Google Punishing Guest Posts?

That would be really disturbing if it were the case because that leaves basically nothing. You just have to wait for people to find your stuff and link to it because they like it so much. Probably gonna be a long wait for lots of people.

Have you analyzed your backlink profile lately? Maybe a competitor has nuked your site with spammy backlinks. I can't see why Google would penalize you for guest posts.

Particularly right now, guest posting on blogs that accept a lot of guest posts may be seen as a blog network. I've read on other sites that some are concerned this would start happening more now with blog networks being deindexed.

What's the best way to check my backlink profile?

I'm looking in my Google Webmaster and it's showing nearly 6,000 links - with 3000 from updowner.com

I'm not sure what that site is but looking in the Webmaster forums a lot of people are seeing a lot of links from this site.

There are a lot of links from junk sites. I'm not sure whether that's because a competitor has blasted my link around or because of websites that scrape content with a link back.

James

i not think google punish it..
maybe has several mistake there

what! if guest post is unnatural link so, how to find natural and quality link? it can be big prolem for me

There's no way you did 3000 guest posts. What's the other 10%? Go to majestic, sign up and get the the free report for the sites you own. You'll know where the links are coming from.

Hi everyone

Thanks for your responses. You're right, I haven't submitted 3,000 guest posts, but sometimes one post results in a number of backlinks. For example I can be linked from the post itself, from the category page and from the authors page.

Still, there are a LOT of links that I don't recognize and that look like junk.

Here are some examples. Could you please tell me if this is the result of people mass submitting junk backlinks to my site, or is this just junk sites that link out to anyone and everyone.

Example 1:

- 13thman.com - 13thman » Free Reverse IP Lookup | Reverse DNS | Sites on the same IP Address

OnTheSameHost.com provides 54 links to my site. If you check that link you can't actually see my website, but they must have linked previously. Is this the result of mass submission or a website just linking to other sites on the same host?

- Com For Acne Face Mask

This site also links to me from 21 pages, such as the one above. All it is is a long list of related posts from around the web. Is that natural? Or is it the result of mass backlink submission?

Looking though the rest of my links, the majority are:

- guest posts
- junk blogs who have taken my ezinearticles.com posts and published them to their own blog
- poor quality blogs that include links to external relevant blogs at the end of the post

Could someone please let me know what paid links would look like, how I can find them (if they exist) and how I can get rid of them.

Thanks,
James

whenever I submit an article to ezinearticles in ends up getting published on a bunch of awful low quality WP blogs and other trashy websites, with links back to my site. It's put me off doing it.

I imagine if you're guest posting a lot and targeting and anchor text then that's considered against their TOS....you're intending to manipulate the results technically speaking. If you didn't target specific anchor text then I'm a fool, but that's what I'm seeing lately.

Sign up for a free account at majesticseo.com if you want to have a look at your backlinks.

It could be autoblogs scraping content from the Blogs you've quest posted leading to a ton of low quality backlinks pointing back to your site.

Dunno if it's true... Just sayin'.

James Scholes

Hey James =)

Sorry to hear of your troubles lately...it gets messy at times, doesn't it?

OK, I took a poke around (I guessed which site of yours this is involving - well, it was an educated guess and I feel like I'm right, but not 100% sure).

The site of yours I checked into has something interesting going on.

First, I need an honest clarification from you on something you said.

You said that 90% of your link building has been via guest posts.

I need you to define "guest posts" for me.

To me, that means you write a unique article for EACH guest post you offer to another site. It is not the SAME article on many sites.

Submitting the SAME article to many sites is article syndication - not guest posts. I just want to make sure we're on the same page with that.

That said, I'm gonna try and explain what I see so you can see it too without giving your sensitive details out, ok?

Go look at one your ezine articles you have for this site. Go down to your bio box and highlight/copy a string of words in your bio box starting with the word "no" and the next 14 words.

Put that string of words inside quotes and search Google for that exact phrase.

