Guest blogging has been and continues to be a popular way to get high quality links to your site. However, given the fact that Google is making major changes to its search algorithms, it is a good idea to have a look at guest blogging and see if this practice is still an effective way of getting search engine traffic and sales.
What are the Advantages?
Guest blogging has numerous advantages if it is done properly. Guest blogging helps to create an awareness of who you are and what you have to offer. Your guest post is likely to reach more people than a post on your own blog because the blog you are writing for gets more traffic than your own site.
Guest posting enables you to attract people who are likely to become customers. The people who are reading your guest post are already interested in the field in question and often want to find out more about a particular product or service before buying it. Therefore, the ROI for a guest blog post is likely to be quite high.
Guest posting can also help to boost your site’s search engine position for important keywords, as it provides a link from a highly rated site to your own site. However, it is very important to note that this link building formula is not as effective as it once was. Following are some disadvantages and pitfalls of guest blogging that you will want to be aware of.
What are the Disadvantages?
The main disadvantage of guest blogging is the fact that Google is actively searching for sites that use unnatural link building methods. Google has tools that analyze not only where links are coming from but also when they were generated and the type of sites that your inbound links are coming from.
If you put a heavy emphasis on guest blogging, then Google is sure to notice that most of your links are coming from blogs. This, in Google’s eyes, is unnatural, as it indicates that you are building links instead of having sites link to you naturally. Google will then demote your site placement for engaging in what it considers to be a spammy practice.
A site you are posting on may allow you to put links to your site within your article. If you do, it is important to never include more than one or two links per article, as Google will demote an article’s ranking if it contains too many links. At the same time, there is a valid concern that Google’s next step will be to devalue links that are placed in the author’s box, given the fact that such links are often placed there as part of a deliberate link building campaign. Google may either demote sites that have too many links of this nature or simply tag such links as "no follow" links and ignore them; either way, the guest blogger loses out.
In Summary
Link building via putting up guest posts on other blogs is still an effective way to boost traffic to your site and earn a high search engine placement. However, it is also a lot more dangerous than it used to be and there is the real possibility that it will become even more risky as time goes on. If you do decide to create guest posts, then do so sparingly. Do not "flood your market" with numerous posts coming out at the same time, make sure each article is unique, link to different pages on your site and be sure you also pursue other ways of getting links so that your campaign looks as "organic" as possible.
