Several studies show that Google might crackdown a site that publishes guest posts. The unnatural outbound link penalties are not new. Multiple reports have already explained how Google penalizes the unnatural outbound links. Let’s see how the Google penalty affects guest posts.
Outbound Link Penalty:
When it comes to the outbound link penalty, manual action is taken against a particular website. In this case, Google might stop PageRank from flowing from the website as a penalty.
The bad links that are penalized by Google:
- Discussion forum links
- Links from foreign guestbooks
- PBNs or Private Blog Network
- Links from cheap link services, like Fiverr
- Links from automatic link building programs
How to understand your guest post has been penalized:
When a guest post is penalized manually, Google emails the publisher that they have detected a few of their articles are guest posts. Google also explains that they have disabled your authority for the outbound links and request the publisher to set their outbound links to nofollow and submit a review request.
In Google’s language, “We have detected that some of your articles are guest posts… We have disabled your authority for your outbound links. Please set your outbound links to nofollow and submit a review request.”
Every publisher that faces an outbound link penalty, gets the same email from Google. Remember, when a guest post lacks the proper diligence or encourage the shady tactics, your site might get a penalty for guest posts from Google.
So, what to do before you accept guest posts:
- Identify your goals and understand if it increases your conversions and CTR.
- Plan guest posting guidelines by maintaining Google’s rules and regulations.
- Highlight your statistics
- Make the right strategy to plan for promoting guest posts
- The home page content must be of the highest quality
- Boost your social presence online
Paid or free? Which Guest Post site can be threatened by Google?
Perhaps the most common and the most important question is, for what type of site Google issue a warning email? Is it a paid guest post site or a free one? Well, Google basically issues manual actions for a website that is paid and over-optimized.
If you are a free guest post site and approve an article that meets all the requirements by Google, but failed to identify one over-optimized content, Google precisely identifies that one and sends you a warning email. In simple words, Google can spot each and the benefits that a person can make from a guest post and ensures it is done maintaining the white hat techniques.
No official declaration from Google:
There was never any official declaration from Google about the Guest Post Penalty. The possible reasons are made by the Webmaster Trends Analysts based on the research and the latest trends. However, this sometimes goes wrong. For example, Google stopped using the Rel/Next link attribute at the beginning of 2019, but the Webmaster Trends team discovered that after a few months, almost at the end of the year. In fact, John Muller, a popular Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, had been recommending the use of the defunct link attribute during the period it was not in use.
So, what should you do? Should you accept the guest posts?
Well, Google’s manual links warning is about asking the publisher to add the nofollow attribute to paid links, embedded in guest posts. So, there is no wrong in accepting guest posts. If there are paid links, don’t forget to add a nofollow attribute on the sponsored link.
Until Google issues, any formal announcement, publishing a guest post without any nofollow link can be risky. However, if you get penalized, Google will also come with compensation, mentioned in its email. That means Google’s main aim is to remove paid links that can influence search results artificially.
So, what is Google’s problem with guest posting? Google does not have any issue with Guest posting until you use paid links or over-optimization process. In short, Google’s perpetual fight is against the paid links to make its search results fair. Use nofollow attributes to avoid Google Penalty for guest posting.