What Is Guest Posting?

Source: Seobility

Date First Published: 26th October 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 4/10

CONTENTS

Effect On SEO
Do I Have To Pay For Guest Posting?

Learn more about what guest posting is in this article.

Guest posting, also known as guest blogging, is the act of writing content for someone else’s website or blog. Guest posting is used to boost the guest's domain authority by posting backlinks back to their website, attract traffic back to their website (referral traffic), and boost their brand awareness. It is unlikely that a site owner would reject a well-written and free piece of content that can attract visitors to their website as long as it is related to the topic of their website.

Website owners often have guidelines for guest posts, such as no duplicate or plagiarised content, a minimum word length, and the types of content allowed. Once the guest has finished writing their article, it will take time for the site owner to approve it, depending on the number of guest posts they receive per day. Once approved, the guest post will appear on the site owner's website and their posts will contain their name. The guest can fill out their profile, which can include information about who they are and a list of their posts.

Effect On SEO

Guest posting now focuses more on site authority and relevance as search engines now focus on the quality of backlinks rather than the quantity. As of now, guest-posting is a white hat off-page SEO and link building method where high-quality guest posts are published on another website that has value for readers. Backlinks are added from the other website to the guest's website in the post or the guest's profile.

However, writing low-quality guest posts with the sole intent of building spammy backlinks is seen as a black hat SEO technique. Guest posting is in line with search engine guidelines as long as the posts are of high-quality and are not solely designed to artificially boost the search engine ranking of websites.

Note:

When guest posting for SEO, make sure that the backlinks are 'dofollow' and not marked with the rel="nofollow" attribute. If they are marked with that attribute, it will instruct search engine bots to not crawl that link or pass any authority to the guest's website, having no SEO benefits.

Do I Have To Pay For Guest Posting?

Guest posting is often free of charge, although posting on high authority sites, such as UK Business Magazine and London Business News requires a fee. Free guest posting on some websites might come with limitations, such as the number of backlinks allowed, the time that the content will stay on that website, the number of images allowed, etc.