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SEO Agencies Turn to Guest Posting: Google’s Chase Continues

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In recent months guest posting has seen a dramatic increase in popularity. This is great to see. But how many of these guest posts are written for backlinks and how many really contain true value and meaning? It’s fair to say that most guest posts flying around out there are just excuses for backlinks and it’s only a matter of time until Google treats them as yet another link building strategy that needs culling.

While Matt Cutts has already stated that guest blogging is monitored carefully by Google, it is inevitable that Google will become stricter and better at distinguishing the junk posts from the posts that hold true value.

SEO Agencies Turn to Guest Posting as Alternatives Run Out 

The death of SEO has been widely discussed, with Ken Krogue’s Forbes article predicting its death, and alternative ideas that SEO will live until search engines die. Both are perhaps true in their own ways.

It’s fair to say that SEO will always exist as long as search engines do. SEO services provided by SEO agencies are facing the real test however, and Google’s noose is really starting to tighten.  While SEO agencies scrabble for link strategy they turn to guest posting which, on the face of things, appears reliable and hard to discredit. But it’s a gloomy outlook for these agencies as Google continues its chase and resolute dislike for SEO services and their artificial link strategy.

SEO Finds a New Road

This is a road which leads somewhere SEO agencies cannot follow. SEO has evolved and redefined itself, and this evolution only continues as Google update and redefine good practice. SEO exists  in a subdued form that must comply closely with Google’s expectations; good practice, website maintenance, authenticity, meaningful content, community involvement and discussion on social media and other platforms. In other words: branding, trust, and PR.

This new road that Google is forcing is for real people with real content; something which an SEO agency finds it difficult to provide. Google are slowly tightening the noose, not on SEO, but on SEO agencies and their existence.

SEO Agencies: Old Road is Running Out

It’s been a long chase as SEO agencies service, Google updates, and SEO agencies service again accordingly. The fact is, everything Google pushes for slowly cuts off avenues and escape routes, backing SEO agencies into dark corners with little room for manoeuvre.

In recent years, the options SEO agencies can take have been severely reduced; paid links, link farms, article submission, press releases, duplicate content, anchor text, keyword stuffing, footer links and many more methods have been penalised, obsoleted, or severely impaired by Google.

It seems SEO agencies are rapidly running out of places to run while Google are determined to chase them down to the end.

Google’s on their Heels

The whole concept of Google’s ideology works against the mechanics of a client and a separate servicing SEO agency. Google reward something genuine, a website that’s natural, content that matters, and signs of involvement, both at a personal and a business level.

All around we see signs that Google is pushing for such trust signals; authorship, social media, branding; what space is left for SEO agencies and their artificial link building strategies? These concepts present problems that an SEO agency is not designed to deal with; the fact is the SEO agency is not the client it services, and so automatically, the genuineness is lost. The only website an SEO agency can win at is its own.

Google don’t want SEO agencies, they want real people and real involvement.

As the avenues of SEO agencies are being cut off, many have turned to guest blogging. Unfortunately Google knows this, and as guest posting becomes the new spam strategy, they will chase this strategy down just like all the rest.

What Gives Guest Posts True Value?

In the end the thing that gives guest posts true value is the people that write them and whether they write with sincerity, care, and continued involvement.

A guest post for the purpose of a backlink sticks out from a mile off. These posts are classically 300-500 words long, include dull recycled content that involves no passion or dynamism, and contain a blatant anchor text backlink which just puts the cherry on the cake.

Worst of all is when the guest poster can’t even be bothered sharing their own post on their social networks; they’re pretty much admitting ‘I don’t care about this post, and I don’t want to be associated with it’. In the end these guests posts are just another form of spam, but are perhaps more popular because they are harder to detect; it’s hard for a robot to decide how worthwhile a post is, but Google are not far behind.

Google become every bit more omnificent and all-seeing every day, with their vast data banks provided by their own systems like Google+ and authorship, as well as many other channels such as social shares and interactions, combining to create all-seeing algorithms. They become wiser by the day as to who is writing posts, why they’re writing them, how people react to them, and consequently just how these posts should be treated.

SEO agencies have turned to paying guest writers, who churn out hundreds of articles a week for publication on a network of vaguely related blogs. Some of these blogs even require a fee for the backlink. The fact of the matter is these are just paid links in a hidden form and we all know the consequences when we delve into the world of paid links. Google on principle cannot allow such articles to pass significant link juice because these articles are effectively spam.

The Death of Guest Posting

Guest posting as a link building strategy is likely to become ineffective before long. Guest posting as a genuine activity is something that should always be credible however. If true bloggers with true specialities include relevant links to relevant websites, then there’s no reason why these links shouldn’t pass link juice. However, finding these true bloggers and paying them for links is something that SEO agencies may find particularly difficult to afford both time-wise and cost-wise.

The Death of SEO Agencies

The feasibility of providing SEO services is becoming stretched; channels are dying out and alternatives are time consuming and expensive. Perhaps SEO consultancy may take the new lead; while it is becoming difficult to run SEO campaigns for a range of clients under Google’s regime, helping clients conform to best SEO practice is a legitimate alternative. The new agencies that we’ll see evolving in years to come may well be hybrids between SEO, PR, branding, and digital marketing as a whole.

