Guest Posting IS NOT Dead if you Do it THIS Way

I keep seeing these posts all over the web about how guest posting is now dead and shouldn't be used. They usually go something like, "Matt Cutts just said guest posting is against Google guidelines and we can't do it anymore".

This is ridiculous.

I believe it was clear what Matt was saying if you "read between the lines". If you are using guest posting "services" or other mass or scaled variations to guest post then you are in danger of a penalty. And apparently so are sites who are accepting payment for publishing these posts.

From what I've seen, most the services that offer guest posting usually provide posts on sites that contain a very high ratio of guest posts. These types of sites will do little for your overall branding and marketing and should be avoided anyhow.

It's like everything else in SEO, the easy way always comes with a price. You can't just throw money at a "guest posting service" and buy your links anymore. Now you must research, target and perform outreach to actual bloggers from whom a guest post would be beneficial well beyond the backlink. If you take that comment to the extreme, you would guest post WITHOUT a link back to your site at all. Instead, you would hope to get name recognition/branding out of the post.

I've been using buzzstream and scrapebox together to find quality blogs to pitch my posts to. Yes it's 10x more time consuming. Yes you must write great content and/or pay a writer. But the benefits in building a network of bloggers, who actually have an active and engaged audience, AND that you can tap when needed, is well worth the time you put in.

I mean think about it. Once upon a time "blog networks" were are all the rage. Then google got wise to them and now they require ridiculous upkeep in the form on constant incoming backlinks, fresh content, social signals and that doesn't even take into account the mutliple hosting/IPs etc. This makes owning and running a blog farm a real PITA.

But what if you had a rolodex of blogs and bloggers that already have all the above going for them PLUS they have actual readers/followers? That's the beauty of REAL outreach and from that stems REAL guest posting.

The biggest hurdle in genuine guest posting is getting your pitch accepted. Most of your target bloggers are inundated with generic copy/paste guest post offers every day. So here a few a few tips for improving your chances with a potential blogger.

PHASE 1 - Make Yourself Known

Investigate your target blogger's social network activity
Follow your target on all their social accounts
Make a few comments on their social accounts
And finally, leave a few blog comments on the target blog​

The phase 1 steps put your name, and possibly face, in front of your potential blogger. This interaction helps to build some basic level of trust and familiarity with you.

PHASE 2 - Content Ideas

While you are doing phase 1, determine the "main" topic/focus of their content (is there a recurring theme?)
Find which posts on their blog have the most reader interactivity
Craft content ideas which are similar to their best posts
Come up with at least THREE ideas for an article​

PHASE 3 - The Outreach

See if there are any pages on their blog about how to contact for advertising/guest posting
If no pages on the above, determine the best method for contact (sometimes it ISNT email)
Make your outreach letter personal, mention that you've been following
Pitch your three ideas and make sure you convey that you are looking for brand/name exposure - not just trying to get links.
Give examples of other articles on other sites that you have written​

In your outreach letter you want to make it clear that you are genuinely interested in connecting with the blogger's audience. This will lower the blog owner's defenses and remove the "seo blinders" so to speak. Including links to articles that you have written for other blogs also provide a portfolio of sorts to display your writing skills and some level of social proof.

Here are a few other helpful tips:

Start your outreach on "low hanging fruit" first. Sites that you know would be easier to get a post from but are still quality with maybe a smaller following. Afterall, you need examples for your outreach email!

You may consider offering to post WITHOUT any backlinks, simply your name and an author profile. This can be very helpful for "breaking the ice" with high quality targets and if their readership is big enough you will still get tons of brand exposure.

Having a unique author name can increase visibility across various social networks. I've had people search me out on twitter, instagram, etc., when I only put my FB or G+ accounts in my author profile. This also goes hand-in-hand with #2 - if your post is realy good, people may find you even if you don't link out in your article.

That's it for now. I'm sure I have other things to add but it would be great to hear from others about their experiences in guest posting.

 

For me, guest blogging is still working... If this way of doing SEO is a BAD idea for your website... Then, everybody can hurts his competitors by BLASTING his website in a lot of blogs or doing article marketing... Maybe the main idea could be to make backlinks to tier2 backlinks, not really sure, I am still investigating it!

 

I suppose that makes low quality guest posting just another piece of arsenal in the negative SEO toolbox because the same could be said about low quality linkbuilding in general.

