How to Use Guest Posts for Reputation Marketing

Here's a frequently asked question from clients:

What exactly is a guestpost?

What distinguishes it from a regular blog post?

A GuestPost is an article written and published on another person's blog. When you write something on your own blog, it's just a "post,"but on someone else's blog, the writer is a 'guest'.

Guest posts are valuable tools for reputation marketing and management for a variety of reasons, including getting your brand mentioned or appearing in branded search query results. However, most people use them to embed backlinks for SEO purposes. However, guest posts are frequently abused; we'll discuss abusive aspects later in this article.

You are the 'guestauthor' if you have found someone else's blog to write on. We'll assume you're doing it to spread the word while also hoping for a link back to one of your own web properties.

The fundamentals of guest posting

Here are some guidelines for writing guest posts that you should be aware of. There is a wealth of information available on the internet about this topic, and we have included links to many useful resources at the end of this article. But here are the quick and simple fundamentals.

Important Considerations for Guest Posts

Guest articles must be well-written. People and search engines are becoming more selective.

Posts must be relevant. To get the most out of them, people must want to read them. You don't want people visiting your post and then returning to search results because the posts are irrelevant, as bounces can lower the value of your post in Google.

People should want to share your social media posts. Sharing boosts readership. Social media sharing aids in the spread of the word in reputation marketing.

Outbound links in your posts should be useful and relevant to the article. Check that the anchor text for the links is correct.

Don't post on sites with a lot of guest content because the links are mostly useless.

Who is eligible to write a guest post?

Almost anyone can write a guest post, but only a few can write one that goes viral. In general, you cannot "make" a post go viral. However, it does not have to go viral. To generate traffic and link juice over time, it only needs to be helpful, on-topic, and well-written.

A good guest post is relevant, on-topic, and of varying lengths. Most guest posts are between 500 and 1000 words long, but some experts, such as Neil Patel, believe they should be much longer. 2500 words is more like it. According to data, having more content on your web increases your chances of ranking high in Google results. However, writing lengthy posts is not required. It is more important to write a good post than a long one.

Check out this post about SEO-enabled articles for a detailed overview of how to write a post for people and search engines.

It is sometimes worthwhile to hire a professional to write guest posts because doing so on a consistent basis is critical.

Basics of blog post headlines

Let's say you are in the llama shaving business and that the search phrase you want to protect or improve is 'Lloyds Llama Shaving Business'. In this case, you may have written articles for posting on someone else's blog, with titles like these:

Best Llamas Shaving Shears

Answers to the Top Ten Llama Shaving Questions

Llama Shaving Techniques Revealed!

Restaurants in New York That Allow Shaved Llamas Legendary Llama Shavers Throughout History

If you shave llamas, these are accurate (and appealing) headlines for your market. Remember that the goal of a headline is to get clicked in search results, which will increase online marketing search volume.

However, keep in mind that some headlines are clickbait. Clickbait headlines are designed to entice you to click (hence the name), but the content does not always live up to your expectations. It does, however, happen on occasion.

The following is an example of a clickbait headline:

You'll Never Believe What Doctors found in This Girl's Abdomen!

It's a clickbait headline because it creates a mental information vacuum, it's sensational, and it preys on people's FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

More information on clickbait headlines can be found here.

Guest post headline ideas

The following are examples of common blog/guest post headlines. These are intended to be the starting point for your headline creation:

What exactly is...

How to Refuse...

Including relevant links

There is an opportunity to embed a link within each of these articles. Here's an illustration: Assume you're doing some reputation marketing and have three positive web results you'd like to promote. One is your own website, and the other two are existing positive articles about your company that appear high in search results but not high enough.

You could promote the following three URLs:

https://lloydsllamashaving.com/

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/garden/the-llama-is-in.html?pagewanted=all

https://shavedllamas.com/

People don't just want to reference to your websites. They also want to reference other authorities. You must give the people who consume your content what they want. Outbound links to other sites, such as the best llama shears, the best time of year to shear, where to buy a good llama, and so on, are important to the reader.

So, in the first article, titled 'Best Shears for Shaving Llamas,' include a link to lloydsllamashaving.com. This is how your article might look:

Best Llamas Shaving Shears

'What are the best shears for llamas?' is one of the most frequently asked questions about llama shaving. We've tried everything from The Heiniger Llama Kit to Wizard Shears. At Lloyds, we've found the best Wizard Shears...

The word 'Lloyds' in the preceding paragraph is a hyperlink to another website. If you click on the link, you will be directed to the website lloydsllamashaving.com (if you do click on it, it will take you to our home page). Your website or blog will most likely make this very easy, so you won't need to write any HTML, but here's what it might look like if you do:

Link anchor variety

Guest contributors frequently make the mistake of focusing on keywords in the anchor text, which search engines interpret as suspicious. Google penalizes links that appear artificial.

