If I include “guest post” in a title, will I get lots of emails asking if they could get a guest post hosted and could they include a link back to their client who has a mobile toe clipping service?
I made my first guest post in 1999, it was image based and was a unique image grab of Julia Roberts. The movie Notting Hill was being made in my street and I had fun using a camcorder (remember those) to record the action. I sent the image to a Julia Roberts fansite for a link back. It’s always easy when you have unique content for a hungry crowd,
But, the landscape has changed. As agencies can no longer call up Guido to rustle up some mucus stained content that nobody will ever read and hawk it on article marketing sites, they have switched to guest posting. Blasting bloggers with barely interesting content for a link back. Some bloggers have now got savvy and started asking for money to place the posts and stupidly some agencies pay for it.
I say stupid because when that blog gets banned by Google for selling links, all the work gone into that relationship will be lost.
Some will use it to get competitors links knocked out, if a blog is linking to your competitor, buy a guest post link from them, link to a neutral party and then dob them in. Will it work? Who knows, but I am sure some will try.
If a site asks for money for a guest post I put them in a file “forget about it”. As their stability is questionable, and I only want to build links for clients that will stick around.
The truth is guest posting is one of those fads that come and go. It will work better when the sheep move on to the next easy win.
Any website should be doing a bit of this and a bit of that. Spread the tactics around, nothing is a ranking killer, but creating useful experiences is always going to be on top.
So if you want that guest post, absolutely. Bring it on, and no I am not going to tell you what the rules for getting accepted are. But donuts are involved.