In today’s technology-ridden society, people no longer “look things up” in encyclopedias or even search engines. “Google” has become a verb, replacing all other synonyms and being used even when that particular search engine is not. Google’s competitors are fighting to achieve the same status. Since search engines basically have the power to decide what websites are found and which are hidden in the vast wasteland that is the internet, website owners are finding it necessary to pander to the search engines’ desires.
It is therefore understandable that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a growing industry. SEO executives simply need to identify what search engines want and find a way to give that to their client. The already over-used trope seems to be “Content is King.” Google has been clear that they want to point people to quality sites with quality content. How is quality determined though?
This is where off-site SEO comes in. While it is important to make sure you have a quality website, it will be seen as more useful if there are more links leading to it. Certainly the first step is to have a website that people will want to link to. But there are a lot of great websites out there with very few viewers, and as you are probably aware, many spam-ridden, useless sites that somehow manage to get thousands of unsuspecting visitors a day.
The reason off-site SEO is important is because of the idea of community. If reputable people are recommending your website, search engines will take that as a sign that your site is reputable as well. This is why paying for links is being penalized. After all, if you’re paying to be recommended, you are skewing the results. Search engines don’t mind you making changes to go up in the rankings; they just want them to be changes that benefit the user.
Guest Posting is one method that many people are utilizing for its link-building benefits. Posting on established blogs is a great way to show that other people appreciate your content and get more traffic to your website. After all, posting on your own blog will only reach the audience you’ve already established. Guest Posting is a form of outreach as well as an SEO tactic.
As with all things, especially where the internet is involved, guest posting can be abused. People utilize the opportunity to get links on other sites, but post useless, irrelevant content. Do not fall into this trap. The number of links you get is not going to matter if they all get penalized by search engines.
The greatest benefit of using white-hat SEO techniques is that it is an easy way to multi-task. By optimizing your website to search engines, you are also making it user-friendly, drawing in people who would not have seen your site otherwise, and providing quality content. Making these long-lasting changes will have a much more powerful effect than just spamming article directories and link farms with obvious links to your site.
Writers are not the only ones who abuse guest posting in order to boost their SEO. Site owners that accept guest posts can also be guilty. In your search for places to post, you will find entire sites dedicated to guest posts. Many of them will not even be relevant to the topic of the website, or the website won’t even have a topic. These sites are just trying to get a high page rank or domain authority without doing any work of their own.
Your content is going to be associated with the website it is posted on. If it is on a low-quality site, people will assume your site is low quality as well. If your article has nothing to do with the objective of the website, or if all of the articles seem to be unrelated, search engines will take that into account.
Make sure you post high-quality content on high-quality websites. It will be more work to get links on these pages, but it will be well worth it. Put time and effort into your work and have it published by people who do the same. By building relationships with blog-owners that actually moderate their blogs, you are also embedding yourself in the online community of your niche. Networking is never a bad thing, and guest posting can be a great way to network.
Guest posting is not the end-all-be-all of link building. Any opportunity you have to get a quality link on a niche-related site, you should take it. This could be in a weekly round-up that a blogger does, profile links, or simply a recommendation by another blogger. Before you seek links you should read Google’s guidelines to make sure that the links you get follow their rules.
By seeking links in these natural ways, you are joining the community that your blog or website caters to. Of course, make sure your blog offers its own quality content, because driving traffic is only the first step. Keeping that traffic is a whole different story altogether, one that can only have a happy ending if the information you provide is relevant, useful, and entertaining. The internet is a community. It takes a village to raise a PageRank.
Jeriann Watkins is a writer living in Boise, Idaho. She enjoys writing about many subjects, including white-hat SEO and new advances in internet technology. She currently works for Page One Power, a relevancy first SEO link building company. They have an in-depth link building blog full of free great information.
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