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I was approved to guest post on Social Media Today, good or bad?

by skitblack
19 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I don’t know how big of a deal this is, if any (maybe everyone gets approved lol).



I posted my first article to the site a couple days ago. The article was approved and is fairly active (for me) with over a hundred shares.

It has three or so links back to my site and back to the original article. All articles include a link to my social accounts and site in my profile. They allow a canonical link backs and dofollow link to my site.

After thinking more about this, I have a few questions for those who have done this or would never do this.

  1. First and most important let me get the correct terms for what I am doing: what is this called, guest posting, article syndication?
  2. Is this going to hurt my site in any way?
  3. Is there any benefit to posting to Social Media Today or any similar sites?
  4. The social sharing buttons have a count on them, the twitter button says over 120 or so shares. Do you think they would inflate the numbers?
Thanks you all for your help. I am trying to make the right decision for my blog and am learning as I go.
#approved #bad #good #guest #media #post #social #today
  • Profile picture of the author Jamel Hassell
    What a great move. Guest posting is always good when posting on an active site. You build relationships and trust at the same time.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    1) Article syndication is the same article getting published at multiple sources.
    2) No.
    3) I don't know anything about Social Media Today. Only benefit you are going to get from a nofollow link is direct traffic. It will not help your SEO at all.
    4) Ask them.
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  • Profile picture of the author samjom
    Don't worry, go ahead and publish another article. Social media today is authority blogging sites and it provide good resources for social media marketer, business owner and readers. Nofollow link from good authority sites is better than dofollow link from low authority sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author Roopatg
      That is really great that getting your article post with many shares. Your content must be unique and user friendly. I would suggest to use one link or just citation, but not 3 backlinks. It might be harmful and effect your SERP.
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      Bus tickets of any Travel operator @ Ticketgoose.com

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  • Profile picture of the author AndresNWD
    If the links you got are relevant to the post subject, then people click on them and if they interact with your site, then you will get some SEO benefit.
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  • Profile picture of the author skitblack
    Wow. I just realized that I put in there "nofollow"... They don't use "nofollow" links they are straight up links "dofollow", sorry for the mis-type.


    I get the consensus that this is not a bad site to post.

    Thanks for the info!
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    Had a quick look at Social Media Today and it's the sort of site Google could downgrade the outbound links in the future. Similar article type sites have gone nofollow to protect their domains, my guess would be it will go nofollow eventually. Too many outbound links added for SEO gain.

    The home page is only PR3, so even if they never go nofollow or Google never stops PR flow via outbound links, the SEO vale of a dofollow link is tiny.

    The high Alexa ranking and the number of indexed pages suggests it's a popular site, so maybe the click through traffic will be worthwhile.

    Been considering doing something similar, but with news articles though on a revenue share basis (share ad revenue: giving backlinks isn't safe): get a site accepted into Google news, find some high quality writers to generate news articles and they keep the majority of the AdSense revenue for clicks from their articles.

    David
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    Freelance SEO Consultant
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    BTW was easy enough to find you on the site "Live by Google, Die by Google".

    Now you have competition for your original article at digitallayne.com/google-search-traffic/ should Google rank your domain or the more popular one you just uploaded a copy of your content to?

    Search for your articles title and their site is above yours. Theirs is at number 3, didn't see your site.

    David
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    Freelance SEO Consultant
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  • Profile picture of the author skitblack
    SEO-Dave, I was afraid of that. I am not sure the tradeoff is worth it. They rank higher for the keywords and I get a few click throughs. We shall see.
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  • Profile picture of the author skitblack
    My site is fairly new so I guess I should expect this. The learning curve hurts my head.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by skitblack View Post

      My site is fairly new so I guess I should expect this. The learning curve hurts my head.
      You are doing fine. Don't let all the Debbie downers get you down. The answer to whether it will help for SEO is YES.

      First things first

      Thats no PR3 site. The last PR udpate was really based on old data that was somewhere around august 2013. So in other words its been about a year and half since the PR toolbar has been accurate. When you check the backlinks on that site (and I only did a quick Moz check...couldn't bother burning up any Majestic API credits on that) you'll see its no PR3 site. So the PR for it has increased in the last year and a half (you just won't see it in the toolbar). I wouldn't be surprised if that was a PR5 or maybe even 6 (since I didn't really check that closely)

      So depending on where your article is you should see a bit of juice plus a nice organic link is good for your profile.

      Social will in fact help your SEO (lol....I can sense the natives ready to pounce)

      You've gotten a bunch of shares and click throughs and traffic can relate to SEO (rofl....now the natives are really ready to pounce)

      In My 2015 goal of going mostly white hat by the end of they year I have realized that the higher traffic your site has the more likely webmasters are to take you seriously when you at some point contact them for link outreach. that of course has always been the case but PR really isn't reliable anymore and the other metrics haven't entrenched themselves yet as reliable. Turns out that also relates to social signals. Webmasters do use social signals to get an idea how popular you are.

