Don't believe the headlines.
Guest blogging is far from dead and is still a powerful way to drive engaged referral traffic, build awareness for your brand, and improve search rankings.
While Google may have waged a very public war on guest blogging in the Spring and Summer of 2014, the target was those who had been using guest blogging as a scalable, low quality way of acquiring links.
Here's how to do it right and ensure you stay on the good side of Google.
1. Go for quality not quantity
Aim to publish one or two guest posts a month on authority sites in your niche.
You will get much more (both in traffic and SEO benefit) out of one post on an authority site, than you will from dozens of posts on low quality sites.
The quality aspect applies to your own writing, as well as the host site.
Guest posts should be on a par quality wise with what you would publish on your own site. Indeed, there is an argument that you should actually save your very best work for guest posts as they represent an opportunity to showcase your talent in front of a new audience.
Ask yourself: -
2. Use branded anchor links in your bio box
Guest posts are not the place to be dropping in keyword rich anchor text - these links are all about boosting your domain authority.
Place one link back to your site in your author bio box with either the name of your brand, or a naked url. For example: -
John Doe is head of marketing at YourBrandName...
John Doe is head of marketing at http://www.yourwebsite.com
Only link back to your site from within the body of the post if the link genuinely adds value, and if you do feel that it should be there, be upfront and link naturally. For example: -
'I wrote up a post on this over on my own blog last week, which goes into a little more detail.'
3. Assist with promotion
When a guest post goes live, do what you can to help promote it:-
The better the post does, the more you will get out of it, and the more likely you are to be asked back!
4. Stick around
After launch be sure you are on hand to help answer any questions that may arise in the comments.
Further Reading