According to a survey by Marie Haynes, many SEOs still employ guest posting as an SEO tactic. 44% of respondents answered ‘no’ when asked if they use guest posting for SEO purposes, whereas 32% answered ‘yes’ and 12% answered ‘sometimes.’
Google declared in 2014 that guest posting was dead for SEO reasons and has penalized many guest posting networks since then. Google said in 2021 that it has many methods to detect and filter out guest posts, urging SEOs to refrain from following those links and declaring them worthless.
Despite Google’s guidelines explicitly prohibiting guest posting for SEO purposes, there are still a lot of SEOs who do so.
Forum discussion found on X.
Clark Taylor: Guest blogging has been terminated, effective January 20, 2014, by Matt Cutts. He believes you need to know the guest blogger personally to publish their content. Cutts agrees that guest blogging is still relevant for various reasons, including branding, exposure, and expanded reach, as long as it is published on quality websites. After some uproar, Cutts conceded that guest blogging might be helpful for various reasons, including exposure, branding, increased reach, and community building. He feels that most people can figure out whether a blog post is just an SEO ploy or a quality piece of content if they’re reasonable. However, Google has improved at detecting whether a blog post is SEO-focused. There is still value in promoting your business or your expertise on other relevant, high-quality sites for branding and exposure, as well as some SEO benefit.
Joy Sikdar: Guest posting is against Google’s policies, but it still works. Is that true? If SEOs guest posts, Google will be in big trouble, correct? Guest posting is not permitted. What is your profession?
Muhammad Junaid: There are still three paid ads showing in that screenshot.
Myung Hwan Hong Replied: Paid ‘dofollow’ links are not just myths; they are as clear and official as described in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. According to the guidelines, Google does not permit paid links unless they are designated ‘nofollow, sponsored, or U.G.C.,’ all of which are paid traffic and advertisements, not tactics to improve search rankings.
Google uses algorithms to detect shady link-building patterns to determine whether a website is purchasing links. Their ‘human team’ and ‘human investigation’ constantly monitor for Google violations. Google’s algorithms can quickly analyze a site’s linking behavior by looking at the links and characteristics of the pages that signal them to Google. They notify Google of violations through a ‘human team’ and ‘manual action,’ and it’s difficult for you to outsmart them ‘forever’ if you do SEO according to Google E.A.T. and real user engagement. Google’s system no longer uses traditional algorithmic systems such as Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird as of 2022. Google has invested heavily in A.I. for the last decade, and their Panda algorithms have been retired mainly because Google has much more sophisticated technology than Panda.
Ammon Johns Replied: It’s OK to do guest posting for traffic, as long as you don’t use ‘nofollow’ links. They specifically say not to do guest posting for links or links that only affect search engines.
Ammon Johns: I’ve been having this discussion with Google employees for years, and things have stayed the same since the days of Matt Cutts. It all depends on how/what you define as ‘guest posting,’ whether you’re the writer or the publisher. Can you program a machine to distinguish between a freelance writer who gets published in The Times without working for it or a guest post? It should be pretty easy for a human to give several answers, most of which imply what I consider a ‘guest post,’ but creating a single rule that suits all cases and scenarios will be challenging.
Creating a high-quality article for a site that doesn’t employ you full-time is perfectly fine, regardless of whether it is considered high-end guest posting. On the other hand, sites that publish any old junk without editorial concern for quality or utility, whether it is their post or one written by a guest, are doing everything wrong.
Joamuk: These answers need more context, so we cannot deduce why guest posting is not occurring. The number of guest postings might increase if cost were no longer an issue for them—Google fear/cost, etc.
David S Freid: my company and I have never supported P.B.N.s or other methods not supported by Google. (without G’s support)
Joamuk Replied: What is your preferred method for earning backlinks if you (or your colleagues) don’t participate in guest posting?
Kes Phelps Replied: Creating content people want to link to is what I do.
Joamuk Replied: It only sometimes works well in some niches.
Myung Hwan Hong Replied: To summarize, the issue is that it doesn’t matter whether or not there are people who don’t link to something. While many new content marketers need help, paid guest posts to have negligible value on spammy websites (sites filled with low-quality content and paid guest post buses). You can boost organic linkages by publishing content on shoulder niches, where you can find many liberators. It appears to function for a short period and get some traction. Still, in the long run, the ranking will surely tumble again, and you will have to live with the risk of the Google penalty for regular networking with shady blog networks that don’t exist for humans but do for selling links.
Joamuk Replied: I’m not sure what you mean by shoulder niches, but it’s something similar to the original niche but with better potential.
Kes Phelps Replied: Which areas are you having difficulty with?
Snuffy: I still receive at least a dozen monthly guest post offers. I mark all of them as spam in Gmail. After looking at numerous of them, I realized that none were worth the time it would take to read the review and create a page for them. Many “product reviews” and “ultimate guides” are published on prominent websites. I believe that many of these pieces of content were submitted to the publisher by third-party writers (just like a “guest post”) and consider them to be of “low quality” and “inaccurate content.” Even so, these pages are often found on the first page of Google SERPs for commercial queries, typically in the top five positions. I think these pages are no different from “guest posts.” In addition, these pages lack E.A.T.