About

I work at Nebstone, a digital marketing agency in Leeds, where I specialise in SEO and contribute to the online marketing blog. I enjoy writing about search engine marketing including SEO and PPC.

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{ 42 Responses }

  1. Chandan says:
    During this tough time what else the SEO company will do? Link building like social bookmarking, blog commenting is no longer working these days, for a single mistake in linkbuilding Google penalize websites. Now for SEO company only way to build trust for Google and to obtain better ranking is guest posting. They either pay bloggers or offer content to bloggers to publish content for getting good quality link.
  2. Jane says:
    Hey George, very true. As long as people chase the search engines instead of chasing their customers, Google's also going to hunt them down. These cheap agencies don't understand that there's a whole geeky team of SEO phds working at Google with the sole aim of eradicating all kinda stuff that manupuates search results. I've closed accepting guest posts at my blog Problogging Success partially because of this!
  3. JamesW says:
    This is great post George and I agree with you on most of the things you mentioned like it's going to get harder to find quality guest posts, and that Google is pushing SEO agencies in the dark corner. But I don't think that it's going to bury SEO agencies or guest posts. Why? Because if Google wants quality, agencies will find the way to deliver better quality articles, they will pay more to the bloggers or to the freelance author. So I guess it's going to run in circles this game of cat and mouse between SEO agencies and "experts" and big search engines like Gooogle or Bing. Regarding the authorship and social media engagement, I think that it's the only way for companies to stay connected, get more clients and don't worry about ranking. IF companies want better quest posts, which are still considered like the gold mine, then they better prepare to pay extra for the content that someone's actually interested in. thanks for sharing :)
  4. Babanature says:
    A fabulous post and well crafted out. I still wonder where guest posting is heading to. Like my blog i get a lot of guest blog request but most of the request are just junks. Thanks for this post
  5. Madras Geek says:
    Great post! what you've written is 100% true. I have been receiving 100's of guest post submissions daily. Most of them is purely junk!
  6. Tayyab says:
    Great post enjoyed it a lot it is true there are lots of professional techniques on the internet and described through out for newbies this lead to the death of seo agencies .
  7. Emma Jones says:
    Mr. George. Good point to mention about guest posting.Google have been saying again and again content is a king. So it's very true that our sharing content have high quality between user and Google. But remembered things such as. content quality,unique,social presence,
  8. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi George, You post some interesting points here. I for one love guest blogging, because I write to solve problems, create value and build relationships with other bloggers, and their audiences. Google "make money on Facebook" or "make money with Facebook" and my guest post on Famous Bloggers is probably still Number 1 on the first page of Google. Obviously the Big G liked the post, because I could not have gamed the system for the weeks that my guest post has been on Page 1 of Google. It works well for me because I am not trying to only get, I honestly and genuinely give. Really, the problem with many folks online is that they are greedy, impatient bastards. Seriously. And yes, I fell into this crowd for years, and I still guard against my greedy, impatient tendencies now. Before you guest post, instead of thinking about what you can get, put a little bit more thought into what you can give, and you will never have problems generating serious link juice and search engine rank on Google, or on any search engines for that matter. Thanks for sharing your helpful insight George. Ryan
  9. Jennifer Cunningham says:
    Guest posting will probably mutate to a new species. Quality content seems to be the buzz phrase everywhere. Thanks for the insight. I found your article at BE. You have a fresh approach.
  10. Gary Shouldis says:
    Great article, it covers a concern I've had for a while now. Most of the old SEO tricks are dead, turning SEO's to guest blogging as a central link building strategy. I agree that SEO agencies will either go away or have to become real internet marketing companies. My blog has seen guest posting requests from agencies go from 1 a week to 10-15 a day, most of which are blatant link grabs with generic content produced in some far off land. Guest blogging is so valuable, I really don't want to see it go the way of the infographic, beaten to death and abused until Google has to step in and devalue it.
  11. Darnell Jackson says:
    Good post George, Personally I think SEO died on the same day that Google started playing games by hiding the search terms that people use to find your site. Google gets the data but they won't share it with the blogger who created the content in the first place. I think if Google had it there way you would have to pay per search.
    • George Stevens says:
      Yeah I'd agree with that, Google will always try and promote AdWords as much as possible
  12. Christopher Masiello says:
    This is a very good article. I get about 5 guest post requests a day and they're all from garbage SEO companies. They want to keep submitting the type of spam that Google already said they are penalizing. They're hurting their clients and the blogs that take the worthless posts. FYI - there are a few plural/singular grammatical errors in this article. You should treat "Google" the company as a singular noun and the text will flow better.
  13. Dave Lucas says:
    Bloggers are now abandoning "guest" anything in droves, as they rush to make their blogs "NO FOLLOW"! I warned everyone this would happen a few months ago when the "gurus" made "guest blogging" a priority and began selling associated pdfs and other wares. Nothing is a better indicator of what to avoid than whatever it is the "gurus" are hawking at the moment!
    • George Stevens says:
      Yes it does seem people are now becoming more and more cautious about guest blogging as the initial hype has died down.