What started as a way for bloggers to build relationships with one another and quickly grew into a powerful tool to boost page rankings is now under attack by the head of Google’s Webspam team–and it looks like people who benefited from the tool might be next.
Matt Cutts, Google’s sheriff in charge of fighting spam, came down hard on MyBlogGuest.com, a website where bloggers can post and share content with other bloggers and website administrators.
Apparently, Google has been firing off notices to MyBlogGuest.com and some of the sites that use the content to increase their search rankings. The emails reading:
“Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. These may be the result of buying links that pass PageRank or participating link schemes.”
What does this mean? It means that the claim Cutts made last January that “guest blogging is dead” may finally be true.
It took a while for Google to take action on what Cutts calls “a more and more spammy practice” on his blog. But it looks like they have finally done so–and with internet-shaking effects that go well beyond just punishing the purveyors of the guest blog copy.
Some website administrators who have used MyBlogGuest.com have tweeted that they’ve seen their search page ranks drop from number one (where they have allegedly been for several years) all the way down to number 15 (or lower).
So why is Cutts doing this?
He spells out his reasoning on his blog post, “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO.” In the post, he says, “Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respectful author to write the introduction to your book. It’s not that way anymore. …”
Cutts argues that guest blogging is no longer about the content–it’s all about the page links and ranking results. Which means it’s as good as spam in his book.
He says it’s done. Put a fork in it. Stop doing it. Or your page rankings will surely suffer.
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About Ajay Prasad
Ajay Prasad is the President and Founder of Global Marketing Resources, LLC, which runs a number of Internet strategy and e-commerce companies under its umbrella. Ajay's functional expertise includes website strategy, marketing management, business development, consumer research, market analysis and strategic planning. GMR Website Maintenance focuses on all aspects of Website Maintenance and ensures high quality and efficient website maintenance services, tailored to fit each of our client's needs. Google+
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