Everyone wants to be #1 on Google. The objective is always to rank as highly as you can as this will drive exponentially more traffic to your site, which ultimately means more sales and reaching your target audience. One of the top ways to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and Google rankings is through guest blogging and this has been a strategy used for many years now. Getting guest bloggers and using backlinks from high authority websites is a way in which you could move up through the Google ranks and show your own site to be authoritative and was using legitimate strategies for link building. Google Sends Businesses into Meltdown Over Guest Blogging     Back in 2014, Matt Cutts, the former Head of Web Spam at Google said that “guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy’. This sent many businesses into a panic. Would their website be affected by this type of update if they previously featured guest bloggers? You never know when the next Google algorithm update is going to come along and set back all your SEO hard work!     Although this was said back in 2014, now as we are heading into 2021, is guest blogging dead? The objective of guest blogging has always been about backlinks. This is still fundamental to Google’s algorithm on how it assesses the authoritativeness of a website. If you are faced with a competitor who has lots of high authority backlinks and you have none, chances are they are going to beat you in the rankings for the best targeted keywords! This means that anyone with a website has had to re-evaluate the effectiveness of their own guest blogging and achieving backlinks. So, is guest blogging dead? The answer, overall, is no. However, there are specific rules to adhere to if you want to ensure that your guest blogging backlinks help your ranking and don’t hinder them. The Basics of Guest Blogging   Source: visual.ly Before we go on, it’s important to establish the basics of guest blogging. Essentially, a guest post is, is written content which is published on a third-party website with the author’s name. Alongside the author’s name, there is normally a line of two of information about who the author is and a link to their website, which is the backlink. In a guest blogging piece, the backlinks are also often included throughout the main body of the content. This type of strategy to get authoritative bank links on your website is one of the most popular, although there are still other options available. Now, you may be asking yourself, what is the problem with this method of obtaining backlinks? It appears great! The problem is that when an SEO technique is popular and widely used, it can be abused. Furthermore, Google catches on to this popularity and will look to weed out the spammy content that is bad practice. While bad content is targeted, it could still end up affecting your good content which is, of course, not what any website owner wants. What Guest Blogging Content Does Google Punish? There are a number of ways in which Google will penalize guest blogging content. These are some of the bad practices that you should avoid. Content with No Value If you are publishing guest blogging content that has no value, or very, very little value, then Google will recognize this and punish you for it. If a guest content piece is purely being written just to include a backlink and does not contain any helpful information, you can be sure this won’t help with your rankings. When creating guest blogging content, at the forefront should always be informing your readers with valuable information. This will then, subsequently, help your SEO. Re-publishing Content If you are thinking about creating one piece of content and then just simply editing it a little to create more backlinks – don’t! When you republish content and spin it a little in order to post it on another website for extra backlinks, Google will recognize this and punish you for it. Overloading Content with Backlinks Many sites that accept guest posts make the mistake of cramming in as many backlinks as possible into an article, however, this is a big mistake. Google will be able to pick this up immediately and see that you are trying to cheat the system and you will be penalized for it. Don’t Go Crazy with Anchor Text Keywords Another common error that is made with guest blogging content is using overloading the backlink anchor text with a tonne of keywords. This isn’t natural and makes your backlink and article appear spammier. To be clear, less than 1% of your anchor text should be exact match, according to Ahrefs. Using Low Authority Guest Blog Sites A big no no when it comes to backlinks and guest blogging is publishing content on low authority sites. You’ll know exactly the types of sites that we are talking about such as the news sites that are very low-quality and look like spam articles. These sorts of sites use very poor content and simply a way to make quick money. In the long run, this will only damage your SEO efforts using these types of websites. Repeatedly Using the Same Websites Guest blogging can be extremely time consuming and so it seems easier just to repeatedly use the same handful of sites that you are on good terms with. However, this is wrong as it can, again, appear like spam. Instead, you need to take the time and effort to build relationships with a wide range of different sites and do blogger outreach. Not Knowing the Subject You’re Writing On If you want a piece of content to appear reputable, knowledgeable and authoritative, then it has to be written by someone who knows about the subject you are writing on. This ensures that your content provides value to the audience it is intended for … Continue reading Is Guest Blogging Dead? Yes & No. Here’s Why.