There has been much speculation recently over the use of guest publications to boost link profile and also increase rankings within the SERPs. Many people think that Google will start to target guest posts and penalize websites, I don't think this is true at all! Let's face it, guest posting is one of the oldest forms of linking known to man and bloggers love to share articles and publish their content on friends blogs.
Yes, Google have been penalizing people for buying guest posts on blogs, but these sorts of blogs you can spot miles away with the human eye and you don't need a robot to tell you otherwise.
How To Spot A Paid Guest Post Blog
It's simple! The blog will have a basic theme along with contact form, the live posts on the blog will also 99% of the time have a biography at the end, so if you flick through 10 live posts and there is a biography at the bottom from a "Guest" author, then this would be a paid blog purely created for the sole purposes of guest posting, if you can spot this then so can Google!
They will also have a write for us page which is a huge giveaway! Advertising the fact they take guest posts from any tom, dick or harry is a bad sign.
Let's run through my top 5 tips.....
Locating & Finding Proper Decent Blogs To Publish On
Locating blogs is pretty simple, I use Google dorks. Many people out there will tell you to target the "write for us" page, but as previously said, this is a bad idea. So we can edit the Google dork and put in something helpful such as:
"Guest Post" + "Keyword / Niche Here" - So what this will do is target blogs that already have guest publications live on their blog, it will also target a certain niche. This is keeping us well away from the write for us page and aiming closer to blogs that accept great content and publish for free, so long as it is suitable for their readership.
You can and it is perfectly legal, even in Google's eyes, for you to buy Sponsored publications, so long as the blog you are publishing to clearly marks it as paid and that they have taken x amount of money for the publication, if this is what you are wanting to do then you simply do this:
"Sponsored Post:" + "Keyword / Niche Here" - This will target blogs that accept payment for publications within your niche.
Finding the blogs is just half of the job but it is a crucial one, if you get any bad links you could be penalised so it is best to choose only the best. Also if your content is quite lengthy and in depth it will get shared via Social Media and will increase in page rank, so submit your best work only!
Your Niche Has More Than One Angle
All niches have more than one angle, don't be boring and branch out a little! Let's say your niche is web hosting, I can instantly think of many sub niches off the top of my head and a good few angles, for example
Geek / Tech blogs - Geek blogs are a pretty good relation as you could go in depth about cloud hosting and starting up your own cloud server from home.
Startup Business - All companies must have a corporate website, do a write up on how and why they must create a website online and get internet exposure.
Marketing Blogs - This is another goody, create a piece about Social Media or about SEO and bind your link naturally into the article.
Stay At Home Mums - There are tonnes of these starting up recently as the blogging trend increases! Maybe a write up on how to install and start up a blog for newbies?
There are literally thousands of different angles, just do a quick brainstorm if you have writers block, we all have it!
The Use Of Anchor Texts
This one is VERY important the over-use of keyword rich anchor texts within your guest posts could rush your blog and get it deindexed completely from Google, I have tried and tested plenty of blogs in my time and have come up with a rule of thumb:
Keyword | exact match anchor text | partial match anchor text | generic anchor text | brand name | naked urls |
Cake decorating seattle | 2 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Cake decorating seattle | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 7 |
Cake decorating in Seattle | 4 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 8 |
Total | 7 | 11 | 11 | 13 | 21 |
Excessive use of your main keyword is a big no no! What we need to do is diversify our link profile and water it down. I created the above graph to demonstrate how we use anchors.
20% On Exact Match Anchor Text - This is our full keyword we are using for example "Cake Decorating Seattle"
20% On Partial Match Anchor Text - This is a partial match for example "Come and see cake decorating Seattle"
20% On Generic Match - This can be literally anything such as "Click here", "Over here" etc.
20% On Brand Name - Brand name could just be your blog name, "PickAndMicks Cakes"
20% On Naked URLS - This will be your full blog URL, Http://www.BlogName.co.uk/
So there we have it, that will spread your link profile and water it down nicely!
How To See If A Blog Is Good Quality
Quite a few people I know who perform guest posting as part of their link building tend to just go for high PR (PageRank), I don't! What I like to do is run it through a DA (Domain Authority) checker first, you can find one here that will check links in bulk for you.
Domain authority tells me if a domain is up to par with content already published on the blog. Believe it or not I have actually come across blogs with a PR5 that hold a DA of just 10-19! What I tend to aim for is DA20+ purely because there will be no crappy articles published on it and also Google has given it good authority for a reason.
So don't just look for PR, check the DA too!
Don't Be Held Back By Length & Add Images
Quite a few bloggers will state they only accept less than 1000 words, I think this is pure stupidity. An article should not be held down by it's length, it leaves the writer trying to cram in all of the information into one small article, which is not going to happen!
An article should be allowed to flow freely, that is after all why we are writing, to get the information out to real readers and let them take something away from it, slow down and just write naturally.
The use of images is also a great idea, as you know, it breaks up a long article nicely. Adding images can also mean the difference of getting accepted from blog owners or rejected. Bloggers have a lot to do and wont want to spend the time looking for images for YOUR article. Use creative commons images and give credit where necessary.