There are two prominent mindsets when it comes to guest blogging one who suggests people to go with guest blogging as this will help them increase their website’s credibility in search engines while the other recommends not to include as part of their strategy as this will harm them instead of helping.

I always include guest blogging as part of my SEO strategy but I personally don’t think anyone of these mindsets is fit for me. According to my perspective, guest blogging will not exactly help you get top rankings from your targeted key phrases but I always strongly oppose the mindset that recommends not doing it.

Some time back I wrote a post about why guest blogging is not toxic for your website and I still believe I am right! Whenever I guest blog for my own or my client’s website there are certain things that I always keep in mind and recommend to anyone who is in this field.

Google Does Not Dislike Guest Blogging

No, Google doesn’t really hate guest blogging, read what Matt says about this.

The problem occurs when the quality of your blog posts deteriorates but if you are writing kick ass content for your guest blog you probably are going to get your name in Google’s good books. The reason why Google wants you to open your eyes while implementing this tactic as part of your strategy is because there are lot of other people in the bubble who are writing crap on others blog, mostly to get a link out of it.

My opinion: Google is not against guest blogging but if you try to manipulate Google by writing crap quality content as a guest author on other’s blog then you will breathe your last breath in the cyber world.

Bill Sable recently write a very detailed post about why he is not afraid of a Google update against guest blogging which backs my opinion

Guest Blogging Is Not Link Building Guest blogging is no more a link building strategy is completely wrong! In my opinion guest blogging was never a link building strategy.

Guest blogging is one of the ways to improve your brand’s credibility within the targeted audience and present yourself as an expert in the industry. If your piece of content will be worth reading, you will see people will naturally share and link to it.

Guest Blogging can be used to attract links but using this as a link building strategy itself is foul play.

John Mueller is suggesting no-follow the links in the guest post and honestly I never really care about a link to be no-follow or do-follow unless my link is visible enough for people to understand who the author of the post is and where one can read more of his posts.

Pro Tip: Write to prove yourself as an expert and don’t care much about links because if you are good, links will follow you anyways!

No Relevancy Means SHIT! Relevancy is the key and without it all of your efforts will not only be useless but in some cases it can harm your search engine credibility.

If you are writing guest posts without keeping the relevancy in mind then you are doing nothing new but similar to what other people do by uploading their articles on article banks and directories.

Think about what you want to say and what the audience of the blog is interested in and write something that comes under the common area,for instance if you are writing about technology on a travel blog this makes no sense at all.

Quick Suggestion: Be relevant when you write otherwise it is better to stop writing.

Blog Quality Matters The Most! What most people forget about when outreaching for guest blogging is the quality of the blog itself. If the blog owner is open to guest posts, it doesn’t mean you actually have to go for it.

It is always important for you consider several parameters in mind when choosing a blog for guest blogging. In my personal opinion the blog should have a clean link profile, good mention/endorsements in the community, good social shares and an active community that can engage with the content and do justice to your guest post.

If you are going to guest post on every other website, you will probably end up having lots of links that Google doesn’t like. Try to find good quality sites for your guest post and write for them instead of writing for some nugatory blogs.

Notable Tip: One post on quality blog can help you convince other quality websites to link back to you but 100s of posts on shitty blogs can’t!

Google loves “X”

Honestly speaking, it’s not only Google but everyone in the digital marketing world loves the “X”. When writing a guest post you can write a blog post that is relevant to the subject, a post that contains value to readers or may be a post that contains the potential to get a link to it.

Most people try to write a post where relevancy can be backed up by value or potential links but there are very few people who can write a piece of content that covers all the three areas and write a perfect post that helps them improve their brand image, targeted traffic and possible leads for the business including links that one is looking for!

Writing a post on 3rd party blog to get a link that points back to your website is not guest blogging! It is about setting up your image in the industry as a professional (as a brand). It is about encouraging the readers to get inspired, learning more about the person/brand, it is about encouraging the new audience to engage and link to you.

Final Thoughts: Keep guest blogging but with your eyes and mind open!