4 Honest SEO Mistakes Part 2

In the last article, I explained two SEO mistakes that could penalize your site and in this article, I am going to explain two other mistakes in your SEO efforts.

1. Influencer Outreach

Influencer outreach is a powerful SEO strategy, and many times it works just fine. Basically, you find the major influencers in a given niche, reach out to them with a request, and get link juice, audience exposure, and other major benefits.

Even after we’ve been rocked by several search engine algorithm updates, influencer outreach still benefits the receiving sites.

If the influencer outreach targets a low-authority niche, the backlinks could compromise the site. Although the influencers are “influential,” the link value from their sites will not enhance your site’s SEO. On the contrary, it could ruin it.

They decided to conduct an influencer outreach. Based on their market research and personas, the most valuable source of influencers was in the mommy blog market. Moms with influential blogs were pitched to blog about Super stellar Designs and get free Super stellar swag in return.

Superstellar’s influencer outreach seemed successful. They pitched thousands of mom blogs and got an overwhelming response. But the success was short-lived. Rather than exercise discretion over influencers, they invited influencers of all varieties to join in the party.

Solution: Super stellar had a lot of cleanups to do, and they ended up quietly disavowing the links from all the blogs that they had pitched.

If you run an influencer outreach campaign, pick your targets carefully. If you have no choice but to pitch a niche that is characteristically low-authority and spammy, then I recommend the following:

• Ask influencers to use no follow links. Provide the code for them to copy/paste into their blog articles for this purpose.
• Create a specific landing page for the influencer outreach. Use a service such as Unbounce to direct users to a specific page that is designed for the outreach campaign. The upside of this is that you can customize the landing page to the niche, and even conduct A/B testing to boot.

4. Guest Blogging Niche

If you do it right, guest blogging is awesome. However, guest blogging is not without its dangers.

I’m going to discuss one of those dangers, but it might not be what you expect. Like point three above, this danger involves the niche in which you guest blog, not simply the fact that you are guest blogging.

The Problem Explained: Earlier this year, the SEO world blew up when Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, announced that guest blogging was largely “done” as a link building tactic, explaining that it had become increasingly spammy over the years.

He didn’t outright condemn the practice, however, noting that there “are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging” and that he wasn’t referring to “high-quality multi-author blogs.”

And so, we all stood back up, dusted off our jackets, and went on guest blogging with purpose and caution. We became selective with our guest blogging opportunities, limiting ourselves to high authority sites that would provide some benefit beyond a link for SEO (e.g. traffic, brand exposure, etc.).

Unfortunately, some of us didn’t realize that it wasn’t just about the sites themselves — it was also about the niche we were guest blogging in.

The niche I find myself in is completely legitimate. I’m guest blogging on high-authority sites with impeccable editorial standards and extremely high authority.

But some of my clients weren’t so fortunate.

Example: I worked with an individual who ran one of Europe’s most successful online casino sites. He faced problems prior to the guest blogging fiasco in 2012 when things really spiraled out of control for online gambling and casino sites.

The poker niche is not known for its adherence to ethical, white hat SEO standards. That’s why a lot of the black hat forums are given to discussing nefarious methods of ranking gambling sites.

Thankfully, there are legit ways for gambling sites to rank. The approach taken by my site was not a very effective way. He chose to guest blog on all the gambling sites he could find.

Unfortunately, those sites were spammy, penalized, and downright dangerous. The bio linkbacks he received from the guest blog spots were sending dangerous link juice to his site, which eventuated in a penalty clampdown on his site.

Solution: Obviously, the general solution is to be careful where you guest blog. Although guest blogging lives on and still carries SEO value, it does have sharp edges.

In my experience, the most dangerous side effect of guest blogging has to do with the neighborhood in which you do your guest blogging. If you choose your neighborhood carefully and wisely, you shouldn’t have a problem.

Conclusion

So, what now? You blew it. You’re sorry. You need to move forward.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy as bashfully sidling up to Google with a sob story. You’ve actually got to do penance — the hard and time-consuming spadework of a penalty recovery process.

I’ve met very few people who actually enjoy having their sites penalized. No one goes in hoping for a penalty. By staying aware of these honest mistakes, you can avoid the plight of a penalty and keep your SEO held high.