Article Writing / Guest Post

[adiez1234]

Hi,

What are the advantage of posting an article / Guest post which

1. Doesn't have any links to my website (Just the name of my website)

2. Links are no follow

3. Links are do follow

In advantages, I am talking mainly about SEO benefits and not referral traffic.

[TomRayner]

OK, strictly from an SEO perspective as you request:

1. Slight, but potentially worthwhile.  There has been a lot of talk of lexical co-occurrence or co-citation (co-occurrence would be more accurate) that talk about Google being able to recognise your website or brand as an authority in its industry even without links.  In short, if your site can be cited on a number of authority websites, even without links, Google may see it as an authority and promote it in search engine results.  Here are a few relevant posts:

http://moz.com/blog/prediction-anchor-text-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-whiteboard-friday

http://www.iacquire.com/blog/its-not-co-citation-but-its-still-awesome/

I think we're a way off seeing this as a major part of the algorithm, but there's no harm in preparing for it.

2. More influential than 1), but in essence it is a link to your site that is telling Google not to pass on any PageRank, thus it shouldn't give any SEO benefit.  There are a few case studies that, over time a nofollow link will pass value (such as this one), but I wouldn't see it as beneficial as a dofollow link.

3. The biggest benefit SEO wise.  If the link is relevant, contextual, from a page with not a lot of outbound links and on a quality website, it can be a great link for your site.  Of course, if the link comes from an irrelevant site, with loads of spammy links, lots of outbound links and your link appears in the comments, footer or blogroll, it could actually do more harm than good.  So it obviously pays to research the site before hand.

Having said all that, I'd always combine guest blogging with engaging with an active audience, not just exclusively for SEO.  But as requested, there's my analysis and I hope it helps!