Howdy Inbound Marketers, after my last interview with Rand Fishkin, today I have another special guest with me. She is guest blogging guru and owner of My Blog Guest.
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Interview with Neil Patel @neilpatel
Q. As we know Google is strengthening its guidelines against guest blogging by warning not to add links in author bio section, not to use exact match keywords and using Google authorship. What strategies do you recommend moving forward for guest blogging.?
A. My advice has always been the same: Guest blogging for the sake of links is degrading and ruining for the whole concept.
The only value of guest blogging is connections you are building on the way: Connections with bloggers who publish your content and connections with their readers.
My advice has always been: Forget about Google and links when guest blogging and think about your brand, exposure and connections.
Thinking where to put your links is also degrading. I am the founder of MyBlogGuest, I'll say I am the founder of MyBlogGuest in the byline of my guest post and link to it. I have nothing to fear about because I am genuine and transparent. If you start thinking where to put your link to get better SEO value, THAT's where you stop being genuine and authentic. That's where you make a step towards ruining your relationships with bloggers because you are not building trust. You are cheating.
So what's my take on Google strengthening their guidelines for guest blogging? That's something they *have* to do to discourage link builders from abusing it but that's not something a genuine good writer should go crazy about (thinking about their byline links)... If you provide high-quality content and care about every connection you build, you are good to go.
As for Google Authorship, I am hoping it will encourage more people to care about the content quality because they will be connecting that content to their online identity. That's why we support Google Authorship at MyBlogGuest.
Q. How do you measure the success of a Guest blogging campaign?
A. From my above answer: The only result from your guest blogging campaign you should be targeting is the growing list of blogging connections you keep interacting this.
This is hard to measure and will take lots of work but that's the only thing that matters!
Q.What is your opinion about authorship and author rank? Do you think Google has already implemented authorship and author rank in its algorithm and it's influencing search results.
A. Google AuthorRank is still not there:
I am sure Google will be very transparent if they make Authorship one of the rankings factors. That will be a HUGE incentive for powerful writers to jump in and verify their Authorship so I don't see why would Google make it quietly.
That being said, I don't believe Google is implementing Authorship into their rankings algorithm (1) until they gather enough information and connect the dots and (2) until they get better and smarter at identifying authors behind content.
Q. What are the steps that you will take to get a product/content/blog to go viral?
A.
1. Make sure it deserves to go viral (make it perfect)
2. Make sure it is easy to share (add social media share buttons)
3. Use tools to bring that content in front of social media influencers (ViralContentBuzz is a good option)
4. Reach out to your contacts you built while guest blogging asking for help (be nice and not spammy)
Q. A client is not interested at investing in CONTENT (Mainly blogs), what are the other strategies you will suggest for them?
A. Content is the foundation of any digital marketing. there's no way around it. You need content to do marketing. If they don't want blogs, I'd suggest other types of content:
• Whitepapers
• Digital books
• User generated content (through contests, example: "Share a photo of how you are using our product"), etc
If they don't want any content at all, they are not my clients :)
Q. Can you name the essential elements in inbound marketing that may end up being true game changers?
A. I am not using "inbound marketing" term a lot. Not that I am against it or anything but I just like "content marketing" better and I don't really know the difference between the two.
For content marketing the two game changers are:
• Rich markup (including Schema, Twitter cards, Facebook open graph, etc)
• Going mobile: from mobile app development to mobile interactive media, etc
Q.What all are the successful distribution & outreach strategies which you have used (examples please)
A. I am not really doing outreach a lot apart from reaching out to MyBlogGuest publishers (which saves a lot of time!).
My most successful tactic so far is content and research re-packaging. In a few words, if I do one research, I make sure I'll write at least FIVE indepth (guest) articles based on it (covering different angles in each) and THEN I'll re-package most of those articles into:
• PowerPoint presentation to distribute to Slideshare
• Google video to distribute to Youtube and Vimeo (PowerPoint presentations are very easy to turn into videos)
• Infographic or cheatsheet (To promote in our Infographics gallery and beyond), etc.
Q. Writing “Long term content” will help for SEO? Any tips to write such content?
A. Google has demonstrated how interested they are in "ever-green" content by introducing their "indepth articles". All in all, ever-green content is an awesome asset to your brand: If you invest in it once, you'll be getting links for ages. The hardest part is to create and rank it but it's doable!
Q. Please list the latest tools that you have subscribed and their purpose(s)?
A. I am testing lots of tools daily. Some of the most recent ones:
• Social searcher (real-time social media search which am hoping to use for reputation management)
• Wistia (which I am hoping to use for video marketing)
Q. We all know MGB was first started as a simple forum and now it has been evolved as leading platform for guest blog posting. Please share with us any secret features that you're planning for MBG in the future.
A. Oh that's a hard one. Really, we've been adding features like crazy for four years... do you really think I can recall a single one now? :)
Ok, on a serious note, I see a big future for the Elite gallery and Articles Requests features. I think with those two we are really promoting high-quality content. And few people know that's it's FREE to try (I hope I managed to open a secret here), so there's really no reason not to try :)
Ann, Thank you very much for taking time from your busy routine and answering the questions, your answers will help us Internet marketers and guest bloggers. Please leave your comments below as I would love to hear from you!
Update: Ann Smarty is also the founder of the MyBlogU platform where bloggers can collaborate to create great content. I highly suggest you check it out. It's a great place to build relationships with other bloggers, and brainstorm content ideas.
If you’re interested in reading more SEO expert industry interviews from TechWyse, please visit SEO Expert Interviews by TechWyse Internet Marketing.
on
Great article. I feel the same way. It seems like if you listen to what Google says. They want as few links as possible. But at the same time, Google uses links to determine if a website is credible. So right now that can’t just get rid of links. But I do think the direct Authorship and authorrank is going looks pomising. If anyone is interested here is an article about some tips we can take to build our AuthorRank. That way when Google does decide to go live with it, we can be ready.
http://hatrackmedia.com/google-authorrank-seven-ways-start-building/
I think it is so cool how in the future, if your AuthorRank is high, by guest blogging on a new site, you will be able to increase it’s rank simply becuase you blogged on their site.
on
Interesting read –
It seems like as with most things in life, quality over quantity is the way to go.
I appreciate those 2 tips for tools to use. I don’t use either of them, so I will definitely check it out as soon as possible. Good interview!
on
So i have a question,will podcast do any good in SERP ?
on
Guest blogging is a form of reaching out to the blogging community, and not for building links. As your connections keep increasing the level of authority in the niche will also increase.
It is also a way to create excellent content by which a blogger should be known to the outside world. Once you create evergreen content your post will drive traffic to your blog.