Is guest posting dying or dead already?

[trackshack64]

With each day that passes I'm getting more and more skeptical of sites that openly state they accept sponsored guest posts and label the guest posts as such.

Are these links even going to worth anything in 1-2 years?

Google made me disavow all of my guest posts to get a manual action removed. It seems they are working on automatically devaluing them algorithmically.

Thoughts?

 

[trackshack64]

Odd this is most bloggers think they are doing the right thing by their site visitors and the FCC by labeling stuff as sponsored but really they are just outting themselves to Google. Which is insanity! SMH...

I've started targeting sites that don't mention anything about guest posting for link placements and guest posts.

 

[Mr Positive]

Guest posting is not dead you just need to target the right ones

 

[Geasy]

I don't really think that was the issue. Either you got "guest posts" on dead PBN sites or one of the sites reported you for buying links at Google (just an option, I don't really believe that's the case).

Most of the sites ranking nowadays are powered by guest posts, and I haven't seen any other report on the community that Google is after guest posts.

Your point is valid though, you never know what Google might add into the next update. However, IMO they're not after guest posts at all, people are still using PBNs effectively and Google main biz is making money not strictly coming after SEOs.

Google likes having the keywords hard to rank, as that means more money into its AdWords platform.

 

[trackshack64]

They definitely weren't dead PBNs they were real sites that I did my own manual outreach too. Very clean, traffic.

 

[trackshack64]

I'll add that they just wouldn't budget, so after 4 rejections I just went ahead and disavowed half the guest posts... Still wouldn't budge until I disavowed all but 1 of them.

We're only talking about maybe 10 guest posts at that.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

They definitely weren't dead PBNs they were real sites that I did my own manual outreach too. Very clean, traffic.

Any chance you left a footprint like the same anchors, all the same url on your site (not using inner pages), extreme link velocity beyond what is normal for your site or something along those lines?

 

[trackshack64]

It was only 10, random anchors, no exact match, to different inner page and a few to the homepage.

I'm not really sure.

 

[trackshack64]

I might add that the site had a manual action for PBNs... My point is that along with disavowing the PBNs to lift the penalty they were making me no follow or disavow all of my guest posts.

Maybe they didn't intend to target guest posts but once I had a manual action for PBNs they were scrutinizing my links much for strictly?

 

[trackshack64]

Thanks for the input guys! I’ll be proceeding cautiously with sites that openly accept guest posts.

 

[iki]

Many websites offer sponsored posts, its not very good idea to build all links like that, but then companies who have big budgets for SEO they do this all the time. But everything is unpredictable with Google

 

[zimba]

Check if any of the websites you bought from are linked to each other's I have seen websites in same network linking all together and selling guest posts. No matter if it's a pbn or real site. A footprint is still a footprint

 

[trackshack64]

Definitely aren't connected based on anything I'm seeing...

 

[tiiberius]

Happened to me as well.

For the past 2 years I stayed away from anything that advertises guest posts in public.

I've started targeting sites that don't mention anything about guest posting for link placements and guest posts.

Thumbs up! Did the same thing, never looked back.

 

[InfinityPeace]

If you try to get a free guest post on sites that have huge traffic and are harder to get approved, that should overcome the "PBNs with no traffic" and footprint issues. A niche relevant site with an Alexa of 200k or less will almost certainly not be a PBN ever, and the visit traffic is so heavy that it can't be called web spam, even if it has a "write for us" page.

 

[710fla]

Make sure they aren't just PBNs selling guest posts. Look at their traffic and new content, as well as outgoing links

 

[nightflower]

Google is getting webmasters to demarcate sponsored content and UGC with respective rel=“” tags now too.

I wouldn’t say that guest posting is dead, but it’s changing.