The comments on this video by Rand Fishkin are very telling. They are recent, meaning that the people who made them still believe guest blogging is some kind of SEO tactic. Only it isn’t. The term “guest blogging” was co-opted by the SEO community, but the practice itself was here long before SEO was. I know. I was there.
Google started in 1998, as did the modern SEO movement. Before then there was nothing to optimize for. In fact the first couple of years of Google were the “newborn star” years where people were just figuring out the link popularity algorithm. People were writing for other blogs in the first couple years of Google and before 1998. Not to get ranked somewhere, but to get direct traffic FROM a popular site TO their own site.
Here’s my response to the commentators on Rand’s video. I just ask everyone to stop using “guest blogging” as some kind of spam term. It was never, and never will be a spam tactic by people who understand what it is truly for. Spammers will NOT ruin this for us too.
I’m continually amazed by how many people think guest blogging was invented by the SEO and link building community. Guest blogging was here long before link building was and it is still one of the best ways to get on a bigger stage than your own to get in front of your best prospective visitors and customers. It had nothing to do with SEO when it started, and it has nothing to do with it NOW, so there is nothing to be declared “dead” by Cutts or anyone else.
Guesting is a way to put some of your best content on someone’s high traffic site in front of their readers to attract them DIRECTLY to your site, social, or products. Period. End of story.
What Matt Cutts declared dead was link spamming. NOT guest blogging!