Guest posting is a popular method that SEOs use to get high-quality links to their sites. According to Rand Fishkin, it’s a very slippery slope. This is an important video to watch because it highlights the progression from good to bad, something that many SEOs end up plummeting down at some point in their career.
Yes, guest posting is good. Yes, guest posting is powerful. Yes, guest posting is a way that you can easily get penalized.
The concept is that with a guest post, you’re putting content somewhere else that will then link back to your site. While there are still plenty of great sites that accept guest posts, a good chunk of the best ones have stopped because of the way that Google has started treating them. Google wants quality that’s real, not fake quality. As a result, the art of guest posting is becoming much more challenging. This is a good thing.
At the end of the day, the true key to guest posting is to keep authority at the top of mind. You’re trying to build authority in your niche. The link is good, but it’s not the end goal. If they don’t like to you but you’re getting mentioned, that’s better than not having the mention at all. The web spam team at Google has been pushing this concept for a long time now. They’re talking about it. Don’t fall into the crosshairs of a future algorithm killer.
Here’s Fishkin’s spot-on take:
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