Matt Cutts Says A Thing
SEO industry flips its lid—again
I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of the collective industry losing its shit every time Matt Cutts exhales audibly. We read into his blogs, his tweets, and his videos with such tenacity that it’s no surprise we’ve become Google conspiracy theorists.
For example, look at last month. The tenacious head of Google’s webspam team dropped a couple big bombshells on SEOs, many of whom are still dealing with the fallout:
- “So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy.” — The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO, posted 20 January 2014
- “Today’s webmaster video: ‘Should I build links using article directories?’ http://goo.gl/5wa0rH (No)” —@mattcutts, tweeted 29 January 2014
Right, then! Okay, so according to our favorite spam crusader, article publishing and guest blogging are donezo, finito, kaput… you get the idea. If your company is currently using these as part of its SEO mix, what do you do?
Well, if you’re a typical SEO/firm, you overreact. You halt the entire process, shouting “Guest blogging is dead!” as you shred papers and overturn tables. Or worse—you continue to do business as usual, with minor changes so you can console yourself that you’re “not like those spammy guys.” An example of the latter: my colleague works for a firm that simply changed the name of its guest blogging product, just to say to clients “See? We don’t do guest blogging anymore! This is something different.” Never mind that you’re essentially doing the exact same thing—maybe it’s just that the branding was off. Sure.
Meanwhile, I’ve personally been asked to assuage clients who watched a Matt Cutts video and decided that link-building is dead. “Tell them links are valuable!” implored The Man. When I answered back “Links are not intrinsically valuable,” the conversation came to a grinding halt. (I’m all about assuaging clients, mind you, but I’m not into make-believe.) Truth is, SEO is more holistic than that.
And therein lies the rub. Guest blogs, article directories, links… None of them are intrinsically valuable. But if you’re a savvy marketer who knows how to balance the mix, they can be. Let’s talk a little about that, using guest blogs as an example.
Understanding guest blogging’s role
Guest blogs serve a valid marketing purpose, and if you’re doing it right, it’s a win-win. Blog owners get a sweet post that they didn’t have to write, and the author gets exposure to the blog’s audience. Hosting a post written by an outside authority is a boon for bloggers; they’re now seen as well-connected. And it’s a boon for authors because if the audience likes what they see, they’re going to follow the link—to another blog, an official website, a Twitter profile, you name it.
Do you see the difference in the search engine definition and the one above? The difference is that one solely cares about pleasing the search-bots, while the other puts the user first and search-bots second. There’s a term for that in the industry: it’s called good marketing.
Learning from organic web: In the YouTube community, vloggers often appear on one another’s channels to create collaborative videos—or ‘collabs.’ The variety and chemistry create great entertainment, and each vlogger gets promoted to the others’ audience. This works whether you have hundreds of subscribers or millions. There are even channels dedicated to collabing with other YouTubers. More of us should think about guest blogs as written collabs ☺
Bottom line is this: Guest blogging is a shared trust between blogger, author, and audience. If you’re doing it purely for SEO, you’re missing out on its real benefits big time, and the strategy won’t work for you long. It’s high time that we SEOs accept that we are part of a bigger marketing picture.
Wondering where to start with guest blogs? Here are some tips.
Do:
- Write compelling, engaging content. Make it newsworthy, or actionable, or a useful reference, or entertaining… Make it something!
- Cite relevant sources. Your client should be one of them. But don’t be afraid of citing others, too. (Like here.) (And here.)
- Find authoritative websites to pitch your content to—websites that cater to the audience you want for the topics you’re writing about.
- Experiment with new publishing platforms to find communities and niches. (Hello, Medium! ☺)
Don’t:
- Blanket-send the same email to every tangentially-related (or unrelated) website you can find.
- Ask websites to publish your content before it’s written based on B.S. “we deliver high quality content” promises.
- Open yourself up to potential online embarrassment with your transparent attempts at link-grabbing.
- Involve money or link exchanges. Wear your white hat well!
There are lots of other resources out there which advise you on best practices and what the future of guest blogging might look like, and I encourage you to seek them out to decide for yourself. But to reiterate my main point…
Conceptualizing SEO as part of the mix
We need to stop thinking about SEO as some purely technical, algorithm exploit-y thing and start treating it like what it really is: an extension of the marketing mix. No more shortcuts—it’s time to join the big boys or go home. That’s not to say ‘forget using SEO tactics.’ Rather, SEO should be the ‘secret sauce’ that you spread atop your other marketing efforts—especially content marketing—to give it that optimized edge. And if you know that the strategies you’re using have value outside of SEO… then the latest revelation from Matt Cutts shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
So bring it on, Matt! We savvy SEOs are ready.
—Alice
Thanks for reading my article! If you enjoyed it or found it useful, please consider sharing it on your favorite social networks. You can also find me on Google+ and my music blog, ExplorersTM. Keep calm and optimize on.
P.S. If you tweet this post, I’ll DM you a Matt Cutts dartboard. Think I’m kidding? Nope—I sought the help of a killer graphic designer to offer fellow SEOs a way to relieve their stress ;) Mega thanks to @AlexM_Thompson!
