Article writing in the form of guest posts has gone through the stratosphere, the amount of people writing informative, topical articles to publish online is literally growing by the thousands on a daily basis.
The standard varies from one extreme to another, i.e. from literary masterpieces to articles of the poorest quality that are hard to decipher and shouldn’t even be on the web. The type of folk who blog and their reasons vary tremendously too, such as journalists publishing the latest breaking news, industry leaders sharing insightful information specific to their sector, staff writing about their company’s latest products and services, to freelance writers producing articles on topics they are knowledgeable and passionate about.
Related Posts:
The Top 10 Reasons You Should Guest Blog with TechWyse
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Whilst guest blogging is a great vehicle to help raise brand awareness or the profile of individual writers, there’s no denying one key reason many turn to guest blogging is the ability to provide a website with what should be original, quality content in return for one or two backlinks of their choice.
In the world of SEO this is a fantastic opportunity but sadly is an area that once again is exploited and abused, but I’ll save that rant for another post! This post is about helping those who do write guest posts of great quality to build both brand awareness and links but are not necessarily aware of the latest best practices when it comes to linking.
The last twelve to eighteen months has seen much change in SEO and the search engines improved ability to identify and penalise those sites that are not playing by their guidelines by trying to manipulate search engine rankings.
Whilst guest blogging if done correctly is viewed as a safe method to generate links, if the article and the links it contains is not approached correctly then guest posts can also get you in deep water and land you with a Google algorithm or manual penalty.
The Backlink Shift
The landscape of how to insert links in posts has evolved to keep abreast of the recommended search engines guidelines. One authorative site My Blog Guest has published this article covering their thoughts and recommendations on the latest best practices. Historically it’s been recommended to place up to two self-serving links in the author’s by-line, which in many cases appears at the end of a post, and whilst that rule still holds true, it’s the number and type of links featured in the by-line that needs to be approached carefully.
It is still regarded as okay to have up to two links in a by-line, but rather than both of them be self-serving to the same domain, it is now recommended only one of those should be a self-serving link, either a brand link or on occasion a keyword rich anchor text link, and the second link should be a second-tier link like your Twitter profile, Facebook, G+ etc, i.e. a link to a page that you don’t own but it’s about you or your business.
One major change from past suggestions is that if you’re able to insert your self-serving link within the body of the actual article in a totally natural way then that is viewed as being okay and still leaves you with the option of featuring up to two links in the by-line, so long as they are pointing to two different domains.
Another point worth stressing and is covered in the My Blog Guest article linked above, is to ensure by-lines are completely unique with every post you write. Author’s bios are still part of the article hence they need to be original with each new post an author writes.
Author by-line Tips
To state the obvious, a by-line is there to describe the author and what he or she does, so at a bare minimum it should contain the author’s name, profession including the company name or blog the author is connected to. To help ensure each blog post author bio is original, it is good practice to add some other brief but interesting information such as career details or past experiences, hobbies and interests, marital status, whether you have children etc, taking this approach will help you create unique bios each and every time you write and publish a new post.
Check out this article which gives some great ideas on the different approaches to writing by-lines as well as links to other useful resources to help give some inspiration -
Guest Post Bylines: Examples and Resources to Get Inspired at #MyBlogGuest
on
I never really thought much about guest blogging until today, great article. Thank you and keep up the good work. Talking of guest blogging, do you have any suggestion on how to get good guest bloggers?
on
Quite honestly I am shocked at myself for never having thought about this, when it is such an obvious way of getting both traffic and exposure. – the bread and butter of any struggling comedian.
on
Guest blogging has never crossed my mind although it is quite a famous method towards building backlinks. But it seems it is not a good option anymore with these penalities mentioned above.
on
It is most definitely still a good option! This blog is informing you how to guest blog properly and effectively!
on
Link building strategies has been shifted these days from article marketing in to guest blogging since after Google’s Panda and Penguin Algo. So people target guest blogging and believe its a best ways to acquire quality back links for top search engine ranking and targeted traffic to their website.
on
To add, the beauty of guest blogging is that it benefits both parties: the one hosting the blog and the one who wrote the blog. For the blog owner, it increases traffic because of thew new content. For the blog author, it increases his or her readership and strengthens his or her credibility.
on
I am really positive that guest blogging will become mainstream this year. More and more internet marketers are recognizing the benefits of guest blogging. It may even replace some of the traditional forms of online marketing.
on
I have heard from so many people that guest-blogging really is a great way to earn backlinks which are actually worth something. But all my tries have failed so far. I have tried contacting many bloggers and offered them my articles, but they don’t really want to pass on the juice to my backlinks. What else can i try to gain more quality backlinks? any input will be greatly appreciated. thanks.
on
@invisibled, As stated in this post, a great platform to publish your guest blog posts in on My Blog Guest. Check out the links in this post for more insight of how to use the network effectively.
on
Do you have any great ideas for ways to find Guest Bloggers for your own blog? Every time I have tried, I only seem to attract those writers that write unreadable thoughts.
on
As mentioned in the article http://MyBlogGuest.com is probably the most popular guest blogging site out there. Another you avenue you could take is to ask for guest bloggers through social media, or even do outreach and approach other related blogs directly.
on
Quite true. A couple of years, I haven’t seen much of guest bloggers before. It was something like frowned upon. But its different now. Most of the new bloggers start their blogging journey through guest blogging.
For some, its a way to gain some dofollow backlinks in return. And for others, its a way to gain exposure.