Guest Blogs crack

 The last couple of weeks have given rise to a lot of cussing and discussing, about penalties levied against sites on both ends of the guest-blog field. Both logic and emotions have run high, as people try to sort out what the fresh "acceptable" is, in Google's vision.

Stick a Fork in it

Matt Cutts' blog post in January raised a few eyebrows, as he made a point of saying "So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy."

At first, his post was titled "The decay and fall of guest blogging", but as the comments on the post started heating up, he went back and edited the title, adding "for SEO" at the end, then softened his carriage a little in the comments.

Cutting Deeply

Google has decided that the rude use of guest blogging needs to stop, and typically, they're giving the nod to the inevitable inclusion of innocent or marginal cases amongst the casualties. As usual, a general outcry has been raised, but if past history is any indication, there isn't likely to be any softening of their stance.

Avoiding the Axe

But guest blogging hasn't suddenly become a totally unlawful practice – it just requires a great deal of caution, now that Google is paying more attention. So I thought I'd share some things to watch out for and some ways to mitigate the risks.

1. The Ultra-Safe Approach

If you're a publisher, stricken by fear, doubt and doubt, you could simply add a nofollow attribute to any external links in a guest post, as well as links in the author bio. That will protect you from any accusations of link-scheming.

2. The Moderated Approach

If you're unwilling to nofollow all outbound links from the post, then you actually should check out the end site and page carefully. If there's any possibility that Google could see that site in a poor light, then linking to it isn't a good idea. Bear in mind, too, that the fact that the site may look noisy clean today won't protect you from a possible backlash if they get in problem a year or two down the road.

3. The Devil May Care Approach

We've already seen what this comes near is doing for a lot of folks... and it's only going to get worse. But if you have a stubborn streak or if you just don't care about suddenly fading from the top 100 or so SERPs, knock yourself out.

The Damage

The extent of penalization can vary. A manual penalty may be partial or sitewide, and can be tied to either abnormal outbound links or inbound links, depending upon which end of the food chain you're on.

Outbound Link Penalty

As a publisher, unless you simply don't care, because you get no traffic from Google, you'll need to clean up your act and submit a reconsideration request. If you have a lot of posts on your blog, this can be a tedious task.

Inbound Link Penalty

As a guest blogger on several sites, if your posts are linking back to your site, you may get an inbound link penalty. We haven't seen a lot of these yet, tied to the recent guest blogging purge, so I can't say if they're giving any fractional penalties or only sitewide.

Some Rules of Thumb

Here are a few things that should help keep you safe from a guest blogging-related penalty. Some of these may seem extreme, but with all the doubt that exists about what Google sees as acceptable, I'm proposing a safe approach.

•    Only accept guest posts from people you know are authentic, will give your readers with real value, and aren't guest posting all over the 'net like a lawn sprinkler.

•    Be very serious of any site you link out to from the body of a post. If in doubt, nofollow.

•    Unless you're 100 percent sure that Google will see your guest poster as a believable authority for that topic on your blog, either nofollow the links from the author bio or only link to their Google+ profile.

•    Quality and relevance are more significant than ever. Don't accept any guest posts just to fill a slot in your calendar. Every post you put on your blog should be high excellence... that means well-written, relevant, and of real interest to your readers. If you lower that bar, be prepared for Google to lower the boom.

  you might also like: Guest Blogging 2014