Guest Blogging

[DigitalEnvy]

If I am looking to guest blog for back links, do I need to reciprocate and provide guest blogging opportunities for them on my site?

OR is it better to ask other site's to link to articles on my client's page with the understanding I will link to their page (if they are not competition)?

I am trying to do some link building for a bankruptcy lawyer and I am considering possibly searching out guest blogging in different cities/states. Bankruptcy is primarily a federal matter, so reaching out to neighboring states. Not sure the client will be interested in this or not, but it's something I am considering. A lot of law firms have contact information  Thanks everyone!

[KeriMorgret]

You may be interested in reading this post from Matt Cutts of Google at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/.  The post starts with "Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company."

I manage the guest post submissions to YouMoz here at Moz, and just today turned down a 2000-word post with original content because it didn't meet our standards of having actionable information for our readers, and had a blatant and unrelated link to the author's company. The good sties are getting a lot stricter about guest posting, especially in 2014.

[MoosaHemani]

I love how Keri starts… J

She is right! If you are using guest blogging or links, you probably were doing it wrong from the starting. If I get the opportunity to write on Moz.com without a link, I would love to do that and this is because they have tons and literally tons of traffic that I can drive to my blog through my social profiles, blogs posts and more.

If your client is a Bankruptcy Lawyer, you should probably target good blogs in the finance and law industry where people actually read and write something meaningful. If your content will be powerful and worth reading you will get links naturally.

In my opinion, Guest Blogging was never a way to get links directly. Target good blogs where people actually read and see how business and links find a way to your website.

This kind of strategy usually takes time but reputation building always takes time.

Hope this helps!

[innovacy]

I think, Matt Cutts emphases "...if you’re doing a_lot_of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company" and not really saying, that guest blogging in itself is bad alltogether.

With "really bad company" he probably means the link neighbourhood, which I can see that this would be the case, by probably creating similar link profiles with spammers, when overdoing it with guest blogging.

And yes I agree with what was said, while you are at it already, doing all the effort for guest blogging, why not do it for targeting good audiences on useful blogs and not just search engines.

[DigitalEnvy]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I have read articles stating the same thing. Like everything with SEO, we want to use guest blogging at a minimal level. I certainly don't see a benefit to over doing it. but we still want to get a few back links.

We definitely want an audience, but we are working with the tools we have.

At this point we are considering reputable sites like major news outlets or state level law blogs. There are a few sites that sell "SEO services" like Alllaw, findlaw, or NOLO, but we have found that while they can get the client business, they don't actually do much to drive traffic to the actual website (ie those companies want to charge and arm and a leg, but not give you the option of really improving your SEO.)