One of the most popular way of building links in today's ever changing and dynamic world wide web environment is Guest Blogging. Most SEOs are benefiting by this phenomenon and as a result bloggers are getting bombarded with dozens of emails a day asking if they accept guest posts.

What will be the next move in Google’s algorithm updates to shake up your SEO strategy? There is much speculation about the Penguin 2.0 update and whether or not Google will continue to make refine the weight it assigns backlinks, notably through how it looks at guest blogs. Here are a few possible effects that Penguin 2.0 may have.

Effect 1: Reevaluating Social Signals

The problem with Google emphasizing social media numbers is that they are so simple to manipulate, especially raw figures like posts and followers. Today, many sites will sell you thousands of Twitter followers for a few bucks, and there are many ways to garner fraudulent retweets.

Following Penguin 2.0, only retweets from influential, high-authority individuals will count for much. This of course, much like the Penguin 1.0 updates, puts an impetus on creating continuously fresh and engaging content.

Effect 2: Link Devaluation

Penguin 2.0 will definitely alter the previously considered guest posting best practices. Author bios are no longer as valuable as they used to be, and going forward, even anchor text links will be devalued. Also, guest posts on multiple sites will be more accurately tracked and appropriately penalized.

This will but a greater premium on authority; after the update, being linked to as an expert by a respected author will be extraordinarily valuable. However, being linked to by numerous small-timers won’t count for much.

In theory, this will work like de-facto Darwinism, and the best, most interesting and most original content will rise to the top. Quick and easy SEO solutions will bow down to creative and original content writing, and a lot of sites are going to get hit hard.

Effect 3: Site Devaluation

Another focus of Penguin 2.0 will be to penalize sites and blogs that are linking to the same site, over and over again. This of course, is the easy way to do it, and not representative of thorough or well researched content.

Sites that are consistently linking out to one site will get penalized. Google wants you to link out to many sites and ideally ones that are authoritative. If you are writing good content, you’ll naturally do this.

Following that line of thought, blogs that promote unrelated, spam-filled links in their content will be punished. And guest posts on those penalized sites will be not be valued highly.

Effect 4: Multiple Citations

In the past, guest bloggers could effectively include multiple semi-promotional citations in the same piece. With the impending restructuring of guest post link valuation, those days are numbered. Each link will count proportionately less, while links to the same content will additionally be penalized.

Conclusion

Perhaps, these predicted affects won’t occur immediately, but soon enough, they all will become an SEO reality. This is the way that Google is going – cracking down on what is easy and easily manipulated, rewarding what is hard and time consuming. Google is getting better and better at punishing spamming and quick-fix tactics while rewarding quality content and high authority links.

Have any thoughts about the impending Penguin updates? Join the conversation below.

Image by: Google

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