Fall of Guest Blogging, Facebook and Twitter Signals, Social Media Traffic, Speedlink 4:2014

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Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great and productive week. Undoubtedly, this weeks most noteworthy SEO news is that of Matt Cutts post about guest blogging. In case you’ve missed it, Matt has literally said he had enough of guest blogging and that you should “stop” ASAP, if you are using this practice as part of your link building campaign. There is a big discussion about it (as you would imagine) on the comment section of his blog (400+ and counting).

Here’s an excerpt from the post:

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…

…So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy. In general I wouldn’t recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.

Here’s one response from Matt on his comment section:

Several years ago, I would have said that the default answer when someone proposed doing a guest blog post would “yes.” However, with the rapid rise of low-quality or spammy sites trying to build tons of links via guest blogging, so I’d say that the default answer now should be “no.” Of course, if you know the person writing the blog post well, or want to vouch for them, or if the author is happy to nofollow their links, then that changes the calculation–it’s much more likely that someone is looking for a new audience instead of a way to get keyword-rich links.

So, is guest blogging over? For SEO purposes, I guess what Matt has said is pretty much self explanatory. Nonetheless, guest blogging for the purpose of gaining new audience and tapping in quality traffic is still at play, and I believe that links from guest blogging can still increase a sites domain authority and ultimately still help a bit on SEO. The thing is, keyword rich anchors with dofollow links will most likely be devalued, specially if it comes from a low quality site. Let’s see. Maybe, rather than “guest blogging” perhaps one of the ways to go for is be a regular contributor of a quality blog. What do you think?

Does Facebook and Twitter signals impact on rankings?

This week on GoogleWebmasterHelp, Matt answers to a question that for the time being puts to rest the question of whether or not Facebook and Twitter signals are part of Google’s ranking algorithm. As it so seems, for now, not yet. He mentions that it may appear on search results because they do crawl them, but as far as using “likes and retweets” as part for the ranking formula, it doesn’t. There you go!

Social Media Traffic Referrals

Shareaholic recently published their Social Media Traffic Report of Q4 2013. This report highlights the traffic referrals from major social networks and is quite interesting to see where they are coming from their findings which are based on four months of data collected from over 200,000 websites which a reach more than 250 million unique visitors each month. Note that Facebook and Stumble Upon continue to be a big source of traffic, while interestingly, YouTube has dropped significantly. You may want to use this data for your Social Media Marketing strategy.

socialmediatrafficreferrals

And as usual, in no particular order:

Content Creation & Marketing/SEO and Search

Social/Small Business Bites

More recommended read!

That’s it! Enjoy and have a great weekend!

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

10 thoughts on “Fall of Guest Blogging, Facebook and Twitter Signals, Social Media Traffic, Speedlink 4:2014”

  • Of course I didn’t have to wait for Matt Cutts to tell me that. I stopped guest blogging on the one blog I allowed it on at the beginning of the year because of all the time it took in trying to edit these things and the sudden proliferation of people asking me to remove links; ugh. Just wasn’t worth the effort anymore.

  • This certainly has been the hot topic of the week Francisco. Matt’s original title for his post ““Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging Is Done” ” really got the blogosphere buzzing.

    Thanks for sharing Matt’s video about social signals (for example using “likes and retweets”) as part for the ranking formula. What he says makes a lot of sense. Even though, as he says, it’s not part of SEO now but it certainly is of value for brand building.

    Thanks for another great post.

    • Hi Sherryl. Yeah, that post took the SEO (not not only) community by storm. I guess it was just a matter of time until it happened. There was just way too many abuse on it. Sites being built just for the sheer purpose of guest blogging and all. Pity is that other legit sites like MBG, may get hurt a bit because of this. As usual, it will be more of wait and see mode.

      As for Social, I suspected that much. Nonetheless, as you said, it helps build brand awareness among other things. Maybe there is no direct impact on rankings, but somewhere in there in does make a difference 🙂

      thanks for stopping by.

  • I guess this is a good move because many people started playing with links on the name of guest blogging. It was also the money making tactic for some people with good site rank in return of a link. With this, people has to find new ways to for link building.

    • I understand what you mean about taking money from links Prince. However, with this form of legitimate link building (once was), it will be much harder for people to build links in other ways.

  • great sharing..
    Its Better than best.People just want the link through gust posting.No matter whats the quality of post…
    thanks for giving review over it…

  • I have read his whole post on blog. It was the demand of time that guest blogging to be checked as this is largely used as a link building strategy. Further, he explained that building lots of links through guest blogging will be taken seriously. So it is better to post 5-10 or so which is not considered as excessive.

  • hey thanks for Sharing the Info here, i read this news from many other Sites that Social Ranking on blog Doesn’t Affect SERP, but for Conformation i need Matt Cutts Answer. thanks for Sharing this Video. now i can Try some other Ways for Better Ranking. 🙂

  • Great post, I agree, guest blogging/posting is still a great way to build links, it’s just a shame that so many people abuse it by creating hundreds of exact match duplicate content posts. Thanks for the info, I did not realise social signals were not part of the algorithm.

    Keep up the good posts!

  • Hello DiTesco,

    I really appreciate the words which you have said in this post, with a good quality content in guest posting helps us to grow a good rank and can drive a traffic. Thanks for sharing with us.

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