Right now, Google is giving 1,620 results for that exact phrase - and they all seem to be copies of your ezine articles... which all have the same bio box.

This one bio box with the same anchor links in them just might be the source of your issue.

Can I guarantee it? No, of course not - but based on info you have given in this thread so far, it sure seems possible.

These links make up the majority of your link profile. How those articles all got out there... well, I could speculate, but that's not the issue now and won't help anything change. That's done...let's move forward.

What To Do?

Well, to me, it doesn't seem possible to contact all of these sites and ask them to remove your article or change up your bio box. That would take a TON of time and most likely, would end up being time wasted.

*If it was me* (that's my disclaimer...lol) - I would work towards improving my back link profile... get some good guest posts out there (all unique with varying bio boxes) etc, in attempt to a) get a better and diverse back link profile, and b) slowly dilute the links that are holding you back.

I have to say this.... in my last blog post about the whole link networks being de-indexed things, I said that I hold on to my "warm and fuzzy" feeling that there is *some* fairness left when it comes to ranking well in Google.

After taking a good look at the OP situation and realizing just how dead simple that would be to do TO someone... well, my warm and fuzzy ain't feeling so warm and fuzzy anymore.

I wish you the best!

Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

is updowner.com = automated guest post link blast? 3000 links from 1 sites seem unnatural.....

My 90% traffic is from guest posting too and I'm 100% manual, never use "automated" stuff or spinner, no problem so far.

Say it ain't true...

G be rainin down fire and brim stone...

2012 B*tches...

this may be because you are doing to fast, always get links slowly don't be too fast..getting backlinks in a natural way is beneficial

Yes, its really disturbing for those who do very genuine link building using guest posts. But why don't you try some diversified link building from different sources. It may balance your link profiles and gives a bit of natural look algorithmically.

Jennifer - Thanks so much for popping in here with your incredibly valuable contribution. I really appreciate it.

In response to some of your queries...

1. Firstly, you correctly identified the site I was referring to. That's the one that's taken the punishment.

2. I define guest posting as publishing new and original content to just one blog, and then posting another new and original piece to another blog.

I have guest posted to new blogs, old blogs, low traffic blogs and high traffic blogs. I have content published on some of the most popular blogs and websites in my market.

With my guest posts I usually include one contextual anchor text link which is usually a keyword I'm targeting. I thought perhaps this would be one of the reasons for Google seeing my links as unnatural?

3. Do you suggest I reply to my Google Reconsideration Request? If so, how do you think I should approach it?

4. Also, what tool/website/service did you use to find all the links pointing back to my site?

I used GWT but I'd imagine there are better tools out there.

Thanks so much for your help. I've also sent you a PM.

Thanks,
James

All is not lost. Since the Op didn't know how to check his backlinks the reconsideration request wasn't going to get him anywhere. Never do a reconsideration request until you know your link profile but there is never any foul in not knowing. Now that he has a better idea of what the issue is he will have a better chance. Apparently based on what Mike and Potpie girl have seen his profile may look similar to an AMR blast.

Did you check the anchor text of majority of your links. Because if majority of your links have same anchor text, Google will see it as spamming activity.

I dont think its as a problem as alot of people are doing is your distributed content is original or just copying and pasting ?

It could be the guest post. Let's get real here. First, read what Google said.

"Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes"

I'm no lawyer, but to me that sounds a lot like 'guest posting' which involves writing an optimized blog post and then submitting it to blogs for the express intent of gaining a 'dofollow in-content link.'

I really think you probably used the exact same anchor text in your BIO box.

And yes, all my sites have those ridiculous links from updowner.com as well. You can rewrite those links using .HTACCESS. If you have access to that file and mod_rewrite, I can post the commands to 'break' those backlinks.

In any event, I really think people need to be more careful about exact anchor linking. Google is on a rampage!

I've already covered the other comments in my posts, but I do want to say this about UpDowner -

I find it hard to believe that a scraper site like UpDowner can hurt your backlink profile. If it DOES, you might need to work on getting a stronger profile.