 

Great post! To me, Matt Cutts is full of sh*t. Guest post will always work, that's why there are still a lot of private blog networks out there. I don't think Google will be able to manually check all of the guest posts out there. Have fun, Matt and his team.

 

I agree with you. For this I want to give you a brief example. Lets see this
I searched yesterday "seo company pakistan" i saw one site http://www.hiconsoft.com/seo-services-in-pakistan
I thought going a deep in it so I checked its PR it was n/a Alexa in 6 digits DA - 26 so i thought of going for its backlinks. I chekced the backlinks
I found 52 backlinks from referring 13 domains. So can you believe just 13 domains brought a high competitive keyword on #2. Also I tried to check that 13 domains all were guest blogging sites which were paid. All backlinks blogs niche were different.
In short i can say Guest blogging is not over if done in a specific way. If these types of scam sites are on top what will be if done guest blogging in correct manner with no spam.

 

Excellent points made. Google's recent changes are targeting low quality content and links - guest posting on respected blogs still can have a good effect. I've written for some well known blogs and it still works (I'm making an well educated guess that it's helped my PR over the last 6 years), plus my traffic spikes afterwards. If Google sees incoming links from reputable websites that have solid reputations they'll still view it favorably. Plus, you build authority.

If you approach guest posting simply as a means to get links, you're doing it wrong and likely won't see much benefit. It'll work best for quality content websites; I'd never do it for an affiliate site, but if I was building an authority site I'd still look into it.

I disagree about the PBNs, though. Google's getting wiser to gimmicks all the time, but if you watch how you run them you should fly under the radar. Different IPs (makes a bigger difference on larger networks) and backlinks - if you go buy PR domains that have crummy backlinks or backlinks about baseball and then you start sending out links to midget wrestling you might not have the best results and will likely get dropped links in the future.

 

Guest blogging just like paid links will not be dead for a very long time. Google is trying to put fear out there to scare people from even considering to use a technique that is extremely effective. If paid links didn't work why would Google have to manually penalize networks? It'd be a waste of time. Obviously they work.

The goal is to make it subtle so you don't get caught. That's all. If you over do it and get caught they can then tell you they warned you.

 

yeah right great post. Guest blogging still work really good just we need to publish on relevant category.

 

what if i copy an article from my own site to use for a quality guest posting instead of creating a new article for the guest posting blog will that hurt my site ?

 

Excellent, i agree with you mate.

 

It would be duplicate content and my experience with this is that Google can, and often, will rank the site with more authority over the original author. I've had people copy my content before and they started ranking above me with it. Besides, most "quality" sites require unique content.

 

excellent post. guest blogging is the only way how to do proper seo. however it is very time consuming, to find relevant blogs, write article, get published...it is not always easy task

 

Matt Cutts seems to get the most traction with people who have little common sense with SEO. If you treat guestposting as a spammy blackhat way to get links, then yeah. If you look for valuable websites where you can contribute something equally valuable with a link to a site that doesn't reek of spam it can still work.

 

But i think this way you gotta write a separate articles for guesting posting for a High PR site, since you are looking for a quality backlink , right ?

 

I would think so. If you treat it as an SEO gimmick you're doing it wrong; If you really care about contributing I don't see how Google could smack you for it or not give you a boost. The question is, if you're doing it as a gimmick but only guest post on reputable websites who carefully screen their authors, you have to ask: Is it the easiest way to get a good link? Not really.

 

well, actually after a lot of searching for that, i agree with you , however i have tried to reach multiple guest posting sites but it was either that i i have to send them the post in an email or have to submit a form that doesn't allow me to insert a link for my post so it was like posting an article without getting a link back ??????
so i guess the guest posting sites that allows you to insert your link is so few so is there a way i can search for such sites ?

 

not as far as I know... that's what keeps the premium fresh link flavor locked inside.

 

There are no "guest posting sites" worth using. They are usually spammy blogs like those you find on MyBlogGuest and the like - waste of time. Now if you want to pay a service to guest post for you, and you want it to be a legitimate post, you will pay $50+ for a single post. But again, you have no real idea what you are getting. The only way to do REAL guest posting is to perform real outreach. It's really not that hard. Find a few sites that you'd like to post on and give it a shot. I've detailed how to approach it in my original post.

 

Real blog posting is different from spammy blog post. Of course a legitimate, good content blog post won`t harm your ranks, it`s laughable even thinking so. Spam on the other side ... it`s something else.