article link building / guest posts

[Makaveli2007]

Has Google penalized Websites for article link Building / writing guest Posts with a link in those….. before?

I read that article Marketing/link Building on a bigger scale is against their webmaster Guidelines, which would suggest writing 3 or so really good, useful articles and getting 1 link per article (instead of submitting it to lots of sites) should not be a Problem.

However, some People seem to Claim that Google has penalized Websites for this link Building technique in the past. Any truth to this?

[martinibuster]

Some sites had these kinds of links called out during Penguin and they had to be removed.

But those were not, in my opinion, the reason why they were Penguinized. Those sites consistently had other issues like old TLA links that had never been removed, things like that.

Nowadays sites are seemingly ranking well with in-content links but with certain precautions.
Those that don't take those certain precautions seem to have their links ignored.

Don't ask what I mean by precaution. :)

[Pjman]

Honestly ,they are getting close to realizing most non-legit citations. Both of the link types you talk of were dead at least 3 years ago, if I'm being generous.

[martinibuster]

They are still dead. It's just a certain way of doing it seems to be sliding under Google's radar.

In fact, it seems like this most recent update has rewarded those who are doing it this way. One site in particular is currently at the highest I've ever seen since it first popped up a few years ago. It's predominantly about the links.

Maybe overconfidence on Google's part or just edge cases?

I have examples of sites that should not be ranking for their keywords but who have popped up because of a discrete style of article writing campaign. That's what I see in common.

[Anthony57]

I think if you post original articles, google won't penalize you.

[martinibuster]

I think if you post original articles...

1. Doesn't matter if the article is original. Guest posting for links is seen as unnatural.
Manual actions were sent out in February:
[searchenginejournal.com...]

Since then, there hasn't been anything heard of manual actions. So presumably Google is handling these algorithmically.

Google Warning on Guest Posting For Links
[searchenginejournal.com...]

Google Says Some Guest Post Links Are Unnatural
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/unnatural-guest-post-links/371224/

...google won't penalize you.

2. Google doesn't penalize for many forms of spam.
So Google does not necessarily penalize for guest articles now. Google simply stops it from passing PageRank, as it does with other forms of unnatural links.