Listening to Matt Cutts answer makes perfect sense.
He mentions bare minimum lenght 200 - 400 words, (If a site accepts this in general, they are not too editorially sound and the rest of the content maybe suckish)
He also mentions high volume of links. Now a high volume of links is not the problem it is the neighberhood and type of link it is and crucially how many start appearing.
So in my opinion, if a person publishes say 2 guest posts per month, within them there may be a link to a relevant site (not over optimised), the article is good and is a good read, then I say go for it.
People need to understand that it will always be crappy, over optimised links built in unnatural amounts that will get you burnt.
If Google decided to kill all links and guest articles - the web would simple suck !
Micah Fisher-Kirshner: I think part of more of the fear stems from this video with John Mueller than Matt Cutts's one: http://selnd.com/12oGmvm
Ok, this is BS in my opinion, if done correctly how is G going to determine natural from unnatural.
Who are they to determine if a really great article written on a site that contains a link to a relevant site is unnatural.
This realy realy grates my tits!
Micah Fisher-Kirshner: This is probably the situation where Matt Cutts was more concise than Mueller. I think Mueller's point was such that it's not only a link building tactic but wasn't clear enough like Cutts was.
Micah Fisher-Kirshner: +Tim Capper: They are the same ones determining that your exact-match links are natural/unnatural through Penguin's pattern analysis whether it's your doing or not.
W.E. Jonk: +Micah Fisher-Kirshner ;Maybe you are right with regard to ;http://selnd.com/12oGmvm .... But to be honest critical information was left out in the transcript on search engine land.
1. John was referring to Huffington Post which was mentioned during the farmer/panda update as a content-farm. Like http://searchengineland.com/mahalo-calacanis-time-to-end-the-content-farm-arms-race-64109 ... It makes sense that John would say be-careful with those sites and if you do use them nofollow may not be a bad idea. ;
2. Link building was mentioned in the sentence or at least during the question to John. Of course a Googler would say that it might be better to use a rel nofollow. Also don't forget that this was a real estate agent wanted to link build locally. There is a lot of spam in that area.
So what John did in both situations was to point webmasters to the right directions but search engine land missed that. They only wanted to show the drama when there is a lot nuance about what John said or did... I am pretty sure if they asked John about this they would receive a more in-depth answer, but no they decided to publish without any due-diligence...
Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Fully agree there +W.E. Jonk. Much more background should have been in the article given what John Mueller mentioned in the short clip and out of context and as a side note (comparatively).
Micah Fisher-Kirshner: I should say it's still a valuable topic as it's a good thing to highlight how important it is to understand the full conversation because if you listen to Matt and John separately without context it sounds very different.
Tim Capper: Agreed +Micah Fisher-Kirshner ;and +W.E. Jonk ;
I maintain the sites that are publishing and the nature of the link.
Because lets be honest here, why would, say the new york times add a link to something and then say to a search engine - do not follow this link.
Why would a company that has just launched invite the press and media to a product launch, who then go away and write articles with a link that is no-follow.
The web would be non existant.
People that abuse guest posts will get caught and sites that publish the crap will not thrive.
Due diligence from both parties.
Micah Fisher-Kirshner: 1) Because nofollowed link juice used to not go into a blackhole? 2) Because news sites want to rank above you so users read more on their site before going to you and a followed link gives value to your site to rank above them? 3) Because news sites believe they can provide a better neutral experience about your company and after you've read enough you can, on your own by typing it in, go to the site itself?
:)
W.E. Jonk: +Tim Capper ;normally at news papers the advertisement staff is separate from the editorial staff. That works for a 100 years and more. And here search engine land just wants to get pageviews, spread the drama and earn advertisement money.
Sorry but if you are a news site you are bound by rules that don't apply to the subject. Life by it and you will be loved by your readers, fail to do so and readers will hate you....
P.S. I don't really hate search engine land...
Masatake Wasa: I have a feeling that the really interesting / contentious cases are few and far between, and there is a lot of scaremongering and blind panicking going on. In most cases, I think it'd be clear what is editorial - or perhaps editorially justifiable - link of reasonable quality and credibility, and what is not. The problem lies with the few hard cases, of which there are two basic types: (1) editorially justifiable links wrongly classified by Google as not (i.e. sites that shouldn't have been adversely affected are hit by Google); (2) links trying to masquerade as editorially justifiable links, when they actually are not (i.e. sites that are getting away with underhanded methods). How does and how well does Google distinguish the two and act accordingly? I've no idea.
Good topic and points that Mark makes which I think would be a worthwhile area to discuss.
