Free Blog Content in Exchange for Links: The New Black Hat?

[Aaron Wirtz]

Refreshers:

I received an interesting spam email the other day that got me thinking about the value of links from external sites. From what I could understand, the person/entity was offering blog content at no charge, provided she could link back to one of the organizations she represented. I must admit, I've never heard of this approach. Here's the email:
------
Hi there,

I hope this email finds you well. Having visited your website, I am contacting you to see if you would like some fresh content for your website. If so, I would love to contribute to your site.

After graduating in business and journalism, I took up work in finance before motherhood got in the way. Now I work from home as a freelance writer and cover topics as diverse as my old business stomping ground, local news, transportation, sustainability and much more. These examples show you how diverse my (often ghost written) work is:

(she provided some links, but I'm afraid to click on them)

As you can see, they are all tailored to the needs of the site I am writing for. This content that I would like to produce for your site would come at no cost, if I am able to mention one of my business clients. Any link to them would be subtle and in line with the content of the article. All my work is 100% original and would only be submitted to your site for approval and nowhere else.

If you have any ideas or burning topics you would like me to write about, let me know; otherwise I can produce something for you to look at. This also applies to any other sites you might run as well . On the other hand, if you do not want my content, I will leave you with my best wishes.
-----
Naturally, we're not going to take her up on this offer. Has anyone else heard of services doing this? Now that Google is getting so sophisticated at identifying and punishing black hat SEO techniques, could this be a new incarnation of it--trying to plant bogus content on legitimate sites?

Thoughts?

 

[cmjerry4531]

Guest blogging is one of the only legitimate ways for link building. I send send out tons of emails every week trying to get in contact with different webmasters. I use a much different strategy than this person, but the goal is essentially the same. If the content is high quality, and the website they link to is legit, then it really is a win/win.

To evaluate the website that you would be linking to you will want to see what websites they link out to, and who links to them. If you are in good company, then it's all good. If they have some sloppy links, such as a mom and pop shop with links in another language, then you should avoid it like the plague.

 

[Aaron Wirtz]

Interesting. I'm very familiar with guest blogging, but I always thought of it in terms of doing it for organizations you have more of a relationship with. Thanks for the input!

 

[ZBennett]

You'll want to tread lightly even when it comes to guest blogging now. My advice for anyone who asks me how they can build links, is NOT to build links, but to focus on making something that is remarkable, something that cuts through the noise of the 5000 other pieces of content someone saw that day and entices them to share it with others. If you focus on being a brand worth mentioning, with a story worth repeating, the links will come naturally and you'll have much stronger social signals (big part of recent algo updates) than you would from lone blog articles.


Google: Guest Blogging For Links? You Better Nofollow Those Links



"Think about whether or not this is a link that would be on that site if it weren't for your actions there. Especially when it comes to guest blogging, that’s something where you are essentially placing links on other people’s sites together with this content, so that’s something I kind of shy away from purely from a linkbuilding point of view. I think sometimes it can make sense to guest blog on other peoples’ sites and drive some traffic to your site because people really liked what you are writing and they are interested in the topic and they click through that link to come to your website but those are probably the cases where you’d want to use something like a rel=nofollow on those links."

*What the person that emailed you is doing, is blackhat affiliate marketing. Every time that link in his article gets clicked, he might earn 10 cents. He doesn't care if his site gets penalized, he has hundreds of throwaway-domains all filled with generic content. What he wants is to get as many clicks on that link in your blog as possible and then repeat, repeat, repeat on 10,000 other blogs until eventually he's earning a couple hundred bucks a day off of his affiliate link scheme. He's probably mass-mailing about 1million emails a day and maybe 0.3% give him a link.

 

[cmjerry4531]

There's two major problems with the whole "write it and they will come" philosophy. First off, most dealers have their blogs hosted off site. That means that any links your blog gets will only result in a better link from one domain to your main site. So, your offsite content isn't going to be as helpful to you as it would be if it was onsite.

Here's Matt Cutts' video about multiple links from one domain: How does Google consider site-wide backlinks? - YouTube

Secondly, the type of content that actually gets linked to has to be amazing/informative/new. For some industries this can be pretty easy. For the car dealer industry, it's very hard. I've personally never seen a car dealers blog that got over 100 linking domains to it. Even Aaron's blog, which is actually worth reading, hasn't gotten a single link that I can find. So, being realistic, guest blogging would be a much better way for a car dealer to get links.

As for Google's comments about guest blogging, that is about all of those guest bloggers that are just spinning poor content. If you write great content that matches the topic of the blog you are posting on, and that matches the topic of your website, then you will always be safe - assuming that you don't try to force keyword rich links. Great content also makes it easier for you to get your blog posts published. I have a few blogs that post my content right away because it does bring traffic.

Of course, you could argue that I should have just posted that content on a dealers blog since it got traffic. If you were a Houston, TX dealership would you rather get traffic from "how to tell when you need new brakes," or "used cars Houston?" By writing a great blog post for your own website you can get traffic from the first, but you won't get the second. By writing great content for other blogs you can build up your authority to be able to get the traffic from searches like "used cars Houston," which will actually impact your bottom line.

Point being, car dealers blogs aren't going to get a whole lot of links because they aren't thought about frequently by the general public. This is in complete contrast to things like Interior Design blogs that would get read every time they post. To make sure I wasn't talking out of my butt I did searches for car dealers in every major city, and I didn't find a single one that had a blog that received over 50 links from different domains.

Zach, as an SEO, have you ever created a car dealer blog that got over 100 links from different domains? Have you been able to replicate that on 10 different car dealer blogs? If you have I'll shut my mouth, otherwise I'll hold to the point that car dealers don't live in the utopia of freely given links.