Guest posting offers a wonderful opportunity to increase traffic to your website. It can be a wonderful tool for helping your digital marketing. But at the same time, it’s important to use these posts appropriately. There are several reasons to guest post, but it might not be the best route in every case.
For a long time, guest posting was seen as a way to get rank-boosting backlinks to your site. You could write a post and include a link or two to your site. Unfortunately, it was an often-abused practice.
Some sites charge for accepting guest posts. Sometimes it’s a way of generating extra income and other times they use it to filter through the abundance of requests they receive. Also, some sites cropped up where the main source of content – and income – is guest posting.
While some sites take guest posts for free, others charge for the opportunity. We’ve seen prices from $10 up to $1000. There are likely sites that charge even more.
Abuses such as these meant that search engines saw less value in the links from these articles. But that doesn’t mean guest posting is relegated to the past.
Does Guest Posting Help Search Engine Rankings?
We know that backlinks can help improve your rank in search engines. So guest posting seems like a great idea, right? Well – it’s not that simple.
Google officially rejects any link-building “schemes.” Defining exactly what a scheme is, though, is often difficult. However, paying for links is always on the naughty list. It’s a way of manipulating the system to try to artificially improve your position. Google and other search engines are pretty good at identifying this.
Links that are paid for should be coded with a “nofollow” or “sponsored” tag by the website they’re posted on. Even if they aren’t, though, Google seems to use clues on the site to see if it charges for posting. They also detect patterns (like too many guest posts) that go along with paid-post sites.
These types of links don’t help your ranking. Sure, some may slip through the cracks at times. But paying to get a link – even if it’s part of a well-written article – isn’t the way to move up in search results.
That’s not to say all guest posting is futile for SEO. You can still post on another site and link back to your page. It’s best if it looks like it belongs on that page, though. That means the content should match the topic of the site, avoid bylines, and show natural link patterns.
So Why Guest Post, Then?
Guest posting has other advantages beyond search ranking. While they might fall out of the strict definition of SEO, they’re still helpful.
Referral Traffic
Remember that SEO is only one means of getting traffic to your page. There are a lot of other ways to get more traffic, too. They include paid search ads, social media links, and email campaigns. Referrals are another category, and guest posting can be a great way to generate referral traffic.
A “referral” basically means that the visitor clicked a link to your site that they found on another site (other than social media).
Maybe the picture is already starting to come together for you. If you guest post on another site and link back to your site, readers may click on that link and visit your site. Of course, the more volume that site has, the more it could potentially send traffic back to your site.
Brand Awareness
Another reason to guest post is that it can help create brand awareness. Even if it doesn’t lead to a click to your site, the guest post allows you to put your content out there. If you do mention your site or have a byline with your name and site in it, readers have now seen that. It can stick with them and help generate confidence in you.
Growth Through Social Media
You could also include your social media link(s) in the article. This can lead to more views and followers. And that’s a preparatory step to get more site visitors.
Speaking of social media, the site that hosts your guest post will share your post, too, hopefully. Again, it increases readership and can lead to more people landing on your site.
Conclusion
Guest posting can, in some cases, be helpful for SEO. But that isn’t its only use. If you’re able to post on quality sites that have a good level of readership, you can achieve several benefits. They include increased awareness of your brand, improvements to your social media following, and more clicks to your site. Be careful using guest posts to improve your backlink profile. But consider them for all the other advantages they offer!