Guest post links
Page Contents
Guest post history
This is perhaps one of the most famous types of manipulative links in recent years; guest posts, also commonly referred to a “guest blogging”.
There are two key points to understand when it comes to manipulative guest post links.
Firstly the people who build them are looking for the easiest and quickest way to influence search results. Historically this would have meant building directory links, or other easily automated/semi-automated links which required minimal effort. However due to improvements in the Google algorithm over the years, the value of these links diminished significantly. The reason being that Google only want to count editorially gained links in their algorithms, and thus the older methods of generating automated links no longer work (as well).
Secondly SEO’s, link builders, and the agencies they work for don’t like spending money. Earning editorially gained links is harder, more expensive and thus less profitable. However in order to get results and justify their ‘SEO services’, they still needed to get editorially gained links for their clients to show results (organic search traffic) and more importantly ROI.
As a result many SEO companies resorted to spamming in the internet with millions (if not trillions) of unsolicited generic emails in an attempt to gain free, or paid for links, hidden under the badge of guest blog posts. Despite polite reminders from Matt Cutts eventually declared war against guest blogs, and when on to very publically name guest blogging networks such as myblogguest.com.
Google’s stance on quest posting (via Matt Cutts)
Guest post link action
It is usually pretty clear if a guest post has been written with the sole reason for generating a link. Typically the content is of little to no value for either the blog, or web in general.
When in any doubt nofollow all in content links, including author profile links.