What is a guest post? The main question today is can you guest post for free and the simple answer is no. For proof of this statement, you can look at how many SEO and marketing companies are running ads for keyword guest posts. Just check the listing at the top for the keyword “guest post” and you will know.
Guest posting is one of the most profitable businesses today. So much profitable in fact that some SEO link building agencies like FATJOE have estimated business revenue of 22 Million $ according to Owler.
But why is guest posting so important in SEO that people are making so much revenue from these services?
Link building is the answer. The more links you build using guest posts the more authority you will build up for your business and site and in return, your site will bring in more revenue. Guest posts will help your business, website, or blog rank much higher in Google organic search.
This is the main reason companies now are ready to spend in excess of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars alone from their marketing budget on guest posts.
Guest blogging act as a seal of trust. The more links you will have from different authoritative sites the more your business will be trustworthy in the eyes of Google.
What is a guest post?
A guest post is an article that you write on someone’s blog in order to leverage their traffic for your own exposure. This will help your site as you will reach the audience of someone who has already worked hard to improve their exposure.
You will add a link back to your site on the guest post that will help to build the trustworthiness of your site. Some people don’t add a link back to their site or some sites don’t allow links to be inserted in guest posts.
They just guest post in order to bring their brand’s name in front of a wider audience. Guest posting is a part of your marketing and SEO campaign.
Does guest posts still work for SEO?
Yes and Yes. Guest posting is the only way to rank for your keyword in a competitive niche. Other signals like Social Media help you rank for keywords as well but guest posting should be at the top of your list.
Some say that you can rank with the content alone but unless you are a big name in the industry good luck with doing so. Competitive niches are tough to rank without authority and relevance and marketing your business or blog with guest posts will help you build these.
Types Of Guest Posts?
There are two types of guest posts.
- Free guest posts
- Sponsored or paid guest posts
What to look for before guest posting?
Before taking a decision to start a guest blogging campaign for your business or blog you will need to keep a few things in mind.
Relevance
Never guest post on a blog or website that is not relevant to your niche. The more links you will have from a relevant blog the more topical authority you will build.
Let’s say you are in the “finance” niche. You only want to guest post on a finance-related blog and website. Using this SEO marketing technique your blog or website will build authority in your niche as you will have references from a relevant source. Simple, Isn’t it?
Budget
You will need to set a specific marketing budget for your guest posting campaign. Guest posts from quality blogs can cost as much as 200$. Set a specific marketing budget that you are willing to pay per post for a blog. Don’t buy links from sellers that email you and say that they offer links for 10-15$. A good site will never offer guest posts at this price.
Backlink Profile
So you have made the decision to guest blogging on a site having 100k+ traffic per month. Sounds good! But before spending your hard-earned money on that site just have a look at their backlink profile. Do they have a spammy backlink profile?
If yes then take caution. Links from spammy sites can lead to manual penalties from Google which will deindex your site from Google organic search. If the site you are guest blogging on already has a high topical authority then a link from that site can be much valuable. You can look at a blog’s backlinks using tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Site Traffic
While some marketing gurus say that you need guest posts on high-traffic sites and blogs I disagree with them. You only want guest posts from high-quality blogs and sites if you want to bring in leads or traffic through your guest posts. The chances of this happening are none unless you are a huge company that offers some SaaS service.
If you are a normal person like me or just starting up, a guest post on a 10K/Month traffic site will benefit you. As a site having 10k traffic a month is already ranking organically it will benefit your site as well.
Content Quality
Make sure that the content of your guest post is really high quality. Most webmasters will not accept low-quality content. The main reason is that low-quality content will not show up in Google organic search results and all your efforts will be wasted.
Also if your guest posts rank on top of Google search results that will benefit you as you will be using the other sites’ authority to build exposure to your own site. Find a good writer that can write good content for you. Only good content will help your guest blogging campaign to be successful.
If your content is not good then you are wasting your marketing budget by guest blogging. Get your writer to include keywords in the content. You can create a list of keywords that you want the content writer to include in the article.
Guest Post Time On-Site
Some sites have policies that remove your guest posts or remove your links from your guest posts after a specific time. Confirm this with the webmaster as you don’t want to guest blog on a site that will remove your guest post after 3 months of posting it.
How do find blogs or sites that accept guest posts?
Searching for a list of sites for guest blogging is easy.
Let’s say you are in the Lifestyle Niche and you want to search for a list of blogs in the Lifestyle Niche. Go to Google and type in the following keywords.
- write for us lifestyle
- write for us + lifestyle
- lifestyle + write for us
- write for us
- guest post lifestyle
- accepting guest posts lifestyle
When you will search for any of these keywords you will get a list of sites that accept guest posts. Every blog will have its own guidelines for guest blogging that you will have to follow.
No-follow or Do-Follow Links In Guest Posts
Google doesn’t want you to build links. Even if you publish a guest blog Google wants you to label the link as no-follow or sponsored. But here’s the thing, Who wants a no-follow or sponsored link? NO ONE. So make sure that you get a do-follow link.
There’s no denying that there will always be a chance of manual penalty if you build links using guest blogging in order to increase your search rankings. But how often have you seen a link that has been tagged as rel=”sponsored”?
The best you can do is find ways to naturally blend in your link in the guest post. Also, make the guest post more than 1000 words so that the link looks completely natural. The other thing you can do is add relevant outbound and internal links to your guest post article. This will decrease your chances of getting a manual penalty.
Conclusion
Marketing using guest posting and guest blogging is a great way to get exposure to your brand, blog, or website. Setting a budget for your guest blogging campaign will help a lot. Find the optimal marketing budget that you want to spend on the campaign.
Try to take things slow while guest posting as it is a part of SEO and SEO takes time. Create a list of websites that you have guest blogged on. Track your rankings and traffic to see what result you get from your link-building campaign. Remember not to spend your marketing budget on sites that are not worth it and get going.
