Why You should Be Guest Posting On High Authority Blogs

Ever since Google released the Penguin update, Guest Posting has enjoyed a huge increase in popularity. When properly employed, Guest Posting can be a very powerful tactic. No other strategy is as ethically justifiable, or as compliant with Google’s T.O.S as the creation of great quality content.

Getting Started

The first step in any Guest Posting campaign should be to identify which blogs in you want to target. Look for blogs in your niche that have high editorial standards. Read through a few of their recent posts and assess the quality of their content. If any of the blogs you selected appear to have low editorial standards, remove them from the list. Don’t focus too heavily on Page Rank,  Alexa rank provides a useful way of assessing the visibility of a blog, and domain authority will provide a clearer picture of a blogs true authority than Page Rank anyway.

Once you have identified a couple of blogs that are deserving of the great content you intend to write, get involved. Comment on their posts, follow them on Google+ and work on building a relationship. Linking to one of their posts from your own blog, and then letting them know you have done so by leaving a comment on the linked post can be a great way to break the ice. The chances are that they will click the link in your comment and read your article, so they will already know that you write great quality content before you have even asked them about the possibility of becoming a guest author.

The Pitch

I much prefer to ask about the possibility of Guest Posting in Google+ hangout chat than via an email, but if you do have to resort to email requests, then make sure you tailor the request to the blog owner in person. Take the time to find out their name, what aspects of your vertical they write about, and provide information in the email that lets the recipient know that you have actually read their blog. Propose writing a post on a specific subject that you think will be well received on their blog and provide previous examples of your work, either on your own blog or as a guest author elsewhere. It’s important to remember that the owners of popular blogs are inundated with guest post requests on a daily basis, to even stand a chance of success your pitch needs to be right.

Why Quality Is Imperative

Guest Posting is now the de facto link acquisition tactic of choice for many internet marketers, and just as standards amongst individual internet marketers vary, so too does the quality of the blogs that they target. There is no shortage of blogs that

are happy to accept poorly written three hundred word articles, but that does not mean you should use them. Google made their stance on Guest Posting for links transparently clear in a web master video that was released in Oct 2012. In this video, Matt Cutts clarifies that links associated with high quality and well written content are precisely the ones that Google want to count. Matt also mentions that Google are not interested in counting links from low quality guest posts, that are written to a “bare minimum” word count and exist solely to provide a link to the author’s site. Many SEO’s have already taken this as an early warning of things to come, and predict a future algorithm update that will penalize low quality guest posts.

Utilizing Google Authorship

Including a Google authorship link in your author bio is a great way of increasing the visibility and click through rate of your article in organic search. Generally speaking, anything that can lead to your article receiving more traffic can only be a good thing, but linking to your Google+ profile in every guest post also provides an additional benefit, each link increases the authority of your Google+ posts page. This means that any pages you share via Google+ will receive more link juice.

Engage

Don’t consider the publishing of your guest post as the end of the line, subscribe to comments on your post and engage your readers. Answering any questions your readers have and responding to feedback is also means you gain an additional link every time you reply. Remember that your readers will likely include other web masters in your vertical, I have gained a number of great Guest Posting opportunities through nothing more than engaging with readers in this manner.

Outsourcing Your Guest Posting

Many business owners simply don’t have the time to write high quality content, build relationships, create their own guest posting opportunities, and then engage their readers. For these businesses outsourcing can be a great solution. There are a number of reputable guest posting services in the UK that create quality content, on the flip side of the coin there are also a number of not so reputable companies that specialize in precisely the kind of guest posts that are likely to be hit with the next Google update. When choosing a provider it’s imperative to view previous examples of their work and ask yourself if you are happy for their standards of work to be associated with your brand. Only when the answer is a resounding and definitive “yes” should you consider working with them.