Guest Blogging. Is it a good thing?

[Studio33]

Hi,

We are looking into guest blogging to get links out there to our site.  Is there any pitfalls to avoid?  Any good advice to share?  Is it actually a good thing to do?

We have seen some site that offer to help for example http://guestblogged.com are these good or a con?

All advice welcomed.

Thanks

Andrew

[TomRayner]

Hi Andrew

Guest blogging can be a great thing - if done correctly.

I'm never much of a fan of a service that makes you blindly commit, so if you were going to go further with that company, I'd request some samples of their work and websites that they have written for.

But to be honest, I think you'd have better luck in looking for guest blogging prospects yourself. You can do this in a number of ways - MyBlogGuest is a popular place to start finding prospects.  I like searching for blogs listed on Technorati as well.  Gaz Copeland also put together a brilliant spreadsheet that will combine your target keyword with a number of search terms, so you can search Google for sites that have pages like "write for us" or "contribute to this site" etc.  This can be a great way of mining prospects.

Now that you have some prospects, here's how I filter them: the primary feature that I look for is an engaged audience for the industry I am working for.  That means, looking at the social shares and comments left on the blog in previous posts.  This is key for me, as I see guest blogging as a traffic and relationship builder first and as an SEO tool second - for the simple reason that I believe traffic and relationships are higher converters.

For the SEO aspect, I look at a solid PA and DA score and also I verify their backlinks using Open Site Explorer.  Check that the highest quality links going to the root domain look to be relevant and editorial and not just spammed somewhere like in a comment section.

You may have heard from some doomsayers that guest blogging is going to be penalised - these are exaggerated claims but not entirely unfounded.  Guest blogging has been spammed by some and you do see some really crap quality articles put together for the sole purpose of getting a link (on equally crap blogs).  You want to avoid those.  This is another reason why I primarily look for engaged audiences and social media interactions - if you find blogs like these, you're more than likely to have found a place that only wants quality content.  Get your content on there and everyone wins.

Hope this helps you to get started!

[bashseo]

Great answer Tom! Thanks for adding something of value!