When it comes to search engine optimization, guest posting is widely hailed as one of the most powerful strategies available. However, this isn't always true, and in some cases guest posting can be an expensive waste of time that could actually hurt your reputation far more than your wallet. Understanding how guest posting affects your SEO and knowing what to look for when soliciting a site to publish your work is critical to capitalizing on this potentially powerful technique.
Does guest posting benefit your SEO? It depends primarily on the 4 following conditions:
1.) Authority
If you're able to get a guest post accepted by a high authority PR7 site, the resulting backlink could pass a significant amount of page rank if the post itself is ranked. This generally only happens with large sites that have huge readership numbers, and it usually only happens with published posts that are popular.
However, it could also happen with a wildly popular post on a low-authority site. In this case your post-gone-viral might provide minimal SEO benefits initially, but it will help to improve the authority and traffic for the site it's posted on overall - a slow benefit for you to realize but one that could eventually pay off.
2.) Advertising and OBL
How much SEO value is found in a guest post backlink will depend largely on the amount of advertising and Out Bound Links on the page. If a reader or bot has to wade through ads embedded right in your post, the value of that page will probably be zero.
Additionally, your post published on a page with a ton of outbound links will become so diluted as to offer no real SEO value.
Of course, sites that have tons of ads and OBLs aren't likely to have high PR or authority either, so submitting your high quality work to them might not be a wise use of resources.
3.) Readership
Readership is critical from both an SEO and a conversions standpoint. Even sites that have low or no Page Rank or authority can generate a massive amount of traffic to your article if they have the readership to support it. This in turn will benefit your site by sending a rush of referral traffic that will hopefully be converted once on your site, thereby increasing your time-on-page, decreasing your bounce rate and improving other SEO metrics.
But readership is also an important consideration for large, high-authority sites. This is because even with millions of site visitors, if your article isn't relevant, fresh and useful, you'll never see any of those numbers anyway. Therefore, appealing to the readership of a particular site for guest posting may be the most important metric and ultimately provide the most SEO value.
4.) Links
Some sites that accept guest posts have authority and Page Rank, few or no ads, few or no OBLs and significant readership, but they don't provide the right type of link - or worse - no link at all. Some sites only allow links in a separate bio section and some will only allow one straight link; each site is different so it's critical to find out what their practice is before you send them your valuable work. After all, even if the site hits on all of the good points detailed above and your post is amazing, if there's no link back to your site or the wrong kind of link, then the SEO value of that post is going to be severely reduced or eliminated.
If you've been considering guest posting but don't have the time to write or market your articles for publishing on the right sites, call the number at the top of your screen now for an immediate consultation. We are experts at getting your message to the right audience at the right time while providing significant SEO value. Find out for yourself by calling us now.