BizSugar.com › Social Media › Are there risks to guest blogging and posting on LinkedIn? Tips on how to protect yourself against Google penalties

Guest blogging – writing articles to be posted on other people’s websites – is a really useful tool in the content marketing toolbox. And when it comes to content marketing, the more mentions and links the better. Increased reach, more exposure – it all sounds great, right? Well, not always.

If your blog or article content is shared in more than one place, it could – in some cases – lead to a drop in your Google rankings.

Back in 2011, I highlighted a potential SEO issue for PR agencies that publish their clients’ press releases. “By re-posting to a wider audience, you would think that the article would be shared more widely and thus score more highly with Google. But in fact, it could lead to Google scoring both websites down for duplicate content, as it doesn’t know who is the true author and assumes both sets of content to be spam.”