Question: One of our content strategies has been using guest bloggers to write for our company as well as guest posting on other sites. In light of recent bad PR for Guest Blogging, we are wondering how big of an issue is this really, and can we continue to plan on using guest blogging in the future?
Okay, so Matt Cutts from Google announced the death of guest blogging for SEO. I want to make an immediate connection for all of you business bloggers out there.
SEO is relevant, but chances are it isn’t nearly as important to your business as you think.
Chances are if you are a small, medium and in some cases even a large business, you will have a hard time out ranking most media outlets and content heavy companies for any highly competitive search.
Having said that, the content that your guest bloggers create may be highly valuable and relevant for your audience. So this, rather than your concern about SEO for guest blogging is what you should be focusing on.
If you have guest bloggers creating good quality content for your site, even if you are syndicating and reposting content (duplicate content), most brands are better served making sure that the content is relevant, useful and widely available for their audience. This means proper promotion through the channels that your brand uses to reach its audience.
If you don’t know where those channels are, read this for some ways to identify and build those channels.
Personally, I think the reports of the death of guest blogging are greatly exaggerated.
For 95+% of the companies I see working to build their brand through content marketing, I think few of them need to put a ton of focus on traditional SEO.
As I always suggest to clients, focus on writing contact that is impactful in telling your brand story. Use content to educate and inform with the hopes of driving a positive sentiment and lead toward a relationship conversion.
So long as you are posting quality content and delivering guest content to sites that help build brand awareness then I think guest blogging still makes a ton of sense for many businesses. Before you give up on it or cut it out of your strategy, make sure to fully understand what Matt Cutts (Google) was talking about and if that is really something that should concern your business.
How does your company curate content to drive readership, engagement and conversions?
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.
