Category Archives: guest blogging

Why Google’s Matt Cutts Thinks Moderation Is Key To Guest Blogging

October 25, 2013Blogging, Business Tech, Content creation, content marketing, guest blogging, Link Building, Organic SEO, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketingguest blog, guest blog and paid links, guest blogging, guest blogging Hummingbird approach, Why Google's Matt Cutts Think Moderation Is Key To Guest BloggingPeter Marino

SEO experts, writers, marketers, and business owners have been writing about guest blogging for years now. Guest blogging is something that should help your company improve it’s branding and visibility, SEO, and reader satisfaction, so knowing you need to create a guest blogging strategy is pretty much a no-brainer. However, as Google continues to grow and develop, guest blogging is becoming trickier. It’s hard to know how to be successful when it comes to building links and exposure anymore, so of course it makes sense to go to the man with all the answers: Head of Google Webspam, Matt Cutts.

A Quick Recap: Why Guest Blogging Is Beneficial

For those who are unfamiliar, guest blogging is essentially the act of writing a piece of content, publishing that content on a different (but related and relevant) website on the web, and then earning a link back to your company in an author bio in return. As discussed above, guest blogging is a great way to build up your linking portfolio as well as earn you visibility with a new audience and really show the world that you know your stuff.

There are a few different strategies used by companies today. In general, how you want to setup your guest blogging has been according to your niche and size, and this isn’t going to change. A few different ways it has worked in the past include:

Hire a guest blogging agency. This is usually what very large companies do when they have a lot of guest posting needs. There are many agencies out there that do nothing but guest blog and build links for websites, and if you do your research, you can find plenty that produce great content.
Hire a team of in-house writers. This is usually the option for larger companies who don’t like going the freelance route. It gives you more control.
Hire freelance writer/writers. This is probably the most popular option. If you just want a little bit extra visibility, hire one or two writers to freelance is an easy way to make it happen. Be careful though and always monitor these writers!
Guest blog on your own. This is usually the route for very small companies. If you’re just getting started, and particularly if you work in an odd niche, this should work just fine.

As you can see, some of these strategies produce quite a few guest posts. In the past this was a great way to improve SEO because you earned a lot of authoritative backlinks and all of that visibility, not to mention it allowed you to really work with a variety of blogs (also good for SEO). While this still works, Cutts says that moving forward guest blogging approaches need not be quite as forceful.

Why Cutts Say Moderation Is a Necessity (And How to React)

The biggest thing to understand is that Google is working to put less emphasis on linking and more emphasis on the actual content. While backlinks will still be important, they aren’t as important, and therefore Cutts explained in his latest video that moderation is the key to success moving forward. You can watch the video below:

As you can see, Cutts does make it clear that Google can easily tell the difference between a guest blog and a blog that paid for links, so no worries there. Still, moderation will allow you to make sure that you are not just spinning articles; you’re actually writing meaningful content, which will be better for your reputation in the long run.

Do you have a guest blogging strategy that doesn’t worry about moderation? What do you think is the best way to use guest blogging to your advantage? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from Panda and Penguin updates. She writes for HigherVisibility.com, a nationally recognized SEO firm that offers online marketing services to a wide range of companies across the country.

Is Guest Posting On Its Way Out?

September 9, 2013Blogging, Content creation, content marketing, guest blogging, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, The Importance Of Content Creatorsfuture of guest porting, guest blogging, guest post, guest postingPeter Marino

Guest posts have long been a fantastic way of boosting the SEO value of a website. The value of such a post is in the link left either in the content or in the author biography at the bottom. The link back to your website enhances your SEO value and takes you up the Google rankings.

Once it was used en masse since the more links you had the higher you would rank. We’ve now shifted to a stage where the PageRank (PR) of a website acts as the defining factor for how valuable a guest post is.

With the shift to social media as the most important part of SEO, some question whether guest posting is about to come to an end.

What Will End?

Guest posting itself will never end. Websites always need quality content to share via social media. And they need the talented writers to do it. What it will end is this focus on quantity over quality. Sites will no longer see it necessary to post hundreds of guest posts on low quality websites, and thus creating link neighbourhoods.

Blogs with high PRs will suddenly become more valuable and webmasters will have to become pickier over what they publish. The value of a guest post will actually go up.

The Social Media Link

Guest posting has a direct link to social media. To entice people to interact with you on Facebook and Twitter you need to trigger the interaction. A guest post can create debate and an emotional reaction. This is what sparks popularity on these platforms. They go hand-in-hand.

There are only so many times you can repeat the same things on your website. And the same goes for everybody else.

To freshen things up a website might bring in a guest blogger to add their opinions and style of writing. It’s an attraction in itself. It’s like a newspaper asking a celebrity to write a column in favour of using one of their regular writers.

What about Guest Posting Websites?

Guest posting websites which host nothing but guest posts will suffer. Google expects you to have a certain proportion of unique content. If you have nothing but a selection of guest posts this makes your website a directory. It doesn’t actually offer anything on its own. Google partially rates a website based on what it would look like if you stripped everything away and left just your original content.

You should aim to have at least 75 per cent of original content on your website. This doesn’t apply to getting other writers to produce content. It applies to posts where a link points to another website for SEO purposes.

Bigger than Ever

In fact, guest posting is likely to become bigger than ever before. Since everyone demands higher quality content the writers who can’t produce such content will gradually fade away. The focus will be on skilled writers who can capture an audience. It makes it even more important to make connections with professionals who know the rules of proper guest posting.

