Worth contributing articles to a Page Rank 1 site?

[yatesandcojewelers]

My intuition tells me that it is not going to help with any SEO link benefit by posting an article as a guest writer on a Page Rank site of #1.  It's a rather new fashion content site.

The article would be informative and not a sales pitch.  The only link is to our url home page in the bio.

I've been told that links from low page ranking sites don't help anymore. But maybe over time the site will achieve higher PR status, and then the link in it would help us?

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

ron

[gazzerman1]

That would be considered a paid links and not one you have earned because the article is written by yourself.

If you nofollow the link then that would be OK.

Google is clamping down everywhere they do not want people to do this sort of thing and acquire a dofollow link as a result.

They want you to go to the editor and tell them you have a wonderful business and if they like you business they may want to include it in some way in an article/blog to their customers.

[EGOL]

Do an extra good job on this article and publish it on your own site.

If it is a kickass article then it will pull traffic, get shared, get liked, get linked.

If you can write articles like that then you sure don't want to be giving it to anybody else's website.   Why would you want to earn benefits like that for anyone else?  And if you give a lot of this stuff away then you have created new competitors and fed existing competitors.

BET ON YOURSELF.  NOT ON SOME OTHER GUY"S WEBSITE.

If you can't write articles like that about your business specialty then you might hire a professional writer and let them interview you about the most important topics that people in your industry or who use your products need to know.

Writing articles, press releases, blog posts, etc  and giving them away to other websites is how a lot of people have gotten into penguin problems.

[yatesandcojewelers]

Thank you for the information.  I know doing exact match keyword links is BAD.  (got in trouble for that!)  But I didn't think just a home page url link was gray/black hat.  What about guest blogging?  Isn't that similar - and I thought that was something that was good for getting links.  or maybe those are no-followed.  If so, why do folks want to do guest blogging?  (except for the obvious reason of getting some traffic through click throughs)

[EnvoyWeb]

I think the strategy of writing the article so Google will give you more link juice is definitely an idea that has died with the killer Google updates... but I'm sure a consensus of experts will tell you that writing it for the purpose of reaching out to that site's community and nofollowing it isn't a bad idea.

The strategy of primarily posting on your site is a good one, but I wouldn't necessarily rule out reaching out to parallel niches with a guest post regardless of the pagerank of the site.

If  you haven't already done this, consider the level of engagement on that site.  Consider whether the traffic meets the profile of your ideal client... if you aren't convinced of these factors, save your guest post for a situation where you could say yes in both considerations.

[yatesandcojewelers]

Thank you Gary.  I am trying to learn the nuances of this stuff.  And it is so awesome when folks like you post replies.  I really like moz.com community.  But this is a bit confusing because wouldn't guest blogging be harmful for seo then?

[yatesandcojewelers]

Thanks sir.  Good advice.  This site doesn't have much traffic, or hardly any engagement.  So I shall take your advice and save my guest post for greener pastures!

[EGOL]

What about guest blogging?  Isn't that similar .

Yes, it is similar but it has every problem that submitting junk articles to junk websites has.  I never do it.

I thought that was something that was good for getting links.

It's great for getting links.  But this is exactly what got lots of people into penguin problems.

**Why do folks want to do guest blogging?  **

They are so desperate for links that they are willing to create new competitors and feed existing competitors.  They are not confident enough in themselves to put the article on their site and enjoy the traffic that it brings (or their content is terrible and will not interest people).

I have been watching SEO forums for over ten years and have seen lots of people come in crying about their rankings going to crap.  If you look at lots of these people today they have been hit by penguin problems and those come mainly from links connived through press releases, directories, guest blogging and article syndication.

They either think that they can get away with it or they have not figured it out.  All you have to do is listen to Matt Cutts on these subjects.

[yatesandcojewelers]

Great direct advice, which I shall follow.

I guess the 2nd step is after creation of good valuable content is to .... share it.  I'm thinking in my case sharing with jewelry industry news websites, bridal websites, wedding planning, mens fashion websites.  And if they think it is valuable content, they can mention it and send a link to our content.  So this is good, right? 
I'm developing an indepth article as we speak that I think is valuable.