      Its kind of the ugly guy pretty girls syndrome. If an ugly guy gets enough pretty women around him other pretty women think - "this guy must have something going on" and then are attracted to him a bit more"

      So keep doing what you are doing. No social and traffic won't make much difference just by itself but with all things in SEO put together with something else and Boom it can work VERY well - in this case when you either reach out to another webmaster or one of your shares gets picked up by someone who yes then links to you.

      and so the natives have to put away their spears
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  • Profile picture of the author DanelKits
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      If it gets shared a 100+ times then the link is definitely worth it as it should result in a decent amount of traffic as well right?
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  • Profile picture of the author cchandran
    Try to write the content as unique and interesting to attract maximum peoples. Once you get to know about guest blogging surely you will make a benefit of them. Social media will gives you a longer reach. Do more article and reach many people.
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  • Profile picture of the author technician27
    PR3 and dofollow link is good. If you get like 50+ more backlinks like it from relevent sites you will see massive ranking difference for your site. I have a friend who has make-up artist website (wordpress) for weddings etc. She doesn't know anything about SEO and she is not paying anything to anyone. She doesn't even do blogging. She got some backlinks from wedding and makeup websites all natural and her site only 2 years old and got PR3.
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  • Profile picture of the author tasolglobal
    Hello,

    Below are my replies to your questions.

    (1) First and most important let me get the correct terms for what I am doing: what is this called, guest posting, article syndication?

    Reply: Its considered are guest post or a single article submission . It will not considered as syndication as you are not distributing the same content on many different websites.

    (2) Is this going to hurt my site in any way?

    Reply: It depends on how you do it in a future

    (3) Is there any benefit to posting to Social Media Today or any similar sites?

    Reply: Yes, Google considering social signals very strongly.

    (4) The social sharing buttons have a count on them, the twitter button says over 120 or so shares. Do you think they would inflate the numbers?

    Reply: In most cases it authentic number but some people plays with number

    Hope you got the point from above replies.
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  • Profile picture of the author bassem formula
    Hi skitblack,

    There are the answers for your questions:

    1.Guest posting: post unique article on one website only.
    Article syndication: the same article posted in many website.

    2.No, but it better to be "nofollow" links.

    3.Of course, you build relationships, trust, brand name and the most important getting direct and targeted traffic to your website that will improve your SEO.

    4.I don't think but you can simply ask them.

    You have good blog Scott :-D
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by tasolglobal View Post

      (3) Is there any benefit to posting to Social Media Today or any similar sites?

      Reply: Yes, Google considering social signals very strongly.
      Forgetting the fact that Google does not care about social signals...

      So getting a link on a site with the words "social media" in its title counts as social signals?

      Lol...
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      • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Forgetting the fact that Google does not care about social signals...

        So getting a link on a site with the words "social media" in its title counts as social signals?

        Lol...
        That is quite funny, if you look at the site it has nothing at all to do with social media, it's just another article/guest post directory.

        It's the owners of the site that benefit the most, those posting their content are gaining practically worthless backlinks.

        200,000 pages indexed in Google, PR3. How much SEO benefit do people think a deep page on a PR3 domain passes???

        To put things into perspective for those who don't understand PR.

        Assuming two domains are equal in everything except home page PR (link structure identical, content identical....)

        A PR7 home page domain is like having access to a swimming pool filled with water, a link from a deep content page might give you a cup of water.

        A PR3 in comparison is like having a bath tub filled with water and your share is a thimble worth.

        Both pass SEO benefit, but the PR3 is practically worthless considering you are giving your content away and Google is likely to rank the more popular domain over yours.

        These types of sites are not where you gain high quality backlinks from guest posting, the way to gain link benefit from guest posts is find a reasonable PR domain that doesn't post very often (not much content) and you can post on their domain. A PR3 domain with say 50 articles where the owner only posts once a month, that will pass significantly more PR than a PR3 with 200K pages indexed with dozens of other people posting new articles.

        Obviously there's more to guest posting than direct SEO benefit, theirs exposure to an audience you can't gain on your own domain. I wouldn't post guest posts for direct SEO benefit, now gaining valuable leads directly could be worthwhile. Same as why many people post on this forum, it gives them no direct SEO benefit, but gives exposure to people who might buy their product/service.

        David
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        Freelance SEO Consultant
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  • Profile picture of the author skitblack
    A lot of great info, thanks everyone. Since it will be a while before my site ranks as well on my keywords as Social Media Today does, I will post a few more and see what happens.
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