The evolution of SEO has played a big role in fueling a large increase in demand for guest posting over the last few months. This has brought guest posting under Google’s scrutiny as SEO agencies have utilised the technique in order to build backlinks and effectively turn guest posting into SEO spam. So it is now worth questioning how long guest posting can go on as a viable SEO technique, and whether it may become completely obsolete, or still carry some value if used carefully.
Utilising Guest Posting for Long-Term SEO Stability…
1) An Honest Author
One of the most important ways to guarantee a Google-safe guest post is to ensure it is written by someone who genuinely cares and has expert knowledge in that field. This ensures a good quality, interesting guest post that is likely to attract attention and will be treated as valuable content by Google. This is in contrast to a generic writer who churns out hundreds of guest posts a week without ever revisiting their published posts to check for comments or to even share their own post on their social network. This lack of interest and involvement in their own post immediately tells Google that no one wants to be associated with the post, and no confirmed author can be attributed to the post. Google are using Google+ and authorship more and more to help determine quality and trust in content across the web; something which is bound to become an increasingly large ranking factor.
2) A Blog with Relevance and Quality
A huge number of guest posts are submitted on generic blogs or blogs that aren’t related in any way to the topic of the post. This is particularly common for spun articles which have been distributed to hundreds of low quality irrelevant blogs throughout the web. It’s an immediate sign that something is wrong when an article about home improvement is found on a gaming blog. This irrelevance is often accompanied by a lack of public interaction and social shares.
It is most important to publish your article on a relevant blog which also includes other relevant, good quality articles. If there is any sign that the blog publishes random articles, duplicate content, or is involved with paid links then it is probably best to stay away. Google are looking for trust, natural, and genuine signals in blogs and content. These key values determine whether a guest post is going to carry any link value or whether it will simply be treated as spam.
3) Submit Unique Content
Publishing the same piece of content in numerous different places may have worked some years ago but nowadays duplicate content is exactly what an SEO strategy should specifically avoid. If you are writing your own guest posts they are likely to be quality and you know they’re unique. However, if someone is writing for you, it is important to ensure their content is unique and they’re not just sending out the same articles for several different clients. Duplicate content is unlikely to pass any link value.
Guest posting will always be encouraged as an activity, and it’s something Google reward; content sharing across the web is great. However, guest posting as an SEO technique needs to be treated with care. Although this technique seems relatively safe since a robot may find it hard to determine the quality or genuineness of a post, Google will inevitably catch up and the value of poor quality guest posting will be completely lost. Only an honest author on a relevant, high quality blog with unique content can ensure guest posting carries any sustained SEO value for a website.
