doherty from HotPads had some interesting stuff to say:
My only comment about MyBlogGuest – you know what you’re doing is too effective when Google publicly targets you.
— John Doherty (@dohertyjf) March 19, 2014
Aka G has no way to determine good vs manipulative blog posts. So they go after one connector and try to scare everyone.
— John Doherty (@dohertyjf) March 19, 2014
Is Google Really That Naive?
As a scare tactic, this might work on some. It might work on the people who are so afraid of losing rankings that they won’t put a link to their website on their social profiles. Maybe it will work on the people who actually want to make the web a better place.
You know who it won’t work on? The people still paying for links, building link networks, link wheels, or whatever trend there has been in ‘link building’ in the last decade. That means that whether MyBlogGuest even exists or not, guest blogging is still going to be a thing.
There’s no way Google really thinks that guest blogging will just stop. So then, what’s going to become of it?
Guest Blogging will Always Be a ‘Thing’
And honestly, from my perspective, how could it ever not be a thing? Regardless of the name you give it, people have been writing for other people since the dawn of time.
From an SEO standpoint, guest blogging will remain an effective way to build website authority until Google stops looking at links as a ranking factor.
