Guest Posting – Are you doing it right?

Guest Posting

Guest posting is one of the most popular ways blogger use to make themselves known. It has been an effective marketing technique for many folks out there.

Is it a good technique??

My answer is Yes and No! And I was glad to see my thoughts get echoed by Rand Fishkin in the following video.

Yes because, each of us say and believe and I also remember an article about guest post where they had said

When done right, guest posting is a powerful way to build an audience

And that is the correct statement, but what is that ‘right’ thing?

Many times we have seen that the ‘right’ thing differs for each bloggers. Many of us are doing it for building traffic to our blog? Or building authority? Or just getting ourself known?

Whichever your objective, you just go ahead and do it the first time. But what happens next is pretty interesting.

No because, much of the time, we see that once the post is out, there is a sudden surge in traffic on your blog and buoyed by it, we write another and more and more. And then, many of us suddenly fall in a trap. The backlinks and traffic are pretty overwhelming for many of us and we keep on guest posting at many different places. Much of the times, the place doesn’t matter till we get a ‘backlink’ and there lies the problem.

While my guest posting guidelines are pretty clear, I still receive mails every day stating they would like to do guest posting on my blog. I go back and ask for a sample and suddenly somewhere in the article, I find a link that is not remotely related to the topic. I guess many of you would have the same experience.

Going by Rand Fishkin’s video and as we hear Matt Cutts, Google is slowly going after the ‘spammy’ looking guest posts. And if you are someone who goes and does a post everywhere, be warned.

Are there any best practices? I am sure there are, but what works best for me is.

Best Practices for Guest Posting

1. Find Quality Blog

It is essential that your content is at the right place. Personally, I have written at 12Most, LighthouseInsights and few other places. These sites have been long known for their quality articles and I truly respect their decision on whom to allow.

So, if you find a site that accepts any and every guest post, don’t go there, simple!!

Also, find sites that will add value to what you’re doing. The sites should help you reach the audience which do not know your work yet.

2. Share good content

Well, this is pretty obvious, isn’t it. But, going by the video above, the ‘marquee’ content should always be on your blog. That is so true, so what you do is, write another post on the same subject and direct readers to your ‘marquee’ content.

Thus you share good content on your hosts site, but still retain the best content on your own real estate.

3.Research the host site

Before you opt for guest posting at the site, research them well. Look at,

  • What they write
  • How often they write
  • Do they accept guest posts
  • Are they promoting?
  • Who is reading

Each of these will give you a fair idea of what to write. I did each of these before writing for 12Most.

4. Don’t automate writing

Hungry for backlinks, many of us want to churn articles every hour and resort to few software that automates the writing process. AVOID!! While few folks accept these articles under their guest posting definitions, most of the times, the articles are of very poor quality.

And I would like to end with the best thing that Rand Fishkin said, it’s in the comments if you look closely,

Best way to get links = don’t care about getting links?

Your Turn

1. Do you see guest posting as an ethical tool for SEO or authority building?

2. Is volume posting the biggest crime?

Would be glad to talk back about the topic. Share your views in the comments below!

Image Credits: Flickr

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