Ideally, the owner of the site where a blog post is published should be able to approve any backlinks and anchor text, as well as change the anchors or links to more relevant posts on the same target site. This contributes to link diversity.

Here's why that matters: Allowing the owners of the blogs you're posting on to edit the anchor text of the link text will result in a more diverse set of natural backlinks.

But how many links should a blog post contain?

If the links aren't relevant, the answer is zero. However, if they are relevant and helpful to the article, you must place the appropriate number of links; there is no set number. "Will a link improve the piece?" is the question. If a link does not improve the post, do not include it - even if it is a link to your own material. As you'll see in the final paragraph of this article, quality is important.

If you still need a rule of thumb, generally place one link from a guest post every 500 words. A 1000-word guest post could therefore handle up to two or three links. Even if your guest post is fantastic, having too many links can make it appear spammy, even if it isn't.

Remember that blog posts are about the reader, not about your need for links.

Abuse and the end of guest blogging?

Back in the day, in January 2014, Google's Matt Cuts stated: " "Okay, here's my prediction: if you're using guest blogging to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because it's become a more and more spammy practice over time, and if you're doing a lot of guest blogging, you're in bad company."

Is guest posting still popular today? Nope. However, web spam has to a large extent. We don't believe that guest posting will ever go away. Consider major publications that do not have contributors. However, as Google updates continue to roll out, such as the latest "helpful content" update in 2022, abuse of the practice should decrease.

We believe Google employs stylometry to identify authors.

What exactly is "stylometry"? Stylometry is the practice of identifying authors based on their writing style.

Google's disdain for SEO practitioners who overuse guest posts could be justified.

At Reputation X, we believe that Google employs a type of stylometry, in addition to many other methods, such as link profiles and IP addresses, to identify blogs and authors who use guest posts to build links.

Why do post patterns matter?

Assume one author writes 100 blog posts in a month, each with a link to a different website. Google can easily deduce that all of those posts exist solely for SEO purposes. When Google detects this practice, the link is discounted. In other words, each link is rendered ineffective. It does not pass "juice" and thus does not help the target site's SEO. Because Google can see most of the web, patterns like this are a dead giveaway and easily detected.

Why are blog networks bad?

There are thousands of websites that exist solely to sell links.

This is how it works: A user purchases an article on the site, inserts content, embeds a link to their website, and it is published. Google will find the article, follow the link to the target site, and count the link as an authority signal, eventually helping to rank the target page higher in search results. This practice was common until 2012, when Google released an update that rendered Private Blog Networks ineffective (PBNs). However, people continue to try to sell blog posts on networks, even though the links are useless (and often expensive).

There is an entire industry dedicated to paid guest posts.

Paid guestposting has its own industry.

An SEO guestpostwriter may write thousands of articles on various topics for placement on numerous websites under various names. However, if Google uses stylometry to identify that author across multiple sites, they will be able to identify the sites that most likely sell links in guest posts. We believe this is one of the methods used by Google's Penguin update from 2012.

If you're going to use guest posts for SEO, avoid sites that do it frequently, or worse, all the time. You will spend money, but the links will not count because Google's Penguin algorithm is updated in real time. Nobody, not even Google, and certainly not the person who paid for the link, will tell you that the link isn't passing authority.

Reputation X never uses blog networks when contributing content for reputation marketing purposes, and you should not either. The problem is that identifying blog networks is difficult unless you have a bird's-eye view like Google.

The general rule is that if it smells like a blog network, it most likely is.

Google wants no-follow links in guest posts.

"If you're providing the content/links, then those links shouldn't be passing signals & should have the rel-sponsored / rel-nofollow attached," Google's John Muller said in a tweet.

Google is asking blog owners who allow guest blogs to tag their links with NOFOLLOW or a similar directive so that Google knows the link may not be trustworthy - even if the link is completely trustworthy.

No-follow links may harm SEO.

It'll be interesting to see how many bloggers use the No-follow attribute on their outbound links. Why? Because adding rel-nofollow to outbound links removes a large portion of the incentive for people to contribute content to a blog as guest contributors. Some people simply want to spread the word, but in our experience, most people who contribute to blogs hope for a link.

Why? Because new, high-quality content is an important SEO signal. As a result, adding NOFOLLOW attributes to all links, as a matter of course, may harm the blog's Google rankings. Do we know for certain? No. However, we believe it is possible in many cases.

All we can do now is wait and see what happens.

Note: Kindly Tell Me Your Requirements I’ll send you a list of our sites for Guest posting.