Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Matt Cutts Tweeted : I did an in-depth interview with Eric Enge at #SMX Advanced about SEO, and it just went live [stonetemple.com...]
Eric Enge:There are people who think link building is illegal now. Is link building illegal?
Matt Cutts:No, link building is not illegal.
Eric Enge:Really?
Matt Cutts:It’s funny because there are some types of link building that are illegal, but it’s very clear-cut: hacking blogs, that sort of thing is illegal.
Eric Enge: One great way to build links in my vision is to build strong Twitter, Facebook, Google+ presences. Build strong, engaged, followings and then create great content and you push that out and then that audience will likely share it, and start doing other things that cause visibility and help it rank. That’s a cool way to do link building.
Matt Cutts: Absolutely, I completely agree. If you take that big picture view in which you’re really doing marketing, one of the ways to get the word out is to have a devoted following. Musicians could have a mailing list or people could follow you on Twitter or Facebook or Google+ or any social outlet.
*Sigh*... Remember when building websites was fun?
Matt Cutts:It’s definitely the case that we will improve over time at assessing the authority and reputation and all those characteristics of authors and people in general and people on the web.
I like the way that Eric and Matt Cutts are trying to refocus SEO's on good old fashioned marketing techniques. Thoughts?
I think sometimes it can make sense to guest blog on other peoples’ sites and drive some traffic to your site because people really liked what you are writing and they are interested in the topic and they click through that link to come to your website but those are probably the cases where you’d want to use something like a rel=nofollow on those links.
Posts like that can be a great way to get your name out there, to build your reputation, to make yourself more well-known, potentially build links or traffic or help with your SEO.
The problem is that if we look at the overall volume of guest posting we see a large number of people who are offering guest blogs or guest blog articles where they are writing the same article and producing multiple copies of it....
If people just move away from doing article banks or article directories or article marketing to guest blogging and they don’t raise their quality thresholds for the content, then that can cause problems....
regarding the John Mueller comments on NoFollow-ing guest post links, I don't think this applies to simple attribution links for guest posts on high authority sites
If guest blogging spam has gotten out of control, then let Google go after *that*.
Google probably will, and in most cases, it shouldn't be too difficult. Boilerplate "guest posts" should be considerably easier to recognize than paid links.
I don't think this applies to simple attribution links for guest posts on high authority sites
"Implicit is that future thresholds will depend on how much this type of blogging is misused."
Writing guest blogs that are good enough for TODAY might end up getting your site marginalized TOMORROW for the simple fact that some time down the road, EVERYONE decides to do it.
Implicit is that future thresholds will depend on how much this type of blogging is misused.
It better not. That's just balls out ridiculous right there. NOFOLLOW is supposed to be used for sites you don't feel you can vouch for. There are no circumstances under which I would not vouch for my own sites, and if I invite a guest blogger, I am happy to vouch for his/her sites or the invitation wouldn't have been offered. If guest blogging spam has gotten out of control, then let Google go after *that*.
So the only way to be safe is to use nofollow on all guests posts.
...regarding the John Mueller comments on NoFollow-ing guest post links, I don't think this applies to simple attribution links for guest posts on high authority sites (note emphasis on high authority).
Maybe. But I refuse. Let em tank me.
Maybe. But I refuse. Let em tank me.
High five! I'm with you there.
Matt Cutts: I would concentrate on the stuff that people write, the utility that people find in it, and the amount of times that people link to it. All of those are ways that implicitly measure how relevant or important somebody is to someone else.
Links are still the best way that we’ve found to discover that, and maybe over time social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that.
"Matt totally did that interview just to get a backlink."
Matt Cutts: No, not all link building is bad. The philosophy that we’ve always had is if you make something that’s compelling then it would be much easier to get people to write about it and to link to it. And so a lot of people approach it from a direction that’s backwards. They try to get the links first and then they want to be grandfathered in or think they will be a successful website as a result.
Their goal should really be to make a fantastic website that people love and tell their friends about and link to and want to experience. As a result, your website starts to become stronger and stronger in the rankings.
Matt Cutts: I would concentrate on the stuff that people write, the utility that people find in it, and the amount of times that people link to it. All of those are ways that implicitly measure how relevant or important somebody is to someone else
[edited by: Whitey at 12:54 pm (utc) on Jul 13, 2013]
