Does Anyone Have Evidence of the Effectiveness of Guest Posts?
-
I think the tactic of guest posts is a good way to earn links to a site. But I have a few concerns:
-Links are usually at the very end of the page.
-Guest posts are on blog posts which usually have much less link juice than top level pages.
-A lot of sites abuse guest posting for spammy anchor text, e.g. "cheap auto loans"
-Some SEOs have said that Google will devalue guest post links in the future (due to abuse)Does anyone have examples, tests, or case studies of guest posting helping a site improve their rankings? (or an opinion on the value of guest posting)
-
Thanks for the response Alan. We haven't explored this route yet, but I am becoming more thoroughly convinced and am practicing some tips offered by another SEOmozzer. I agree that it seems to be all in the blog selection.
-
My personal experience is that done right, it brings a lot of diverse value. Keys to follow:
- Find highly relevant, topically related blogs to get the posts on
- Write an article that's truly valuable to that blogs readers
- Include a link in the article (2nd or 3rd paragraph) to the site you're targeting
- Be sure the content is truly relevant to the link you're embedding, and that the link is truly realistic in its use
- be very attentive to comments - respond with respect, appreciation and value
- Include links to other sites and blog articles when appropriate for even more trust, and occasionally even more interaction from the owners/bloggers of THOSE sites
When I followed that path, my own blog and site grew in visits and inbound links of varying quality and weight (which is natural, as it should be, as far as a healthy inbound link profile goes), and established trust and authority signals critical to my goals.
So I always recommend this path to clients and those that follow through find the same value return.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Has anyone heard or worked with penwarriors.co
I had someone from penwarriors.co approach me about putting some content on my site. The content is good. It's unique. It's very relevant and any links out are reasonable. But when I started to look into it, they seem to be churning out a hell of a lot of content for the companies they're doing outreach for and the companies themselves don't seem to be very active on social. I can't find the person they are attributing a guest blog to and I can't find the person that I've been communicating with on linkedin etc. Something doesn't feel right. Any ideas? Simon
Link Building | | GrowTraffic0 -
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Anyone heard of Linklicious?
Interested to know if anyone has heard of Linklicious? They apparently get your links noticed by Google. Not sure if it's genuine or what to think about the idea. Personally sounds a bit dodgy to me, any thoughts?
Link Building | | seoman100 -
Link Building Techniques: Guest Blogging - Is it Okay or Not?
I was reading this page here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 "[...]Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link." So assuming you provide high quality guest posts to high quality blogs, is it okay or not to use this method as a link building technique?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
When leaving guest posts on blogs, are blog profiles such as Disqus relevant for SEO?
In other words, instead of the comment linking back to the money site it is being linked back to a blog profile which contains a link to the money site. Is this still as effective?
Link Building | | msmdz0 -
Google to devalue guest blog links?
There's a lot of talk at the minute about google possible devaluing guest post links. I wondered what people thought of this and whether it is likely to happen? If it does happen then how will google identify 'spam' guest posts and links? I guess it's fair to assume that if the post is well written, autoriative and adds value to a site with a knoweldgable perspective then it will be counted? It can be very hard to define how google will define a 'quality guest post'? Any ideas? Here's what Matt has to say... http://www.webpronews.com/matt-cutts-weighs-in-on-guest-blogging-for-links-2012-10
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
How do I get the most links out of one QUALITY article/post??
Basically we are a small business (2 employees) we don't have the time or resources to be writing hundreds of original quality articles each week (nor do we have the time to write endless guest blogs each week) how do we gain links from one article? (not including poor quality article submission sites) And how do SEO's write so many guest blogs? for the returns on time invested!!! Confused Newbie, thanks in advance!!!
Link Building | | Buzzwords0