Does Anyone Have Evidence of the Effectiveness of Guest Posts?

[SparkplugDigital]

I think the tactic of guest posts is a good way to earn links to a site. But I have a few concerns:

-Links are usually at the very end of the page.
-Guest posts are on blog posts which usually have much less link juice than top level pages.
-A lot of sites abuse guest posting for spammy anchor text, e.g. "cheap auto loans"
-Some SEOs have said that Google will devalue guest post links in the future (due to abuse)

Does anyone have examples, tests, or case studies of guest posting helping a site improve their rankings? (or an opinion on the value of guest posting)

[AlanBleiweiss]

My personal experience is that done right, it brings a lot of diverse value.  Keys to follow:

• Find highly relevant, topically related blogs to get the posts on
• Write an article that's truly valuable to that blogs readers
• Include a link in the article (2nd or 3rd paragraph) to the site you're targeting
• Be sure the content is truly relevant to the link you're embedding, and that the link is truly realistic in its use
• be very attentive to comments - respond with respect, appreciation and value
• Include links to other sites and blog articles when appropriate for even more trust, and occasionally even more interaction from the owners/bloggers of THOSE sites

When I followed that path, my own blog and site grew in visits and inbound links of varying quality and weight (which is natural, as it should be, as far as a healthy inbound link profile goes), and established trust and authority signals critical to my goals.

So I always recommend this path to clients and those that follow through find the same value return.

[esztanyo]

Thanks for the response Alan.  We haven't explored this route yet, but I am becoming more thoroughly convinced and am practicing some tips offered by another SEOmozzer.  I agree that it seems to be all in the blog selection.