The ABC’s of Internet Marketing-Can Guest Blogging Help You to Brand?
Today there is a raging debate about the in’s and outs as well as the viabilty of guest blogging for use. The debate began when someone told someone else that Matt Cutts, the undisputed king of spam patrol had said that guest blogging was over. In fact, so far as that goes, it is what Mr. Cutts said. That guest blogging was no longer a viable option for getting backlinks to your site.
He did not say, at any time that guest blogging was not a viable option for branding yourself or your company or that it no longer had any purpose to serve. He said if you are using it strictly to provide your site with an inbound linke and you’re doing it from multiple sites that are not relevant to you in any way that you’re likely to notice that you received a penalty from your guest blogging efforts.
What Matt Cutts related on his blog, located here http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/ is this.”Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.”
Note that he qualified what it could not be used for and explained his reasons for that. The fact is that once other types of gray hat link building went to the wayside, people developed a few more bad habits to get those links. The same practices are not necessarily bad, only when used in a negative way.
The key is that if you’re using it for spammy links then it’s not the best practice but, on the other hand if you’re posting as a guest poster to a relevant and quality site and you’re using it for branding yourself, not for providing your site with inbound links to your site, the chances of being penalized for it are nominal and with a good site that has reasonable authority, the chances of improving your traffic and your brand recognition are excellent. Guest blogging is still a very viable option and one that can be used for a wide range of purposes.