But - what do I know, right

Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

Are you using the same author bio for every post of yours, or you might be using the same anchor text for all your backlinks. When there's no variation in the anchor text, Google might think of those as manually built (purchased) links...

@MattCutts:

@potpiegirl he has a lot of sites: referring to "accelerated niche profits" site? Or firm up abs site? Or the miracle aloe vera site? Or...?

@potpiegirl Or the "Lose Belly Fat Naturally" site? Or the "exponential list building" site? Or the "secret natural remedies" site? Or.....?

@potpiegirl or the "melt your flab" domain? Or the "best wine coolers" affiliate site?

@potpiegirl or "Shocking Free Report" revealing "Never Before Heard Food Sources" site? There's quite a lot of potential sites to discuss.

hmm I looked at the niche profit sites lots of ad based links and the guest posts look like well disguised blog networks. Bunch of posts all supporting affilliate offers.

Maybe one site was penalized and they all got put together.

I have to say that I'm really impressed by what Google is doing.

I mean sure, lots of people lost money bla bla - whatever. I just went over some link reports from 3 small blog networks (less than 2 sites per network, unique content, themes, posting frequency, etc) - all blogs de-indexed over the last 2-3 days. Very, very well played.

You may want to analyze the websites you are guest blogging for. From what I have experienced personally, Ranking factors go two websites deep (the links pointing to you, and the links pointing to the websites linking to you). They may be doing something shady. If you are guest writing for websites that are publishing 50 articles a day (or something that is black-hatty), then they may be passing some nasty link junk onto you. Just a theory. Hope it helps.

Sorry to read about your demise, I've been subjected like many others to the same penalty. It's a real dilemma to know what to do to improve the ranking of your websites without it being perceived as a way of manipulating your sites rankings.
If you build a website and leave it to its own devices then you will just languish way down the rankings without any traffic.
Can't help thinking that affiliates and MFA webmasters are under seige from the Big G. I built ten new sites after the penalty and 8 out of 10 aren't even ranking without any backlinking. What do I do? If I manually build or buy links these sites will also get slapped and possibly my adsense account will get suspended as has happened to a friend of mine. The game as we know it is over!

There is possibility that your competitor done reserve SEO for your website! therefore your traffic get down, i don't think guest posting is bad thing according to google.

Just took another look at the site.

a few ideas.

Maybe potential problem would be all thel keywords in the title, you don't need all of them. Just 'natural health blog' would suffice.

I have never liked using Meta Keywords in the source, I dont know if they count that as any factor but too easy to come across as keyword stuffing in it.

Also, like the first artcle, the very first link is the keyword and its an ad to a product, maybe that doesnt help

You link to other pages on your site a bit, and probably build backlinks to them too I would assume, all with the same anchor or not enough variation?

http://www.revitaliseyourhealth.com/...-glowing-skin/ - You have an ad pretty much before the content starts, that cant be good...And the ad isn't even a relevant ad.

At the bottom of the pages you have

Is their any need to put that there? Its obviously a ploy to add your keywords to the page.

I am just guessing though, trying to give some ideas.

Before Publishing Guest Post On Your Blog. Must Check Quality Of Links Otherwise Google Will Punish You..

If an initial reconsideration request is denied then the site will be put on a 'low priority pile' next time it is submitted. I would check your backlink spread before resubmitting.

How would you classify the backlinks as high quality? most of the people I see running 'guest blog' strategies are actually submitting articles to thinly veiled article directories.

Guest posting is actually a terrific solution. However, article marketing is not true "guest posting". It's article marketing and generates thousands of spammy links from auto-bloggers.

Hi James,

I will Highly Recommend you to check your Link Profile as May be someone might be building poor links for you. May Be if you've outsourced the work. Not Sure If you have do so. Guest are exactly a WHITE HAT SEO TACTIC and Google knows that very well.

