What is a Guest Post? We get this question often from our customers: What exactly is a guest article? What is the difference between it and an ordinary blog post? A Guest Post is a post that is written and published on a blog of someone else’s. If you write something on your blog, it’s an ordinary “post,” but the writer is considered a guest on other blogs. Guest posts are a great tool for reputation marketing for many reasons, such as having your name mentioned or appearing in the results of branded search queries. However, the majority of people use them for embedding backlinks. Guest posts can be abused; however, they can be abused, and we’ll discuss the issue in the following article.
If you’ve found another blog to write on, you’re the guest author. We’ll assume that you did it to get to know about it and try to get a link back on one of your websites.
The basic principles of guest posting
Here are some guidelines regarding guest postings you need to be aware of. There’s a wealth of online information on this topic, and we have linked some excellent resources at the bottom of this post. However, here are the short and easy essentials.
Important Things to Remember About Guest Posts
Guest posts need to be well-written. Search engines are starting to be picky. People too.
They must be relevant. The reader must be interested in reading for the most value.
People should share their experiences on social media. Sharing can increase the readership.
Outbound links should be useful as well as relevant for the content. The anchor text above the links must be precise.
Do not post on websites that publish many guest posts because these links are unimportant.
Who can write a guest post for a guest blogger?
Anyone can write a guest blog; However, few people can create an excellent one that is viral. You’re not able to “make” a post go viral. However, it doesn’t have to be to become viral. All it takes is to be informative, relevant, and well-written to bring in more traffic and increase link juice in the long run.
A well-written guest post is relevant, on-topic, and should be of varying lengths. Most guest blogs contain between 500 and 1000 words, but some people, such as Neil Patel, say they should be more extensive. It’s more like 2500 words. The data suggests that having more content on your website means that your page is more likely to be in an upper position within Google results. For a thorough outline of the best way to write posts for search engines and users, look at this post on SEO-accessible articles.
Sometimes, it’s worthwhile to employ a professional to write guest blog posts since the consistency of doing it is crucial. At least you should write guest posts weekly, and who has enough time to do that? We do.
Blog post headline basics
Keep in mind that certain headlines could be clickbait. Clickbait headlines aim to entice you to click (hence their name); however, the content does not always match what you expected. Sometimes, however. Here’s an example of an ad that is clickbait:
You’ll be amazed by what doctors found in this girl’s abdomen!
This headline is clickbait because it creates a vacuum of information within your brain. It’s thrilling, and it presides over humans’ FOMO (Fear of Not Being Able to Catch Up).
Ideas for headlines for guest posts
Common blog and guest post headlines contain these ideas. These are designed to serve as the basis for creative headlines:
What exactly is…
How do I…
Some tips to…
Examples of…
The best illustrations in…
The benefits Of…
Alternatives…
[Process] template…
[Product] vs. [Product]…
How do I solve it…
How do I utilize…
How do you incorporate…
How do I remove it…
Embedding Relevant Links
For each of these articles, there is a chance to embed the hyperlink to one of them. So suppose these address three positive results you would like to advertise. The first is likely to be your site, while the other two are positive, existing articles about your company that appear prominently in search results; however, they aren’t as high. Therefore, this is your list of websites you’d like to advertise.
But they don’t wish to refer to your websites. They also want to refer to other authorities also. Links to external sites, including the best shears for llamas, the ideal time of year to cut and buy an excellent llama, etc., are crucial for the user.
So in the first article, ‘Best Shears for Shaving Llamas,’ you’ll want to embed a link to lloydsllamashaving.com. Your article could look like this:
But How Many Links?
Zero if they’re not pertinent. If they’re useful and relevant to the article, you’ll need to choose the appropriate amount of links. There’s no fixed number. The issue will be “will a link improve the piece?” If not, don’t include it – even if it’s a hyperlink to your work. The quality of the content is crucial, as you’ll discover in the last sentence of this piece.
Generally speaking, if you require a reference, you should put just one link from a guest blog in every 500 words. For example, a 1,000-word guest post can accommodate at least two or three hyperlinks. Even if your guest blog is great, the number of links you include can cause it to appear as spam even though it’s not. Remember that it’s about the user, not your requirements to link.
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Abuse and the end of guest posts?
In January 2014, Matt Cutts of Google said, “Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time, it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging, you’re hanging out with really bad company.” Did guest blogging cease to exist at the time? Nope. Web-based spam does exist and has been around for a long time. We’re not convinced that guest blogging will cease to exist. Imagine major publications that contributors don’t populate. However, since Rank Brain and other Google enhancements continue to be released, the use of the technique will decrease.
We believe Google uses stylometry to identify authors.
There might be something to Google’s disdain for SEO practitioners who use guest posts. We at Reputation X Reputation X think that Google utilizes a type of stylometry in conjunction with other methods, such as links profiles and scraped and scrapped material, to determine websites and authors who use guest posts to create links.
Stylometry is the process of identifying a writer based on their writing style.
What could this be? There are a lot of websites that are just there to sell links to. If a buyer purchases an article from the site where they post content on it and then embed a link back to their website, it’s published. The concept is Google will discover the content and click the link to the website of the targeted site and use this link’s authority as a signal, eventually helping to make the target site higher in the results for a search. This was a common practice until 2012, when Google introduced an update to eliminate Private Blog Networks (PBNs).
An entire industry is dedicated to guest post-paid guest posts.
There’s an entire business that is based on guest posting paid. An SEO guest writer could create thousands of posts on various topics for inclusion under different names on various websites. However, when Google employs stylometry to determine the writer across multiple websites, they can pinpoint the sites likely to be selling links on guest posts. We believe there is a method to do this. Strategies Google’s Penguin update of 2012 employs.
If you’re planning to utilize guest posts to aid in SEO, beware of websites that regularly do this or even every day. It’s expensive, but your links won’t count because Google’s Penguin algorithm updates happen in real-time. There is no way to tell if the link doesn’t have the authority of Google or the person who bought the link.
Nofollow could be harmful to SEO
It is interesting to know how many bloggers include the Nofollow attribute in their outbound links. Why? Because the addition of rel-nofollow on outbound links reduces the motivation for people to write content for blogs as guest contributors. Some bloggers wish to spread more knowledge about their blog; however, in our experience, most of those who write for blogs hope to get an opportunity to link.
Why? because fresh, high-quality content is an important SEO signal. Then, including NOFOLLOW attributes to any link, of course, could hurt the Google ranking on the site. Can we be sure? Absolute certainty? No. However, we believe it could occur in a variety of cases.
We’ll have to sit back and wait to see what transpires.