Please explain how incontent/Guest Post are better than Blogroll Links

[GreenDog18]

When I think of guest posting I think of post with links that ends up getting buried in SERPS thus not really pass much page rank.

Whereas a blogroll link is always on the main site. Which also likely is the highest authority page within the linking site.

[ZydoSEO]

The problems with blogrolls are that 1) they are part of the template (not the body of the page) and 2) they create LOTS of links from the same site and 3) with the exact same link text. And having lots of links to a page with the same link text is an issue now days except when it's people linking to your home page with your web sitename. These are the very types of links that Google is now working hard to detect, devalue, and possibly even filter your site for with updates like Penguin.

You are correct that links from blog post themselves tend to loose juice (and therefore their punch) over time.

When a post is new, the post has links from the home page, page 1 of category/categories, page 1 of the tag page(s) (if applicable), and page 1 of that month's archive pages... And the first page of all category/categories and page 1 of all monthly archives pages are typically linked to from every page on the site because they are sidebar widgets.

Once 10 more posts are made on the site, the post rolls off the home page and loses it's most powerful internal link.

Once 10 more posts are made in that month, the link to the post rolls off of page 1 of that month's archive onto page 2 of the archives. At this point the page loses a lot more link juice because page 2 is typically ONLY linked to from page 1 of the archive where page 1 on the archive is linked to from every page on the site.

Once 10 more posts are made in that category (or categories), the link to the post rolls off the page 1 category page(s) and onto page 2 of the category/categories. Page 2 of the category does not have links from every page on the site, typically only from page 1 of that category. So your post loses even more link juice.

yada yada yada

However, this same fading effectiveness phenomenon occurs with pretty much all unnatural link building techniques... article submissions, forum links, blog commenting, etc.

And therein lies what I think has always been the biggest issue with unnatural link building techniques. The effectiveness of those links built ALWAYS fade over time. This means you have to continue to build links JUST to maintain the same amount of "juice" coming into your site... not to improve rankings, but simply to maintain them. It's like swimming upstream. The more unnatural links you have in your backlink profile, the stronger the current and the more links you have to constantly build just to maintain the same amount of incoming "juice".

But decaying link juice from a guest blog post seems a better alternative than having URLs on your site or even your entire site filtered by Google because you have to many inbound links that are sitewides with keyword rich anchor text as is usually the case with blogrolls.

The holy grail remains truly editorial, natural inbound links given freely from webmasters of other traditional (non-blog) sites which tend to NOT fade over time unless the other site's overall authority fades.

[martinibuster]

I agree with what Zydo said about the blogroll link. Another issue is that there's a bit of under the table link selling going on with those and in the United States that can run afoul of FTC regulations (requiring)asking bloggers to disclose advertisers. So there's a question as to it's legality if money has been exchanged.

If money has been exchanged and your blogroll link is properly labeled as Sponsored or Advertiser, then Google will spot that and best case scenario will pass depreciated PageRank and worst case scenario slap a penalty on your site and send you the unnatural links love letter.

Then there is the issue of other sites listed in the blogroll. Any site that is low quality or off topic may have a negative effect on the PageRank flowing from the link and may associate your site with that low quality site.

So that's two more issues with blogrolls to be concerned about.

As far as in-content links, I get the feeling you're talking about article directory marketing or paid articles. For the paid articles there is the FTC issue to consider. If it's properly labeled as sponsored etc. then there is the Google Love Letter issue to consider.

Both the article directory and paid articles programs are, in my opinion, garbage. There are several reasons they are garbage, chief among them is the poor backlinks those sites typically have and the next reason is that the site/page may have links that are to poor neighborhoods. Just use common sense. A legitimate article published in a high quality site doesn't allow in-content links because that's promotional garbage.

[CainIV]

I would not advocate blogrolls, paid articles programs.

Generally websites that ask for payment for articles are going to jeopardize this down the line. They do this in two ways

1. Not committing to previous fundamentals and guidelines they set in place in the beginning - such as 'excessively' adding advertisers in

2. Not having a very distinction on the rules of Google, and ultimately, often, no-following the link over time once learning about the rules.

It's best to write high quality content about what you do, your niche, and offer to your audience and related audiences.

Combining that with the proper authority links which send strong signals to Google that you are a legitimate business, and you will be much further down the road than many.

[anand84]

The holy grail remains truly editorial, natural inbound links given freely from webmasters of other traditional (non-blog) sites which tend to NOT fade over time unless the other site's overall authority fades.

Can you give an example of such a link? As I see it, links (regardless of them being natural or unnatural) are either on the main content (whose authority fades over time) or template-wide (where there are links from across the site).

If I genuinely like your site, I may either refer you from my article or from my sidebar - Either ways, it is natural, and yet in the former case, the punch fades over time while in the latter you could get penalized.

I think the way Google sees this is that most natural links are from the main content area. And every time I get a link to my site, the authority of my site increases. While Pagerank (if that even exists today) could fade with time when this link gets buried, the authority stays and now Google heavily bases its results on site authority rather than link juice.

[martinibuster]

I think the way Google sees this is that most natural links are from the main content area.

No. You're thinking inside the SEO box. The root of the problem is the SEO belief that Google values in-content link better because the link has a context, the words surrounding the link. Yes, there are patents that say Google may take a look at the words surrounding a link and it is even mentioned in the original Google paper. But that doesn't mean that link placed elsewhere must be worth less. That's SEO-think. That kind of thinking subverts your project because it puts you into an SEO box that forces you into the kind of garbage projects I described above.

[nickstamoulis]

First off, I'd suggest you not worry so much about PageRank when thinking about guest blogging. Google even said "PageRank is no longer—if it ever was—the be-all and end-all of ranking." ([googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com ])

And like some of the other responses have pointed out, links in a blogroll can create hundreds of links from one domain that all use the same anchor text--if you have too many of these it might catch the eye of Penguin and land your site in hot water.

And you have to ask yourself, when was the last time you clicked on a link in a blogroll? It might provide an inbound links but are they driving any actual visitors to your site?