Thanks

Just want to say one thing, if you are anything like me then get only 1 link from every possible site. That means every link from unique site and IP. Right now, one of my site is ranking #1 on the base of my this secret strategy. Cheers!

JamesPenn, actually, there many other different ways you can get links, but if the blogs you are linking to have bad links it may get pass on to your site... That's why it's important to carefully review what sites your links are placed...

Also, if you have other sites on your hosting account that have spam links, Google knows and can hold it against one of your sites...

You can always interlink right on your website... Link to revelant pages with keyword relevant anchor text

Be sure to write long post for your sites preferably 2000-3000 words..... No one is doing this... Guarantee you will get traffic... Google looks at sites with long articles with authority....

You can use this strategy, just build real followers on tweeter and facebook write quality content and post your link on tweeter and content on facebook

You can get your followers to build links for you......

Tried to get links from sites that most people would even attempt to links from - those kind of links stand out...

its good to see someone not moaning about how unfair Google is and actually realising their is nothing they can do except try and fix the problems.

whether or not one agrees with how google does things doesnt matter, no point in moaning about it, try and do something about it, which is what the OP is doing.

good luck, hope you get it sorted.

Check your referral traffic. If you're not getting real traffic from natural links, then you have to question if your site should rank highly.

Be wary of guest posting on low quality blogs. I used TKA's Postrunner for a while, and the average quality of site was pretty low.

I think it matters to some degree what your guest blog posts are. I know a lot of people submit really empty articles that are keyword stuffed with the same generic anchor text in the backlink. To Google, they may not see that as a guest post, but some kind of content submitted through a spinner. Especially if you do a lot of them to low quality sites with low trust rankings. Not saying that's the case with you. Just saying Google may question the way you are doing them.

I've done guest blogging for some very smart affiliate marketers. However, their policies seemed a little kooky to me. These included:

1. Putting the keyword inside the post (even if it wasn't relevant to the niche).
2. Writing guest posts from any site with appropriate Alexa links, irrespective of whether or not it was a relevant niche.
3. Using the same keywords in the anchor text, but changing the anchor text slightly each time.

I was always kind of suspicious about how effective this was and if it looked spammy. However, I wasn't going to question it because I wouldn't get paid if I did.

Good thing google doesn't rule the offline world. If they did, all advertising would have to be word of mouth (which is, in my opinion, the equivalent of someone linking to my site on their own) and no business could buy TV or radio ads, do press releases or put up a bill board (in my opinion, equivalent to guest posting or article posting or even blog commenting). All of that advertising to get customers to their store would be seen as unnatural by google and result in a penalty.
I think the bottom line is that google doesn't want anyone to advertise their websites unless it is through google adwords. Any attempt to get any other form of advertising is being penalized.

The REAL irony in all of this is that james previously was not interested in SEO etc, wheras thanks to the poor actions of Google he now HAS become interested in it and is considering making a fglase link profile to combat the attack on his natural link profile.

Maybe a concurrent was doing negative SEO over your blog and that's why you have got flagged by Google. I have also receive the message from Google and some of my rankings dropped.

I recommend writhing a great reconsideration request if you know that you haven't used blackhat link building tactics and if you are not selling affiliate products.

Thanks James for starting this thread and more so for all the helpful comments thus far.

IMHO, I don't think anybody should be punished for the crap links that come "naturally" (natural in the sense that you didn't pay for these links although they are made from automatic scripts). I don't think Google (with all the smarta$$es working for them) would do this.

The reason? As what have been stated by some on this thread - reverse SEO. I'm sure big G have deliberated this and its possible effects and that they wouldn't dare turn the search world around. If they did, oh well, the more money for SEO professionals like myself and many others.

How so?

Did it ever cross your mind that if this is the world big G is pushing, then the work of SEOs would at least be 10x more. 10x more because instead of optimizing (or overoptimizing as big G is saying as of late) 1 website (our client's website), we will now be optimizing the websiteS of our clients sites. Why optimize competing sites of our clients? To get them "penalized" of course.

