Articles Tagged with Matt Cutts

Stick Your Fork Elsewhere… Thoughts On Matt Cutts’ “Guest Blogging Is Done” Statement

Fork imageYesterday, Google’s Head of Webspam Matt Cutts posted a new blog post containing a very strong statement:

“Stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy.”

As expected, the SEO industy went nuts on Twitter (I have to admit that a lot of the responses were actually pretty funny). In the 12-ish hours or so that have passed since the announcement, there have already been some great response posts by SEO greats including Joost de Valk and Ann Smarty (to name just a few). Given that I’m a strong advocate of guest blogging, I wanted to chip in, too.

My immediate thought was this: the statement is intended to scare the spammers. People who spam guest blogging will (hopefully) be put off. But people who do guest blogging properly aren’t (or shouldn’t) suddenly be thinking of stopping everything. That would be crazy.

Here are some other thoughts…

Matt specifically mentions paid guest blogging

In Matt’s post, he complains about some guest blogging outreach that he received, especially the fact that they offered him money if they published it:

“If you ignore the bad spacing and read the parts that I bolded, someone sent me a spam email offering money to get links that pass PageRank. That’s a clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines.”

I’m curious to know if Matt would’ve made such a fuss if they didn’t offer him money. Granted, it was still a lousy outreach attempt (and of all the people to target…!), but it’s true: money shouldn’t be involved in a conversation about guest blogging (more on this below).

Not all guest posting is spammy

My concern is that people will suddenly think: “oh no, guest blogging… eee!” and run for the hills. But Stephen Kenwright makes a cracking point:

YouMoz, man! I challenge anyone to read YouMoz and find one post where someone’s blatantly only done it for the SEO-ness. I’ve had the pleasure of writing for YouMoz 6 times (2 of which were promoted onto the main blog), and not once did I think: “this is gonna boost my SEOz” – if anything, it’s an added bonus.

Click to read more!

OffCutts: 20 Drawings/Cartoons/Caricatures of Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts fans imageThe other night I caught a Twitter conversation between @Tony_DWM and @MaxMinzer where (for some reason) they were talking about what showed up when you conducted Google Image Searches for their own/each other’s names (e.g. “tony dimmock seo“). I checked out a few of the searches myself and somehow ended up doing the same for other bigwigs in our industry, including @randfish and @mattcutts. Don’t ask me why – I don’t even know. Boredom? Yeah, let’s go with that.

…But it was at that point that I realised… boy, there’s a lot of doodles, sketches, etc. starring Matt Cutts. I found around 20 after a quick 5-minute search and so I thought it’d be an idea felt it was my duty to share these tributes to the individual who’s “about the closest thing to a ‘rock star’ in the SEO world” (not my words; source).

So, without further ado…

Classic Cutts

These first few put our pal Matt in a… let’s say… more flattering and normal light…

1) First off, a normal-ish caricature:

Matt Cutts caricature image[Source]

2) And another, this time with his buddy Rand:

Matt Cutts caricature (with Rand) image[Source]

3) Getting a taste of his own medicine…

Matt Cutts Kicked Off Google image[Source: page; image]

Click to read more!