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Guest Blogging – Is it Still A Good SEO Strategy?

Does Guest Blogging for Links Still Make Sense

It wasn’t long ago that guest posting, or guest blogging, was a terrific way to get backlinks. Backlinks are necessary in SEO and help websites climb the search pages quickly. Back then quantity ruled over quality, and webmasters got rich offering guest posting services. Unsurprisingly, Google wised up and guest blogging was suddenly no longer an easy path to earn backlinks that dramatically improved ranking.

Any changes made that encourages great content on the internet is a good thing. Google’s crack down on guest posting was a good thing for all involved. Today, guest posting is still a good opportunity for relevant links. Guest blog articles can send quality traffic to your website and help with SEO. But the effort now involves getting webmasters to agree to post your content. That means crafting meaningful content that gets accepted by webmasters and eventually their readers. Guest blogs are no longer thick with useless matter.

The process for getting a guest post published isn’t hard to understand but does involve some investment of time. However, done right, a guest post can deliver high quality backlinks that will justify the time and effort put into the job. Small business owners don’t usually have the time or the knowledge to guest blog correctly. For them, It’s a good idea to hire an SEO agency to benefit fully from guest posting. For example, guest posting campaigns can deliver more powerful results if supported by a detailed competitor backlinks analysis. That’s the kind of work an SEO services provider does. 

Steps to take for success in getting guest post published

As we stated, successful guest blogging requires some time and effort. Here are some steps that will help you find the success you desire.

  • Define your goals and pick your audience 

For the purposes of SEO your main goal is usually to gain authority and credibility. This increases your brand awareness and traffic to your site. Other goals may be to offer your opinion on a subject, increase your reputation as a thought leader or generate followers.

  • Find the right site to host your article

There are dozens of high quality websites that host guest blogs. Look for a site that specializes in your niche and has a high domain authority (DA). One idea to avoid is going to an article farm. Article farms are sites that are packed with articles of mosting useless content. The articles are keyword rich and written to the search algorithms rather than perspective readers. They will post virtually any article for a fee. Some articles farms have garnered a high DA through this practice but Google eventually does catch up with them. The best practice is to avoids them.

  • Submit your idea or article for consideration.

The first step is to pitch an idea to decision maker and hope they find it interesting. You would then go ahead and write the article.  An alternative step would be to write the article and send it out to all the sites you think would accept it. If you chose this route remember to choose sites in your niche and sites with a high DA. Those are sites with a DA of 40 or more.

There are other methods to getting your guest blog published. One is to enter into a mutual blog with a company that has a relationship to your business or niche. In this case you’d allow them to guest post on your site and you on theirs. The drawback here is that the “link juice” associated with a mutual link isn’t usually very strong. A mutual link partner typically doesn’t have a DA much higher than yours. 

Guest posting is still an effective SEO tool

A single powerful link from a guest post may be enough to get your website to rank for a targeted long tail keyword. You should choose your keywords carefully. Rank the websites you approach in terms of their authority. Online tools such as Mangools Site Profiler provide information on backlinks, Domain Authority, and Page Authority for websites. Websites with an active social media presence will likely share your article too, giving it wider exposure. Social media performance of content from such sites, i.e. likes and shares, is an indicator that your content is engaging and informative . You can use that information when approaching a website owner about another project.

Making guest posts a regular feature of an SEO campaign is a tested and proven way to rank for keywords through good quality one-way backlinks. It works for newbies and established websites. A byline along with a backlink is a nice bonus as it lets you propagate your authority.

The post Guest Blogging – Is it Still A Good SEO Strategy? appeared first on Elvin Web Marketing.

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