That's what I can say on the subject of being penalyzed for the backlinks/mentions that are junk.

#

On the subject of "anchor text", although it might look unnatural if all your backlinks have the same anchor text however, I'm pretty sure big G has been explicit in keeping your SEO efforts "relevant" aren't they?

And how on earth would they rank you for the keywords you are after if you aren't consistent with your keyword targets?

Here's a recent video on how Google search works and how important keywords are: youtube.com/watch?v=KyCYyoGusqs&feature=player_embedded

This one goes out to both anchor text from inlinks and backlinks (offsite).

#

On the subject of guest posting, I for one believe this is the most natural way to get the word out for any blog/site. I'm pretty sure as well that Matt Cutts have been explicit about going out of your way to participate in the industry that you are in to show your "authority" and expertise.

This is just plain logic. This has even been around even before the internet was born. Industry authorities would go out of their way to discuss in conferences and talks, etc. Naturally, they would give out calling cards to network. It's the very same principle in guess blogging (even forum participation and guest posting - the correct way that is).

Ergo, this isn't illegal or unnatural at all. If you know a little about real life businesses, you should know this is only plain logic.

#

On the subject of the ad placements on JamesPenn's blog (your blog is looking great and authoritative to me too), big G has also been in contradiction with itself regarding this. Ever heard of big G's recent "warning" for sites that have too many adds above the fold (the part where the monitor - it doesn't specific on what device's monitor when it really should since my 22" desktop monitor's fold is way too large compared to my Samsung Galaxy S2's fold (no intention of product placements here)) are going to get a slap.

Why is Google contradicting itself (again) here? Because Google adsense encourages publishers to put the ads on the very same spots and worst? Even Google search results are plague with these ads (on top of the organic search results and on the right sidebar of results).

Again this has made publishers think Google just wants all the fun on the world that they own (internet).

I for one have removed some adsense ads above the "fold" to somehow comply with this. However, my 4,000 UV ($20/day adsense earning) blog is still stuck at 800UV/day and $5-10/day earnings up until now.

I hope JamesPenn will be able to solve his problems. I doubt your plan of building more links from a more diverse source and using more diverse keywords would help though. I hope I'm wrong.

#

To end my lengthy (an probably uncalled for while at that) reply, I would like to share that we shouldn't get unto Google+. Why? Because Google owns too much of the internet as it is why give them what Facebook already has? If you hate Google's monopoly on search and how it's trying to stretch its limitless power, then why give them more?

PS: Google didn't even bother sending me one of those dreaded "unnatural links warning message through Google Webmaster tools. So consider yourself lucky you have been seen as someone worth sending that out.

I can understand google not passing on value from poor quality backlinks. But how can they punish a site for the backlinks pointing to it. If this is the case then I am sure there are many people out there who would happily buy 100,000 backlinks off ebay and point them to a competitors site to get them penalized. ??????

Well, you may not be buying links it is true but it is algorithm of Google to catch those who are like you, as you are submitting guest posts on high pr and high quality sites then it is a little suspicious to Google so you should also consider natural, submit guest posts to low pr sites, nofollow sites, do activity in forums for link building purpose, do article submission also so that it would look natural to Google.

I don't think there was a real penalty, the site did not get deindexed. And all the ranking drops simply indicate that the link juice is getting less, because google flagged some links as "not worthy" therefore passing no link juice anymore, and naturally the rankings drop.

And its quite clear what the problem was: link anchor text keyword stuffing. its simply not natural, no matter how high quality the content of the sites linking to him were... So, even if you do great link building, you gotta have to disversify the anchor text. I would in no way even think about asking websites to delete links... hell no!! google is lying if they are saying you should. how should someone hit by some neg seo do that, if there are now 20000 sites pointing to him? besides of the weeks of manual contacting work, if it was a neg seo attack, you will not be able to affect most of those links. Just let the links be, and try to disversify your anchor texts to look natural. and keep building your high quality links since they give you direct traffic as well, making you more independent from google.
you should add a lot of links with no anchor text (or the url as anchor text), with your websites name as anchor text, and keyword variations in places that google would see as "natural" such as forums and comments, in the right ratio to guest blogging of course.

