Matt Cutts on Guest Posting, SEO, Floost, Empower Network, Speedlink 40:2012

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week. Matt Cutts has been releasing successive videos recently, answering questions that are basically related to search engine optimization. Its no news that one way of getting good rankings is by building a good link profile, this achieved, among other things, via guest posting. If you are in the “guest posting” arena, you may find this video interesting, where Matt responds to a question about Google’s view in guest posting:

From Bing’s side, Duane Forrester posted an interesting article, where he states that SEO has a future (that’s good news). You just have to be ready to learn how SEO is properly done.

Another interesting site that I found about this week is Floost. Not sure if you have heard about it before, but it was new to me. Floost as they say is “a place where you share and satisfy your curiosity”. It is very, very similar to that of Pinterest, the difference being that you can curate content, has analytics and an interface, which is quite impressive. If you are not happy, sick of, or looking for an alternative to Pinterest, Floost may be a good place to start. Have you heard about it before?

Floost

Finally, Ana of Traffic Generation Cafe has written an extensive posts about Empower Network (EN). You probably already heard about it, but if you want an in-depth review and know if it is an interesting program to join, read the article to find out.

As usual, in no particular order:

Content Marketing/Small Business Bites

SEO/Inbound Marketing

Social Web/Other Roundups and Cool Stuff

That’s it! Enjoy and have a great weekend.

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

32 thoughts on “Matt Cutts on Guest Posting, SEO, Floost, Empower Network, Speedlink 40:2012

  • Hi DiTesco,

    Just want to thank you for these SpeedLink Weekly posts. I always find something important that I would miss otherwise.

  • Matt is putting it out there in a very interesting way.

    In my opinion, truth is search engines (especially Google) are getting smarter and smarter. There were a lot of ways you could trick them back in the day, but there are less and less of them.

    Eventually, Google will get to the point where they will be able to accurately figure whether your article is unique and valuable or not (and they’re not far from that).

    There won’t be any ways to trick it into thinking your page is better than it actually is, and the only way for the blogs to stay on the first page long-term is to constantly give value to their readers by writing unique and helpful articles.

    • Good point! Instead of looking for short-term quick money or tricks, I would rather invest my time and effort on building a solid online business that provides true value and benefit to my readers. Though it may be slow at the beginning, I don’t need to be too much concerned about the next Google update.

  • Do you think there is going to be a shakeup in the guest posting industry? How will sites like My Blog Guest be effected? It seems like guest posting is taking off due to other tactics getting penalized, I wonder how long it is before a good thing gets ruined.

    • Hi Shannon. Good question and IMO, guest posting will never be a bad issue, provided it is done with the proper ethics in mind. If you do a guest post to add value to the blog owner and its readers and not solely think about link building and taking advantage, I think it will stick. Obviously, if you are guest posting on a blog that is known to search engines as being of poor quality, then it may not even be worthwhile doing it. As for MyBlogGuest, I think that there will be no problem. The same rule of proper ethics and quality applies. They just provide you with a platform to make things easier.

      • Guest posting has been working better than ever for me. It has become one of the core strategies that I use to get traffic to my sites from Google. Like DiTesco said, I wouldn’t imagine this strategy having issues in the future provided you are doing it to add value and not just spamming posts out for the sake a getting a link.

      • Thanks, I love guest posting, my only fear is that it will eventually go by way of the infographic. A great tool that gets beaten to death and abused until Google has to step in and say enough, which Matt Cuts recently mentioned in an interview, though it was a little more subtle.

        • I hear you Shannon. The problem is that, if things continue this way, pretty soon there will be very little and legitimate forms of building quality links. IMO, what could happen is that, once again, the quality of the website as a whole, in combination with authorship should dictate if a guest post will be counted as being good or not. We’ll see..

          • I agree, thanks for your opinion. I do think guest posting is a great long term link building strategy, just hope it doesn’t get ruined. I’m starting to see the same spammers who used to build links the black hat way, starting to use guest posting as a mass linkbuilding tool.

  • i never heard about floost, thanks to you, i sign up floost now

  • Thanks for the kind inclusion DiTesco, appreciate it. There’s been lots of neat stuff going on this week. I know some are afraid that guest posting is getting penalized and I disagree with that. Crappy content is getting penalized and there just happens to be a bunch of it in the guest blogging arena. High quality content – regardless of by whom – and posted where – (although bonused for author authority and domain authority) will continue to remain unimpacted in any negative way. In fact, clearing out more of the crap is only going to further allow it to shine.
    Kim

    • Hi Kim. Welcome for the inclusion.. Great and warranted post. As for the guest posting thing, you have hit it right on target.. can’t agree with you more. That last part “clearing out more of the crap is only going to further allow it to shine” is so true 🙂

  • Hi DiTesco, I saw a note that you joined Floost so I guess we are connected over there already. I tested it out months ago and forgot all about it. I guess it’s similar to Scoop.it also, but I’ll need to take another look.

    I have a few Pinterest boards but as you say, some of us might be getting just a little bored with the platform these days.

