Is Guest Blogging Still Effective In 2023?

For the most part, guest blogging has been a useful SEO tool for high search engine rankings, particularly on Google. It takes you out of the sea of anonymity right and in the eyes of your potential target audience. Guest blogging has especially been effective in boosting a website’s SEO by procuring high-authority website backlinks.

However, it’s 2020, and the importance and relevance of guest blogging have been on the back of everyone’s minds lately. In other words, is guest blogging still effective in 2020 as it was over a decade ago? That’s what we’re here to discuss in this article.

Why‌ ‌Is‌ ‌Guest‌ ‌Blogging‌ ‌Doubtful‌ ‌In‌ ‌2020?‌

Whether done rightfully or wrongfully, there’s no denying that guest blogging has relatively watered down over the years. And despite many of us who appreciated this method of brand visibility, we can understand the reason why. It’s a textbook SEO technique – when we find something that clicks; we tend to expand on it and then reap the benefits.

In 2012, there was something known as Penguin that was targeting SEO techniques, just so they could alter search results. About two years later, Matt Cutts, the former head of Webspam, wrote an extensive post referencing the rise and fall of guest posting for SEO.

Well, it turns out that he was right. The outreach email he shared as an example was to inform us of how things shouldn’t be done with guest posting. When he received an overwhelmingly negative response to his write-up, he gave it some more context and clarified what he meant.

In actuality, he never explicitly told people to give‌ ‌up‌ ‌on‌ guest blogging completely. Instead, he gave several reasons as to why guest blogging can be useful, especially in terms of branding, marketing, community, exposure, and increased visibility, etc. these reasons were there even before Google came around. They’ll continue to be with us in the foreseeable future. That’s why Matt had to change the title of his post to clarify that he meant guest blogging for SEO purposes.

Now, whenever “guest posting” as a link building strategy is mentioned, it can make SEOs weak in the knees given how it can go so wrong so fast; if not done right, that is. So, the question on everyone’s minds is “how should guest blogging for SEOs be done?”

The Basics of Guest Blogging

Let’s talk about the relationship between SEO and guest posting itself first.

What matters in all of this are the backlinks. This is considered to be an effective and safe‌ ‌way‌ for branding, enhancing authority, and building your backlink profile’s strength.

Even though Google’s machine learning and sophistication have greatly improved over the years, backlinks are essential even as of today, given how it can assess a website’s authoritativeness. Without backlinks, your competitors may outrank you on Google for the number of keywords that you’re targeting.

So, anyone who wishes to improve their website’s SEO would want to answer the question of “how to get backlinks close”? That’s where guest blogging comes into the picture.

How to Do‌ ‌Guest‌ ‌Blogging‌ for SEOs Right

1.    Find the Appropriate Target Audience

To prevent the kind of mistakes that Matt Cutts warned us about, it is important that we focus on topics that click with our target audience and then look for the type of blogs, and the publisher behind those blogs. We have to look for websites that genuinely talk about as well as cover topics that our audience is most interested in reading.

2.    Try Pitching‌ ‌Your‌ ‌Article‌

There are over thousands of websites that want to publish high-quality articles on their blogs. You need to find out exactly what kind of content they’re looking for so you can make an outline that their readers can benefit from.

The more complex your outline is, the better the readers over on a website will understand what you have to offer and what you’re delivering. Most sites even come with a “guest blogging guidelines” section, so you know which topics viewers want to read the most.

3.    Write a Unique‌ ‌Blog‌ ‌Post‌

Writing a unique blog post informs your readers about what makes you different from your competitors and what you have to offer. This means that you shouldn’t write anything that they’ve seen over and over again. Instead, you should focus on writing the juiciest topics for guest blogging. You need to come up with titles and subjects that not only prompt your viewers to click through the link, but also offer something that has not been seen or done before.

4.    Only Include‌ ‌Relevant‌ ‌Backlinks‌ ‌In‌ ‌An‌ ‌Article‌

If a website’s guest posting guidelines allow you to include a backlink within the article’s main body, you must ensure that they are not only relevant but editorially irrelevant. By this, we mean that the links provide more insights on the subjects that are included in your guest blog post. But be sure not to include more than one or two backlinks.

Conclusion

In the end, guest blog posting can‌ ‌be‌ ‌an‌ ‌effective‌ SEO ‌tool‌, provided that you followed the proper tips and guidelines, like the ones in this article. You need to be original in your content, include editorially relevant backlinks, and set your sights on the right target audience, etc.

We really hope your learned something from this article and understand what guest blogging is about. If you want to add your thought, please use the comments box below.

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