Just ask yourself: where would links come from, if they were from USERS? what would the anchor texts look like? you could even do some link analysis of some websites that only got natural links and try to recreate this pattern, because THIS is what google does most likely want to see. But don't overdo it, time wise.

And of course, be careful with on page keyword stuffing... or phrase combination stuffing etc... thats another red flag and google gets increasingly sensible to that as well. And there, too, you can simply run some onpage analysis on your top ranking competitors to see what level of onpage optimization is OK and what is not.

EDIT:
when publishing content on eza for being syndicated, you should chose your anchor text carefully, because you will get multiple links with the same anchor text because of the nature of syndication. So you could approach it that way: check how many sites are pointing to your page with your desired keyword, if the ratio vs other anchor texts is very low, then use the keyword, otherwise use another (similar) keyword, but always keep in mind that a natural link profile has a LOT of backlinks with the url as anchor text or no anchor text or the name of your site as anchor text or the title of the post as anchor text, in relation to the keyword you want to rank for...!

This is a great thread discussion and many of you, especially PotPieGirl, have made some tremendous observations.

James, I believe your got penalized for the two main things that Google Panda was looking for:

1.) Anchor Text: Your eZine articles, which are not guest blogs, were scraped ad nauseam and they all had same anchor text from the resource box. This is unnatural.

2.) Diversified/Poor Inbound Link Portfolio: Since this "guest posting" was your main strategy, all links are from similar sites, most of which are scraper sites.

The very unfortunate thing here is that you did not do anything wrong and got penalized. Article marketing was a viable way to get great inbound links. Everybody knew this and did it. In fact, often people DID article marketing BECAUSE the sites get syndicated and generated massive inbound links. Unfortunately, this strategy that use to work now brings a penalty.

On that note, it is still unfathomable to me that Google is clearly penalizing sites for their inbound link portfolio. Google has the brightest engineering minds in the country and it would be easy to simply de-value a link rather than penalize you for it. This makes it too easy to destroy the competition.

And, really, contacting every blog and asking them to remove their links to you? You can't be serious. This is an impossible task and, frankly, most of these auto-blogs are not even monitored by a human.

So, what to do?

Since it is unreasonable to contact every site with a link, I think you need to move forward with a more diversified SEO strategy like we use at The SEO System, where none of our sites were penalized because we task you with creating a diversified inbound link portfolio. You need to make sure all inbound links use a variety of anchor text--including site name and URL--and come from a variety of sources, especially social media!

I wish you good fortune with this and hope your site makes it back to the top...

In the real world where I live lots of people have propositioned my with offers to 'pay for' guest post inclusion. In other words, many practitioners of guest posting are merely SEO companies acting on behalf of clients. They generally are looking for contextual backlinks that will stay placed permanently.

Of course these links are not being disclosed. Clearly I'm not the only one getting these offers. In other words, guest posting has devolved into another source of 'black hat backlinks.' Google will end up discounting this practice soon enough. They probably have installed their moles into this eco-system and will soon take enforcement action.

If you have 3000 backlinks how many of them are guest posts ?

Once you work that out may be the remainding links have caused your website to be penalised ?

Sorry to revive an old post but about a week or so Google released a tool for Disavowing links:
Google’s Link Disavow Tool And Negative SEO | WebProNews

By using this, you can protect yourself from negative SEO attempts (I know I did).

Specifically for Updowner, Google already announced that it will disregards all links from this site.

Still, if you want, you can also prevent automatic visits from Updowner by using this info about Updownerbot

But you should know properly that which links are helpful and which are not helpful, as you have to build natural links too.

I hope not because I have done a ton of blog posts

There is a possibility that one of the website's you have guest posted on got penalized, passing on the trouble to you!