The practise of using guest posting to gain links for SEO purposes is not new. The technique has generated discussion in the digital marketing community as a result of changes Google has made to the way it uses links to evaluate content or its crackdown on link spam. You could be tempted to stop producing guest content altogether given that Google’s July 2021 update expressly targeted backlink and other link abuses.
Guest posting or blogger outreach for SEO is still a powerful tactic, though. In the sections that follow, we’ll go into detail about how to use SEO material effectively.
Keep In Mind The Basics Of SEO Blogging
Write a guest post for a different website in the same manner as you would for one of your own. Whether you’re writing for your own blog or someone else’s, the basic SEO blog writing principles outlined in this Search Engine Journal article always hold true. Examples of best practises for developing blog content that is optimised for Google can be found in the hints below.
Apply Keywords – One to two is sufficient, but avoid stuffing your guest blogs with keywords. Use of natural variations and related keywords can assist avoid this. Additionally, it will increase reader interest in your guest blogs.
Make Use Of Headings And Subheadings – They assist in your blog post’s comprehension by web crawlers utilised by search engines like Google. Additionally, they help readers comprehend your articles more easily. Furthermore, breaking up your guest content into manageable pieces makes it easy for the website owner to repurpose it.
Use Meta Descriptions – The brief summaries that appear beneath the title link of a search result are known as meta descriptions. They often range in length from one to three sentences. Your primary keyword or keywords should also be present in your meta descriptions.
Use Alt Image Text – In your blogs, alt text is used to describe the photographs. Another tool that aids web crawlers, it also makes your content accessible to those who are visually impaired. While you shouldn’t cram your alt-image text with keywords, it’s acceptable to do so if it makes sense to do so.
Select The Right Link Anchor Text – Although you should link to authoritative websites, it’s crucial that the anchor text for your links be search engine optimised. The SEO specialists at Moz suggest the following in their post on anchor text:
- Related to the page you are linking to
- Not very many keywords, i.e., none to very few keywords
- The language that is precise, concise, and non-generic
Think Beyond Links And Keywords
Go beyond keywords In her article on guest blogging and SEO, Melissa Fach of SEMrush claims that Google has been trying to persuade content producers and SEO specialists to cease putting so much emphasis on link building and keyword optimization for almost ten years. Instead, they want to highlight web content in search results that is consistent with their mission to deliver high-quality, practical, accurate, and enlightening content that is consistent with searcher intent.
The majority of Google’s algorithm updates and search models, such as Panda and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), have been designed to weed out flimsy content from search engine results pages (SERPs) or to enhance the search engine’s comprehension of context and search query intent.
Searcher Intent – Examine your SEO guest blogging approach in the context of Google’s stated goals and pay attention to searcher intent. Concentrate on producing guest content that responds to typical customer questions tackles pain points or finds a solution to a problem that affects a lot of people. When you write articles for your own website or those of others, put yourself in the position of your target audience.
Search quality scores on Google – Google published the first version of their Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines in 2015, and the most recent one was published in 2020. The manual’s objective is to assist Google’s Search Quality Raters in understanding the standards for assessing the quality of search engines and search results. As part of its declared objective to deliver relevant, helpful, and educational content in its search results, Google uses humans as assessors. When it comes to SEO and guest blogging, there are two key elements in every version of the publication that you need to consider.
1. E-A-T – Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness – is a content requirement that Google utilises to support the delivery of high-quality sites in search results. They seek to offer trusted content to their readers who are subject matter experts to their users. Think about the website or blog’s theme and the expertise it covers when considering guest blog posts.
2. YMYL – Your Money or Your Life – is a criteria for content that Google employs to determine whether a page’s content could negatively impact a user’s “happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.” They use this norm for discussing subjects like finance, news, the legal system, politics, shopping, and social gatherings. When considering offering guest content, you should assess the subject and the website to determine who should write the material. You can write it yourself, or you can hire and speak with an expert or specialist like Megri Outreach who can assist you.
Utilize The Guest Posting Approach
How to identify and selecting websites and blogs to submit guest posts to may be the subject of a whole article. Briefly, stick to websites that are relevant to you or your clients. Keep in mind that larger magazines may be more selective and may not accept submissions of guest work. Additionally, they frequently have campaigns and goals for individual pieces of content prepared months in advance.
After deciding which websites you want to approach regarding guest writing, conduct independent research in the following areas:
- Follow The Blog Site’s Rules – It’s your responsibility to look for and abide by a blog’s guest posting rules. Look at roughly three to five blog posts to get an idea of the formatting, length, and image requirements if a site doesn’t have any written criteria and you can’t ask them in advance.
Never rely on the internet publication for topic suggestions – Use the same keyword research tools and strategies that you do for your own site. Find content and topic gaps between the blogs of the websites you wish to target and their rivals by looking at their blogs. You can use tools provided by organisations like SEMrush and Ahrefs to undertake competition analysis in addition to finding themes and keywords.
Choose evergreen topics – Pick topics that will likely still be relevant in the future, if at all possible. Any changes to data, practises, regulations, or trends are acceptable. After your guest post is published, keep an eye on it and email the publisher if you notice any potential updates they might want to add.
Avoid Risks With Guest Posting
The way Google and online publishers generally see guest writing has evolved over time. It’s possible that well-known websites in your field that once accepted submissions, especially by email outreach, have stopped doing so. And Google frequently changes its policies on the placement of links in guest articles. Pay attention to what they say.
There are some methods that will hurt your SEO rather than help it, in addition to keeping up with Google’s updates and changes to how they index and display content in their SERPS. Prevent developing any of the following poor habits when it comes to guest posting to assist you to avoid any errors:
- Avoid using form email templates when approaching webmasters, blog editors, and company SEO or marketing teams about guest posting. You’re not doing yourself or the reputation of your company any favours by sending an email that will likely be ignored or marked as spam. Instead, concentrate on establishing genuine connections with editors and engaging in direct dialogue with them.
- You should avoid from using link schemes, link exchanges, and link purchases in your SEO strategy for guest content. Google has become quite good at finding this kind of information over time, and their most recent update to their core algorithm, which was made at the end of July 2021, was made to combat link spamming. More information on this upgrade can be found here, and their post on Google linking best practices can be found here.
- Don’t merely suggest writing a guest post for a website because it falls under your speciality or is relevant to a client’s area of expertise. Analyze the website’s quality and avoid submitting blog posts if you find problems like unfavourable reviews, a poor material that either doesn’t cover themes or has numerous grammar and spelling mistakes, employs keyword stuffing, or has misleading design elements and a negative user experience.
Final Thoughts
Guest blogging is still a successful component of any SEO plan despite Google’s constantly evolving criteria, especially those regarding how they treat links. Your guest blogging efforts will eventually be successful if you educate yourself on how to research and approach online publications, keep up with Google developments and announcements, and use the same SEO principles as you use on your own website.
