Guest blogging is a popular aspect of search engine optimization [SEO]. With Google and other search engines heavily weighing the value of your links to other websites, posting a short article on another blog is an easy way to create links. But easy is not always best, and it’s important to understand the subtleties of the process in order to be sure you don’t instead create a problem for your website’s page rank.
Here are some Guest post guidelines when it comes to both accepting invitations to guest blog or when trying to become a guest blogger.
What are the Guest post guidelines
Be Picky About Sites You Accept
Every day, webmasters are reaching out to websites, asking for the opportunity to post a guest blog. In evaluating the website and writer who will be posting for you, be sure to check that the site is not seen as spam. Avoid weight-loss fixes, get rich quick schemes, and, of course, porn. These types of sites will just pull you into a negative view from the likes of Google. You may find yourself guilty just by association, which is not how you will increase your page rank.
Don’t guest blog with spam sites!
Best Guest Bloggers
The best guest bloggers come from a related topic area. If you are a fitness blog, then a guest post on new menus for training from a nutritionist is a perfect fit. For example, Google would give less value to links to you from a machine shop, unless their specialty is fixing fitness equipment.
The guest blogger can, of course, write on a relevant topic and put their link in the writer’s bio if their website focus is further afield, but first be sure the subject matter in the blog post makes sense for your site.
Interact Before Asking
Just as you wouldn’t stop in a strange neighborhood to ask a homeowner for a favor, people in cyberspace are most willing to accommodate friends and neighbors. Don’t just jump in and ask someone to guest post that you have not “met.” On Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, first and foremost, interact and demonstrate you are indeed a good member of the online community.
Members of your social media network are good places to find guest blogging opportunities.
On Twitter, you can create Lists to follow certain keywords. Just search for the hashtag you need, such as #Fitness, and start to communicate with the Tweeters. Re-tweet interesting ideas, ask questions and generally build up relationships. You’ll soon have a good group of contacts, and asking to a guest blog will come naturally.
Media Outlets
Media outlets that get lots of hits online per day are viewed as great links. The best are big national websites like CNN or the New York Times. Keep in mind that in your locale or industry, a smaller readership in a target market may have even greater value for increasing page rank in particular keywords. To communicate with appropriate media outlets such as local newspapers and trade journals to see where they might need guest blog posts or even a guest column since the fresh content is always in demand.
All in all, guest blogging is a powerful SEO tool if you think through the process strategically in order to avoid causing problems with Google. Being banned by the industry giant is a far worse problem than low page rank and can sometimes take years to correct.
