Guest Blogging - Enough is Enough

Guest Blogging - Enough is Enough
http://bit.ly/RgXD4a

Posted by Carson Ward

If your process chart looks like this, prepare for complete failure.

Technical Audit >> Competitive and Keyword Research >> Guest Blog Posts

Guest blogging is not a strategy, and it’s not a generic solution that can be applied to every client or every part of your site. Guest posts can be an effective supplemental tactic to a fully-formed strategy, but giving this tactic center stage is a recipe for frustration and inevitable defeat.

The Guest Blog Bubble

On-page factors don’t pack the same punch they once did. Search engines have become much better at both compensating for imperfect site optimization and ignoring on-page tricks. Our collective focus began shifting towards off-page factors long ago; it’s all about those tender, juicy links.

There are as many ways to get links as there are people and pages, but in the aftermath of Penguin, guest articles are slowly becoming an industry default. I fear that the trend is driven by a lack of creativity, augmented by fear of failure, and then reinforced by poor communication. 

I raised the issue of guest posting to someone who has done a lot of it - Distilled's head of Outreach, Adria Saracino:

 "Guest posting is safe" ... "We're SEOs. We're metric driven. We like being able to see this consistent, targeted movement. Guest posting plays to our tactical strengths. And once we see it working once, we just keep doing it because it's safe. We fall into a routine of guest posting and the blinders slowly form over time, stifling innovation and big wins.

Guest posting in most cases isn't going to bring you direct traffic or conversions, it's not a "branding" play. There is usually no other benefit other than metric movement, and while it's short-sighted, it's also the easiest to defend to the higher-ups. So we become slaves to a redundant process rather than testing innovative ideas. I may even be so bold as to say guest posting is what will mark a slow death to the fast-paced innovation our industry is known for when it comes to link building."

Diminishing Returns at Best

Guest blog posts, all by themselves, do increase rankings. That does not necessarily mean they are worth doing.

It’s easy to forget about opportunity cost as an SEO when we have had past success with a given tactic. Far too often, we see results, and continue doing it as long as we possibly can. The value of an activity like guest posting is only worth doing if there’s nothing better we could be doing with our time.

Once more, just because something works does not mean we should be doing it – unless it is the best path to the fastest or most enduring results. Guest posting (by itself) is essentially never the best activity for an SEO, due primarily to the diminishing returns seen in long-term guest blogging campaigns.

Guest blogging’s strength is that you can launch immediately, avoiding that lonely feeling of blog posts that no one comments on. However, the guest-blog-only strategy has two fatal weaknesses: 1) there is an obviously fixed ratio of one linking domain per article placed, and 2) you reach rapidly diminishing returns. Furthermore, ideal blogs are a finite resource, and you can either lower your standards or post again on a good blog. Neither option is necessarily bad, but both have diminishing returns.

A pure content strategy can be frustrating simply because it takes so long to get rolling. I’ll be honest: I abandoned both a commercial and a philosophy blog in a past life because I got sick of writing posts no one read. But what if I had combined great content with other tactics?

What do I mean by a comprehensive strategy? I’m sure you remember this guy:

Inbound Marketing Channels

From Inbound Marketing is Taking Off by Rand Fishkin

With great content, your guest posts will be more effective. So will your email marketing campaigns, paid search traffic, and referral traffic. We can think of content as a multiplier that adds to almost any other marketing tactic.

The multiplier effect of amazing content happens two ways with guest posting (or any other channel, really). First, bloggers will be more likely to accept posts and talk about/to you if your target site has its own credible content. Second, users from the host blog will share and re-share your content if your site offers something they can be excited about.

Site Owner Fatigue

Link-based diminishing returns aside, the guest blogging bubble weakens further as site owners are continually poked and prodded by requests from acquaintances and strangers to allow them to guest post. Everyone is getting tired of the constant requests, especially when the requests are so damn horrible. I think Geraldine’s recent post on her travel blog captures that well:

“Hello! I am interested in writing a high-quality guest post for your site! All I require is two contextual links placed within the post.”

You know that song from the sixties that starts with “No-no no no no no no-no-no no?” That is now playing in my head. Because no.

Even if you actually read these blogs and really want to contribute something great, other people are making all but the most patient blog owners weary with their piles of requests.

What's Next?

Where are we headed, and what should we do next? SEO is not dying, and linkbuilding is not dead. I'm actually more optimistic than ever about the direction the industry is moving in. We're generally moving towards sustainability and making recommendations that are going to have a far bigger impact than raising the rankings for a couple tracked keywords.

Penalties: Unlikely for Most

It seems highly unlikely that Google will penalize guest posts just because they are guest posts. It’s a perfectly legitimate strategy – at least, when it is legitimate. Just consider that a ton of links from spammy sites publishing poorly-written content is more of a liability than a benefit. I’m not arguing that Google will bring the hammer down on guest blog posts, but risk certainly rises as quality declines.

Communicate and Fix Misconceptions

Some clients and managers are under the impression that it’s your job to vanish into the nether, and return bearing all the links they will ever need to rank for their broadest pet phrase. They're probably in the wrong; that's not how SEO works anymore. It’s easy to blame the people who have the wrong ideas, but whose fault is it when points of contact have these mistaken expectations?

It’s our fault.

We know SEO. Presumably that’s what we're taking checks for. We understand the value of content. Regardless of how someone picked up their mistaken assumptions - and this is worth looking into - it's up to us to correct misconceptions. 

We often get cornered into rote guest blogging when expected to solve their problems without interaction or support. Failure to communicate this fact; however, is not sufficient reason enough to head face first into the inevitable plateau of diminishing returns. For more on how to encourage cooperation, read Hannah's post on solving&n