It seems like every day I get an email from some “SEO Company” or agency wanting to guest post on a blog.
Sometimes these companies want to post on GBW. Usually they want to post on Country Music Life.
It’s crazy to me that some people still believe that guest blogging is about building links. Heck, I can’t believe people still think you should focus on building all kinds of links for SEO benefit.
Yes, links are great, but if you focus on links you’re going to find yourself going down a dark path at some point.
When you’re chasing links you’re going to do things like the scams listed below. Stay away from these. You’ll end up spending money on things that won’t every work or worse, you’ll end up seeing results in the short-term only to have them ripped away in an instant when Google makes an update to its rankings.
SEO Scam #1: Link Building
Any kind of link building SEO effort is usually a scam. I would say that it’s a scam 100% of the time, but we’ll stay away from absolutes.
Commenting, forums, directories, reciprocals, etc. It’s all a scam. It’s not worthwhile for you because in the long run you’ll end up hurting your brand more than any short-term benefit would have.
Google wants brands to focus on what’s best for the customer. The simple SEO strategy for you is to focus on what is best for the customer as well and trust that Google will rank you content accordingly.
There really isn’t much more that you can do unless you want to get burned.
Keep your focus on what the customer wants. You’ll find that you’ll get traffic, leads and sales from a variety of sources like direct referrals, social media and search.
SEO Scam #2: Guest Blogging For SEO
Guest blogging has really gone to the dark side in the last year.
You used to be able to look at each guest article email that came to your inbox, but now there is so much junk that most blog owners ignore it all.
This is a great example of how focus on link building can ruin your SEO strategy.
Guest blogging should have never been about link building. It was always one of many tools for building your online presence. You provide valuable content to someone with an audience and in return you get exposure to the audience.
That’s it.
You get exposure. You get some traffic. You repeat the process to grow your brand.
Doing it for links was always walking on shady ground and Google has cracked down on it.
Guest blogging is still find. You just need to focus on growing your audience and not on link building.
It’s also good to still focus on building your own content.
Content today is part of the product and service you provide. You give your target customer something before asking them for anything.
That’s how business works in general today let alone SEO.
SEO Scam #3: Article Marketing
Article marketing is when you write one article and send it out to a bunch of places to have it published. It’s a form of press releasing material.
In this basic form there is nothing wrong, but if you’re doing it for SEO purposes you’re going to get burned. If you’re building links you’ll find that it might work in the short-term, but the engines are smart enough to know what you’re doing. They’ll discount the links and you’ll be back to square one.
However, if you want to create articles for multiple sites you can as long as you cite the original source.
Again, the basic concept of spreading your article to as many audiences as possible is a good idea, but it’s about exposure and traffic – not SEO.
And it’s always better to create unique content for any site you’re contributing to while focusing on what the customer for each site wants to read/see/hear.
Conclusion
Stay away from these things as you grow your business. These things are tempting and some SEO agencies will promise fast results that are too good to be true.
Resist the temptation.
The best SEO strategies are to create things your target customer demands.
Create content. Build a community. Grow your audience by contributing to existing audiences.
It may take longer, but you’ll be better in the long run.
Image: Kenneth Lu