There is only one constant with Google – it is constantly changing. Any website that wants to continue seeing results for their website needs to implement all these changes – and quickly – to avoid serious penalties from Google.
Guest blogging has been a controversial topic in the past – some claiming that it was essential for building links, while others following the Google released statement regarding how this practice was fading in effectiveness.
So, who is right?
In this situation, the answer may be both and neither.
In fact, many of the top online SEO training programs teach that high quality blogger outreach as a recommended SEO tactic.
Understanding more about guest blogging is one of the best ways to determine if it is a practice that will help, or hurt your website.
Guest Posting: What You should Know
Guest posting represents a great and effective way to drive traffic, increase your sales and even grow your brand. However, you have to avoid the ‘spammyness’ that is accompanying many guest posts being published today.
This means that there are certain guest posting services who are emailing every blogger they can find, requesting a guest post. Most of these people are just seeking the backlink and have no ability to offer or provide value.
Guest posting is no longer effective like it was in the past because there are far too many companies attempting to post irrelevant blogs. The content isn’t very high quality, either. Essentially, they are just trying to post the absolute minimum in order to get the coveted backlink.
How Guest Posting can be Beneficial
However, if someone is willing to put in the time and effort to create a great post, it can be beneficial for SEO ranking. Qualities that make a great guest post include:
- View the author rank to determine if they are a high quality source
- Reward social signals with blogs getting more attention being rewarded
It is important to keep in mind, if you are attempting to use guest posting to rank for a specific head term, it will likely not prove to be a strong, long-term strategy. However, if you are using it to build your brand, grow referral traffic and increase sales, it is going to continue to be a strong and effective strategy – and it often work best with other tactics such as podcast guesting.
Rules for SEO Strong Guest Blogs
You have to provide benefits for readers. While links will help and improve your site authority, it is still essential to follow a few ‘good practices’ when creating guest blogs:
- Only create posts that are relevant to what you offer or know about
- Avoid the use of rich anchor text
- Be willing to link to sites that will benefit readers the most – not just your own
- Remember that co-citations are extremely valuable
When trying to increase your rankings in the search engines with guest posts, you may be spinning your wheels. While it may work now, it won’t forever. However, if you are using it to increase your branding efforts, referral traffic and overall sales, then guest posting can be gold. This will also be beneficial in terms of increasing your site authority.