Our guest post was contributed by Kenneth Adams. He is an avid blogger who shares his knowledge about blogging and SEO through his articles. He says that he finds Adelaide SEO a great source of information on SEO and blogging techniques.

The Art Of Balancing Content Creation And Promotion

August 16, 2013Blogging, content marketing, Copywriting, guest blogging, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Viral marketingPeter Marino

Many people can be seen to be debating over content creation and promotion. Both are known to be unique and important in their own way and individuals are recommended to give a good amount of attention to them in order to acquire a good feedback from the customers and real-time visitors. When it comes to the importance of choosing between the two, nothing can be said since both the processes are considered to be equally significant. However, ineffective content creation really does not help the content promotion as it fails to pique the attention of the target market. On the other hand, good content creation with low content promotion does not easily reach the customers, resulting is low feedback and followers in the long run.

Importance of Efficient Content Creation

Content creation can be difficult for people who are not really aware of it. It is essential to create good content beforehand in order to attract the customers. The process of content creation and promotion is linked to each other and both become worthless even if one is ineffective. Therefore, in the beginning, interesting and well-written content must be written for the purpose of promoting it in the long run.

Benefits of Efficient Content Promotion

Since content promotion is equally as important as content creation, individuals are recommended to give a good amount of attention to it in order to avoid any kind of shortage in the target audience in the near future. It is essential to publish content at as many sites as possible in order to give it an adequate amount of coverage and promotion. Without promotion, content ceases to exist and acquires extremely low rankings in the search engines, which is likely to ruin all the chances of possible promotion in the long run. Effective content promotion allows many WebPages and blogs to achieve a high status and ranking in the search engines, resulting in higher web traffic on a daily basis.

Preventing Audience and Content Shortage

A balance between content creation and promotion is a must in order to achieve success. Even if one ignores, then the other is not likely to act the way it is supposed to. The fact that bad content creation ends up in audience shortage and bad content promotion ends up in content shortage gives all the more reason for people to maintain an appropriate balance between the two. The one and only way to do so is to take both the processes seriously and to attend to both the content creation and promotion on an equal basis.

Acquiring Content Harmony

The main strategy for creating a balance between both the processes is to indulge in content harmony. According to a lot of research and professionals, content harmony can be achieved through the correct usage of both the content creation and promotion and that too, on the right time. The results are going to be much better than just following content creation or content promotion. Good content creation can be satisfactory for the time being but it undoubtedly results in a shortage of audience in the long run and the same is the case with promotion as it tends to create a vast content shortage.

Content Creation and Promotion for a Successful Marketing Campaign

An effective process of employing both the content promotion and creation ends up in a successful content strategy which enables people to earn a good amount of profit in the long run. Businesses must really follow both the strategies in order to excel in content creation and promotion. Content harmony is something which can be easily achieved by hard work and determination. All marketing campaigns can be easily successful if people try and concentrate on both the content related and promotional aspects of their business in the long run.

Our guest blogger, Jordon, has varied and broad career in the technology world and he is one of the most experienced SEO writers who love to spread the knowledge through his informative contents. His articles mostly cover the exact step by step working procedure and current research, inventions in the technology field. His most of the case studies can be found on Climb Digital.

How To Deal With Social Media When On Holidays

August 15, 2013Blogging, Business Tech, content marketing, guest blogging, Instagram marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media MarketingPeter Marino

If you’re a small business owner, you may be going away at some stage over the summer. As wonderful as summer holidays are, they also create a degree of trepidation as regards your business.

Finding the correct balance between escaping work when away and also maintaining some degree of control and ensuring everything is working well can be hard. As you full well know, social media can take hours and needs regular attention. However, you will still want a break of some sort – so how best to partially automate social media when away to ensure things are ticking over – we take a look.

Quality not Quantity

The key to getting some time away from social is down to first deciding on a quality not quantity philosophy. One great piece whether created or shared by you is worth ten average pieces in the social media sphere.

Content

Finding good content for curation and channelling it to one place can be easily achieved with a little organisation prior to you going away. The likes of Feedly and Trap.it among others are great feeds for finding worthy content.

XYDO is also a good app for personal curation and allows you to find personalised content that is relevant to your business and worthy of sharing with your audiences. Set a couple of these apps up before you head for warmer climes and finding content worthy of sharing should be a lot easier.

Automation

There are a number of fantastic tools out there that can make for excellent additions and are fantastic for automation purposes. Our own favourite Bufferapp allows you to line up those sharing prospects for the times that best suit your own specific social media accounts. A few minutes each day or every few days when away topping up your Buffer can work wonders when you’re away. It saves you time, effort and ensure you maintain a good relationship with followers when away from the desk.

Apps such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck also provide you with plenty of benefits too. These are ideal for more generic tweets and shares and allow you to schedule times that suit you. These shares can be prepared for as far in advance as you like, though they will obviously smell of automation to some degree.

However, we find at mysocialagency that apps like Hootsuite allow you the opportunity to monitor other people’s content, check up on analytics and monitor conversations – also beneficial when away.

Discipline

On a lot of levels, the most important thing is discipline. How many of us begin our social media task, whether at work or at home, and then end up being distracted and performing numerous other tasks? Setting a time limit for how long or how much management you’re going to do each day and sticking to it limits the time and stress involved and ensures you don’t feel bad for not spending more time on task.

It’s nice to get away from it all and these apps will help you almost do so completely by increasing efficiency and lowering time spent in front of the screen. What are your tips for keeping your social media ticking over when away?