Penguin 2.0 Will Usher in Huge Transitions in Guest Blogging Practices

This is a guest post by Alan Smith.

After Penguin 2.0, the guest blogging will keep on working, but it will change in several ways after the Google update arrives. Guest blogging has been very effective for most SEOs and bloggers have been receiving loads of emails asking if they will take guest posts. But Penguin 2.0 will greatly impact the way you build your links by using guest blogging and to get a better idea of this, let’s examine piecemeal just why Google’s new algorithm will bring about many changes.

Social Signs

A few dollars will enable you to get plenty of likes/tweets/social shares. As search engines looked into social signals to help gauge the website’s ranking, there was surely going to be some kind of deception.  The update will definitely look into this aspect.

Search engines will focus more on the persons who are sharing them on the social aspect. It’s like this: A powerful group of 200-odd significant people sharing your post will be more effective in Google’s algorithm than shares or likes by someone who has a network of 2,000 bots, besides just spamming.

Google may also ensure that you share your posts on your own social network. Their logic will be: If you are not tweeting or even liking your guest post, it means you did not write a good one. The posts will have thus to be well-written; the kind that make you proud and which you will naturally and happily share.

You will also need to rope in influential people with a huge social following to network with. Then, they may decide to like or share your content, if it’s really good.

Author Rank & Blogging

If your content is great, Google will give it more importance regardless of the site it is published on. Author Rank enables Google to see where you are getting your content published and how good it is doing on the net. If your content remains bad, Google will make note of it and devalue your post’s links. The search engine will devalue all that you link to if they find you are only posting guest blogs for links.

In short, both sites and authors will get devalued by Google, which is especially searching for links which are authentic references.

Therefore, be very choosy with regard to your content. If you are not sure or incapable of churning out great content, open Copyblogger and Problogger where you will learn everything about writing.

Devaluing links

Author bio links are not as useful as before. I feel that these links will carry lesser weightage than now.

A keyword-rich text link, in the first or second paragraph of a guest post, will most likely be devalued. Also, if you are only posting old Infographic on several blog posts, those links too will get diminished. Search engines will be compelled to do this because it’s easy to pay cash and get Infographics placed on well-known blog sites and get back links.

So focus more on giving value and not easy link-building practices. A great blog will automatically get people linking to it.

Penalizing sites

Sites which consistently link to one site will have to pay a penalty. Google wants that you link to several sites, generally trustworthy ones. And if your content is good, you will logically do this. Irrelevant content posting will also get penalized. Anyway their links will not gain much weightage.

For instance, why would a graphic designer site link to a loan company site? It’s simply senseless!

Spammy linking will also call for devaluation. If you indulge in this for a few times, it may not harm you; but if you do it on a regular basis, you’ll really get hurt.

The best thing is to pick the right site for your guest blog: don’t link to spammy ones, but to highly relevant sites. Also, link to other sites to give benefit to your readers -- even if the other site is your rival!

Co-citations

When people talk about your website or about you, most of the time they do not link to you.

If you continuously post guest blogs and link back to your own site, you will get hurt in the long run. Google knows what natural link percentages are and if you are not in that range, it may harm you.

Thus, don’t link back to your website always. Write terrific content to educate people and to share something you’ve learned. This will also help to make better the ratio of sites that link to you and name you and those that name you but do not link back.

Let’s look at this scenario. Suppose a scientific paper written by Isaac Newton would be seen as one of the most valued authoritative content pieces on the Web. Then any other paper that Newton gave reference to in his paper will be easily seen as being important. These references were the basis of Google’s Pagerank. It clearly explains that links from Newton’s paper are far more powerful than a huge number of links from poor quality sites.

Rich Anchor Text Link

Sites that had strange link profiles that were based on the allotment of anchor text have been punished by Google. I expect the search engine to go one step further.

An abundance of rich anchor text links is an obvious sign that the link isn’t a citation. If Google notices too many of these, they can immediately recognize that the two parties are participating in a trade.

Google looks for authentic site recommendations; not clear signs of trading, and rich anchor text shows that a link is not an authentic citation.

It must be understood that rich anchor links to authentic sources will not be screened this way, and its fine if a few of them link to your money site. But if you over-abuse rich anchor text, you’ll do more harm and less good.

Summing Up…

Google is right now paying very close attention to the tactic of guest blogging. They can be expected to take action against the huge number of SEO agencies, bloggers, individuals and businesses that are playing the system and doing guest blogging only for the purpose of getting a link.

A simple way is to focus on your branding and not the link value. Sites that are taking guest blogs must be most careful. And if the blogs you accept contain some of the issues spoken of above, you have to worry even more.

The only risk to guest bloggers is that their links will be discounted or devalued. Owners of sites run the risk of their entire website getting punished! Hope you liked this article. Please share your thoughts on the same in the comments column.

About the author
Alan Smith is an avid tech blogger with vast experience in various IT domains, currently associated with SPINX Inc., a Los Angeles, California based website design, Web Application Development and internet marketing company.