Guest Posting | How to do it properly for Digital PR
Guest posting as a tactic within SEO has gotten a bit of a bad rap over the past few years with many using it as an exercise to get links and that’s about it. There are a lot of sites out there that offer paid for guest posts and this has contributed to the bad image of this particular tactic of digital PR.
Despite the image issues, we are still a massive fan of guest posts for clients and provided you are doing it in the right way it can help you get some coverage on some amazing websites and drive some great value links for your client.
In this week’s blog we chat about all things guest posting, and how to do it right to leverage good results for your digital PR campaigns.
Guest posting is the act of writing content for another website, it can come in the form of a writer looking to promote their work or a company looking to add to their field through publications. Sites often indicate that they accept guest posts and these are often good places to reach out to if you are looking to get coverage for your website.
When it comes to SEO, guest posting gives you the chance to link back to your site in relevant content form an authoritative and relevant site, this is a good tactic to use early on when your content may not be getting as many links as you would like.
As discussed, this area of digital PR can be tricky to get right, but following the below dos and don’ts will keep you and your rankings on the right track.
Content is the backbone of any website, and it’s what will ultimately attract and engage your audience. By focusing on creating quality content, you can establish yourself as an authority in your niche and those you are reaching out to will appreciate it, increasing the chances of you earning placements through guest posts.
While it may seem like a quick and easy way to build links and improve your search engine rankings, paying for links is a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can result in penalties, including being removed from search engine results altogether.
When reaching out to guest bloggers, be clear that you are after content only placement.
Linking to your target pages can help improve your site’s rankings and drive traffic and SEO value to the pages that matter most. It’s important to ensure that the links you include are relevant to the content and provide value to the reader; this is the key part when it comes to guest posting. Don’t include links if they are not relevant for the reader of the blog.
Exact match anchor text refers to the use of the exact keyword phrase you want to rank for in the anchor text of a link. While it can be helpful in improving your rankings for that particular keyword phrase, overusing exact match anchor text can lead to a penalty from Google for over-optimisation, so make sure you are using logical anchor text that incorporates keywords, but not in a spammy way.
Building long-term relationships with other bloggers in your niche can be incredibly valuable for growing your website. By establishing a relationship with other bloggers, you can collaborate on projects, exchange ideas and guest posts, if you are working in an agency you can also write content for different sites depending on the relevance, and having that pre-existing relationship in place will help massively.
When it comes to assessing the value of a website for your backlink profile, it’s important not to rely solely on domain authority as a metric. While domain authority can provide a general idea of a website’s authority and influence, it’s not always an accurate measure of the website’s quality or relevance to your niche, look at other metrics like Trust and Citation Flow from Majestic and your judgement of the relevance of the website to your niche.
If you are unsure on where to start when it comes to guest blogging then get in touch with a member of the Varn team, Our SEO team have been combining digital PR tactics for years and driving great results for clients, just make sure you focus on content and you can’t go far wrong.
Varn is an expert & specialist SEO search marketing agency. Technical SEO * AI & Data Analytics * Offsite SEO * Paid Search