When I hear Google declare that they use E.A.T. to create every SERP and that guest posting is dead and that they discard poor quality content, I question if Google is observing the amount of junk that comes through their SERPs or if they favor specific content formats so much that they give anything with that format a ‘free pass.
Read next: Google Search Essentials is Replacing the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
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Choosing the Right Strategy
With Google Ads, it’s all about choosing the right strategy. Using a solid strategy will increase your conversions, lower ad costs, and take your performance to the next level. Do you know what you’re doing? If you don’t, you can blow through your entire budget in just a few days. But, making the right moves means boosting your campaign performance to new heights. One study from Medium found that changing Google Ads bidding strategies lead to a 142% increase in conversions. In the post, we’ll look at different types of Google Ads bidding strategies, and how to use them to your advantage.
Google Ads Bidding Strategies
Some users prefer to use the exact same ad strategy for all campaigns, while others opt for more flexible strategies. Always keep in mind that you’ll need to use multiple strategies to target your audience.
One way to stay focused is to use bid strategies on different campaigns. Using different bid strategies allows you to set up different bids for each campaign, so you can create a more efficient ad spend. You can set bids for a fixed price, a fixed cost, or bid on a CPA. Bid strategies also give you the ability to specify how many impressions you’re willing to pay for, and the total budget. But, most importantly, you can set bids to match your budget, and the resulting ads are guaranteed to have the exact same results. Another strategy that many marketers use is to split the Google Ad budget across several bidding strategies.
Google Ads Bidding Strategies
Some users prefer to use the exact same ad strategy for all campaigns, while others opt for more flexible strategies. Always keep in mind that you’ll need to use multiple strategies to target your audience.
One way to stay focused is to use bid strategies on different campaigns. Using different bid strategies allows you to set up different bids for each campaign, so you can create a more efficient ad spend. You can set bids for a fixed price, a fixed cost, or bid on a CPA. Bid strategies also give you the ability to specify how many impressions you’re willing to pay for, and the total budget. But, most importantly, you can set bids to match your budget, and the resulting ads are guaranteed to have the exact same results. Another strategy that many marketers use is to split the Google Ad budget across several bidding strategies.
The Cost-per-Click (CPC) Bid Strategy
The CPC bid strategy is the most straightforward. You bid on your ad and wait to see what Google will give you back in return. Click-through rate (CTR) is the most important metric for your ads, so increasing your CTR will increase your conversions, and CTR is directly related to CPC. Every type of CPC bid strategy works, and it’s all based on how Google chooses to show ads to the searchers it’s tracking. The keyword you target is the only thing they’ll factor into this decision. As long as you’re adjusting to your target keyword, this strategy will yield you the best results.
The Target Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) Bid Strategy
One of the simplest bidding strategies is the Target Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) Bid strategy. This strategy uses a combination of bid prices, ad position, keywords, and ad copy. It’s a very popular approach, with Google Ads showing over 15 billion in total ads for this bidding strategy. Target cost-per-acquisition bids work best with ad copy that is simple and actionable.
For example, if you want to sell tickets to a music concert, you might write in your ad copy:
Join www.buy.ticketleap.com and get tickets to the sold-out Drake concert on Wednesday. Buy a ticket to the sold-out Justin Timberlake concert on Tuesday.
This simple copy is simple and measurable. By adding this simple keyword, your conversion rate is going to be much higher.
The Target Cost-per-impression (CPM) Bid Strategy
CPM bidding is the simplest of all Google Ads strategies, and it’s the most inexpensive way to run a targeted ad campaign. The CPM model only requires a simple divider: Cost-per-impression (CPI) is the amount you’re willing to pay per impression on your ads. The conversion rate (CTR) is the number of conversions a user experiences on your ad. You should use Google Ads CPC bidding when you have a very low CTR and your CPI is high. To increase your CPC, start by lowering your CTR. This is known as “channel regression.” Use this conversion rate calculator to analyze your CTR. A low CTR indicates that your ads are getting lost in the noise. Once you know your CTR, you can go back to the conversion rate and start decreasing your CPI. For example, if your CTR is 0.
The Quality Score Bid Strategy
Another type of Google Ads bidding strategy is the Quality Score Bid strategy. Quality Score Bids are a great way to increase conversion rates by making your bids more competitive. It works like this: Under Quality Score Bids, you bid below the minimum bid (typically $0.30 or $0.50). After your bid, you’re evaluated against competitors. If you beat their bid by more than $0.05, you’ll be marked “High Quality.” If you beat it by less than $0.05, you’ll be marked “Low Quality.” This is a very effective bidding strategy for the campaigns that are easily performing (and have a high potential for higher conversion rates). To learn more about Quality Score Bids, check out this article from Criteo.
Using the Right Strategy
Before you go all-in on any marketing strategies, make sure you’re using the right ones. Your Google Ads strategy is crucial to growth and helps you gauge the right balance between conversions and costs. If you don’t get your strategy right, your ads will be too expensive, and you’ll be wasting time and money.
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