Guest posting on a lot of blogs were all the rage a few years ago since it was a very effective way to build links and improve your rankings in the search engines. Like all things that are easy to do and effective the method was abused by webmasters that used it for quick gains without actually adding any value. There was a lot of networks with no other purpose than to allow people to guest post on them. They were in many ways a rebirth of the article directories but with a different name. The whole thing got so bad that Google publicly mention guest posting as a spam technique that could hurt your website.
In this article we are going to take a look at the state of guest posting today. Does it still work or did the abuse kill the technique completely.
Harder to find opportunities
One important effect of the fact that Google mentioned guest posting a spam technique is that it got a lot harder to find guest posting opportunities. White hat webmasters decided that they would no longer allow guest posting since it was now frowned upon and they did not want to risk their websites good standing. This means that it is hard to find quality sites that allow you to guest posts. Most sites who do are weak websites that aren’t worth the effort.
This does however not mean that it is impossible to find guest blogging opportunists. Most websites still accept guest posts. You just have to be more diplomatic about it and you need to provide them with quality content to post on their website. If you contact someone and ask if you can guest post on their blog then they are very likely to say no. If you write a long high quality article or two and send the articles to the blog owner together with a nice letter saying that you thought they might be suitable for his blog then you are a lot more likely to get a yes.
Does the links work
It is very hard for google to tell if a website is featuring guest posts on not. Especially if they are not clearly marked as such. This makes it almost impossible for google to target guest posts. What they can do is to see if a website links to quality websites or not etc and discount links from blogs that seems to be linking to any crap. What this means is that guest posting remains an effective way to build valuable links as long as you do it on high quality websites. It is only guest posting on low quality website that has lost a lot of its value. If you post high quality articles on high quality websites then you get a high quality link.
Works great if done correct
Guest posting still works if you do it right. It is no longer a good technique to use if you are looking for a quick and easy fix. It is not a good way to build a lot of links fast. If you on the other hand wants to build high quality links to your website and is willing to do what is takes to be successful then guest posting remains a great way to build links.