I’ve never been a fan of MyBlogGuest.com, not because I knew they’d end up getting a Google penalty but because frankly, the user experience of the site is awful.
I remember having a chat with my Co-Director Nige about MyBlogGuest.com and it’s legitimacy of connecting with bloggers to help build our (and our clients) credibility via Guest Blogging. At the time, Nige pointed out that given the sites pretty lousy design and their blatant “Guest Blog to build links” pitch on their home page doesn’t inspire a lot of trust or credibility.
In fact, since Article Marketing for SEO became the focus of the web spam team at Google, it was pretty clear Guest Blogging would follow suit as would any “SEO Tactic” that was abused at scale for the sole intention of building back links.
And that’s the point. MyBlogGuest clearly has some fans, Twitter is full of it’s users protesting about the spam action, even the founder is being vocal about the situation:
[Official] Even though #myblogguest has been against paying for links (unlike other platforms), @mattcutts team decided to penalize us…
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 19, 2014
Sorry Ann, you’re missing the point. Being against paying for links isn’t relevant. Being against unnatural links is what would have saved you. The fact your website homepage pitch specifically mentions: “Building links to your site” should be a clue. Furthermore, this blog on venturebreak.com suggests that MyBlogGuest.com has a policy on guest posts having a “follow” link as opposed to a no follow link. (Follow links pass Page Rank and help rankings).
What many Twitter users are struggling to understand is why MyBlogGuest have been targeted. I’ll explain simply:
If I can go to MyBlogGuest.com and guest post at scale and obtain 10’s, 100’s or even 1000’s of links back to my site then that’s unnatural, anyway you slice it. Had MyBlogGuest.com insisted on “No Follow” links rather than “Follow” then fine. The fact is, the popular guest posting network is nothing more than a link scheme.
Websites that deserve to be ranked well are rewarded as such and by that I mean sites that have built authority, credibility and their brand to earn the top spot.
It is NOT a “Who can buy the most links or get the most guest posts” competition – and it shouldn’t be.
I struggle to understand why anyone would have a problem with this: If your site was number 1 in Google after investing your time and resources into building your reputation and brand etc, how would you feel if a low quality site kicked you off the top spot simply because they’ve published a tonne of low quality guest posts on low quality sites and obtained backlinks?
You’d be pretty annoyed.
Google just cannot allow this to happen. Low quality results means less people searching and clicking on ads which means good ole Larry and Sergey won’t be buying a new yacht next year. Simple.
(For the record, I think connecting bloggers is a great thing if that’s your true objective. Connecting bloggers for “follow” links is an entirely different story)