    Thanks for the link luv my dear. Have an awesome day!

    • Hi Ileane. Nope, we were not yet connected over there, but I just remedied that situation very fast 🙂 It is quite similar to Scoop.it and Pinterest combined. Still learning how it works.. We’ll see how that plays out.

      Thanks for stopping by and welcome for the luv…

  • Interesting video about guest posting…if Google ever decided to go after those so as to negate their SEO benefits, things would get really complicated really fast.

    Mark

    • I hear you Mark. I think that Google will eventually go after guest posts too (if they are not doing it already), but only on those blogs that they consider to be of low quality. I think that this is where things may be a bit complicated. However if you guest posts on good blogs and the article provides value, there should not be any problem.

  • First of all, what Matt Cutts is doing is awesome. He is providing great content that ordinary people can understand. And, I love the fact that Google is getting smarter. This means that people and businesses who are working hard to create quality content will be awarded and that it’s getting harder to do blackhat methods.

    Great information.

  • Matt Cutts has always given answers to the queries before one asks.This video is an example of it.

    And regarding Anna’s Post on Empower network i have to say that one has to read it for sure and see how can it help one build their own and the pros and cons of having it.

  • Matt cutts has the fantastic work here,
    I think he has given a short note for the smart work not for a work which are huge in quantity.
    I have read this post before and I think Blog can be panelised If the Links are coming from Low quality or spammy sites.The google is making the competition high on this internet world.

  • I haven’t heard about Floost,but yes empower network has something which can turn impossible into possible by making some effort.But i have also read that Empower network has been slapped by Facebook.Don’t know the exact reason though but yes it sure empower one who joins it.

  • Hi DiTesco, most blogs that accept guest blogging don’t allow duplicate content. However, I’m sure there are those who spin articles prior to submission.

    The tougher Google gets, the better it is for those of us who do it right.

    I’ll have to check out Floost.

  • I’ve done a couple of guest posts but it’s not really my cup of tea and even if Google loves them I’m not about to change my ways just to make the big G happy.

    Never heard of Floost before and to tell you the truth there are so many of these sites coming alive that you just can’t join all of them. That being said it’s still good to let people know of them so they’re able to make an informed decision.

  • Guest posting has sure become one of the best way to build your link profile. And to hear that SEO has a future has sure made my day. I am definitely looking at trying Floost . Thanks for all the speedLinks, heading there right away!

  • Watched the Matt Cutt’s video you shared. At least he doesn’t say not to guest post. He seems to imply choose sites to guest blog on wisely. That’s what I got out of it anyway.

    I still don’t get sites like Floost, Pintrest, and the like. I am not a member, but I have looked at a few pages on them. I mean there is a full page of pictures, but I just don’t get how it’s that helpful. Maybe I misunderstand the whole concept.

    • I understood the same thing Ray. Matt is not saying to get away from guest posting but rather to write something that will add value and on good site. As for Pinterest and Floost, the concept is fairly simple 🙂 It is just like using Twitter, only instead of just words, you use Pinterest and Floost with images. Floost does go a bit further, because you can actually write a post in its entirety.

  • Thanks so much for the shout, Francisco – I truly hope that more people are able to make a more educated decision about EN based on my review.

    On the other note, have you seen Cutts’ video about disavow link tool? It’s something… Not sure what to think about it yet.

    • Hi Ana. You are welcome. You were not kidding when you told me that is was important 🙂 As for Matt new video about the disavow tool, yeah, I’ve seen it and it will most certainly be speedlink bound this weekend. Not sure what to make of it yet, but I am no “power user” and with him repeating constantly that “you ay not need this tool” is something to think about seriously. I am almost thinking that he is saying, “look don’t use this tool for evil” and it may hit you back.. We’ll see. I’m sure that soon, the SEO community will talk about it

  • This is very disheartening and I’m not sure what to make of it. It seems to me that the big G is changing the rules and trying to pull the rug out from under us every time you look around. I have been meaning to guest post on blogs of two coaching colleagues. I’ll still do it, but everything is suspect now.

  • All these topics you have discussed in this post are all related to one common topic and that is blogging. Blogging comprises of guest posting, writing content as well as SEO marketing tools. However, Floost is something new I have heard about in your post. I liked gaining that extra knowledge.

  • Hi DiTesco,
    I am Floost’s co-founder and am really glad that you tried Floost and liked the experience. We want to provide our users with quality content – which includes news, videos, blog posts, articles related to their interests.
    We are going to launch a more “personalized” home page feed for our users by the end of this month. We would love to receive feedback from both you and your readers.

    • HI Harpreet. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a bit of information about Floost’s direction. I am looking forward to using it more extensively and quite frankly, I like the interface, so keep up the good work and all the best. If I can be of any help, let me know 🙂

  • Hi DiTesco,
    This comment from Google about guest posts is a really good news, I’m thinking now about writing few guest posts. And about this site Floost, looks interesting, but at the moment can’t see much power in this tool.

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