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Some fluctuations (between PR 3 and PR 2 in your case) do not mean anything bad. That's just natural.

As for the traffic, you didn't mention how huge was the drop in traffic and position? Chances are, that's another normal fluctuation

I say flocking to low-quality guest blogging is a bad solution to Penguin update. Penguin was not primarily about banning blog networks. It was about banning over-optimized links and link schemes. So Google will use the same tactics here: too much anchor text, too easy to identify!

Thanks for the kind words on MyBlogGuest, guys. We fight hard for the quality there trying to turn it into a valuable resource of awesome guest posts!

Let me try to be very clear. Please email if you have more questions (I got both of your emails, so feel free to use the email)

When guest blogging, are you promoting ONE site in your byline in each of the guest posts? There can be different pages from one site, but one and the same domain.

For example:

• Project name: SEOmoz
• Base domain: seomoz.org

Then when you decide to upload this page, for example: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/seomoz-secret-startup-success-rand-fishkins-tips/ - the tracker will automatically identify the backlink to track - http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seattle-startup-marketing - because it has seomoz.org base domain.

By providing the base domain, you make your own job easier because you don't have to manually provide the tool with the backlink to track!

While it surely up to you, but with guest posting, I'd rather focus on the quality of the blogs than the number of unique ones. That said, recurring guest articles at SEOmoz or Mashable will work much better than dozens of unique guest posts on low-quality blogs.

That doesn't mean you should focus only on huge established blogs.

Here's what I do:

• Identify several large blogs in my niche and guest post their at least once a month
• At the same time, be in the constant search of new promising blogs and guest post there as well (to discover new communities and build more links)

Looks like my answer here is: do both

Thanks! I am on it

Many of our rules are getting somewhat stricter while we are getting feedback from the publishers. We don't want our blog owners to leave because they come across spammy articles, right?

Also, try to understand them: bloggers don't want to feel used! Everyone wants to see an effort behind the article.

So yes, please, let's not be greedy and try to give our dear publishers what they want. In the end of the day, that's them who make our platform attractive, isn't that?

Asking for payment is not allowed at MyBlogGuest. You should report that user to us. We don't want other users to suffer from him

While you are pretty much free to do whatever you want at the forums (there people arrange things while discussing them), the Articles Gallery is editorial which means we are responsible for the quality of the articles we allow there.

I think I have said that a thousand times: the higher quality content, the higher quality the offers! So no matter what it may look, we moderate the gallery for you (we have no other reason to).

Now to the links. Let's be honest, we only hide articles where the link looks particularly dirty. You do not pay the blogger for placing that article - why do you want the link to look like it was paid for?

You have lots of freedom in your byline but please the in-body linking should be natural and modest.

Hey Ryan, let's try to figure everything out!

1. We are welcome blogs on any platforms. However we only support DIRECT post (sending guest articles directly to blogs) for Wordpress. Don't worry, that's an optional feature. Just ignore it if you don't have a Wordpress blog. You can still make offers in the gallery (provided you have verified your blog)

2. "So, now, I just write content in the site-used article generator?"

Generator? Not sure what you mean, but just in case: we allow only well-written authentical and useful content.

• Here's how guest blogging generally works
• Here are other members' review for you to know how people use the platform

3. To start off, you may want to browse PRIVATE forum to read about the rules, quality standards, other members' experiences, etc. Just look it over

4. Now, feel free to write a good article and try submitting it to the gallery.

• Here's how the gallery works (video)
• Here are most essential steps to writing a good guest post

5. "so basically I want my posts on competitors sites and that will help out with backlinks and authority?"

There's no actual strict way to use guest blogging for links. If you don't want to write for competing sites, brainstorm topics in neighboring niches.

Lastly, if you need more help, examples of good guest articles, actual guest post ideas on your topics, etc - I can always be reached via email (I am going to email you right away as well)

watch?v=qoIZ1vteee8

Which group  do you mean here? the GUEST BLOGGER group? Just wondering, maybe there are a few of them. Mind a link?

Thanks for the mention, Kristy!

While I never recommend using only one method (the best way is to combine a few of them like searching Google, guest blogging for blogs you read daily and know best, etc), adding MyBlogGuest to the mix is highly efficient: besides offering multiple actual guest blogging opportunities, there's a huge community built there as well as plenty of way to learn more about guest blogging tactics, general rules and ethics, etc

In regards to mentioning you are going to link to your site, I like this quote a lot: http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/graywolf-tweet.png

While I do agree with what Casey says, I do cross-link my guest posts around the web in a most natural way. My guest articles are all in the same niche, so they are somehow cross-related, so what I do is to mention my guest articles now and then. That effort has been noticed by the way:

Guest blogging on Bloggingpro she links to another post she wrote on cleverdude.com. I’m sure she’ll get invited back.

Not that I'd turn that into strategy but why not if those links make perfect sense and build better relations with bloggers I guest post for?

Thanks for the mention!

Hey Marie, good plan on starting guest blogging! Good luck. Here's my way to handle this:

1. No more than 2 links in the byline. More looks somewhat greedy and doesn't make sense anyway.

2. I wouldn't guest blog on a PR N/A site but in all other cases PR doesn't matter. There are very new but very active sites: lots of tweets, likes and comments, lots of activity. Even if they are PR0 or PR1 they might be worth a show for two reasons: (1) They are likely to attract traffic (2) They are likely to have accumulated some considerable link power but it's not that visible yet using the tools. If there's activity on the blog, it's most likely to grow very fast! Besides, these new blogs are usually much easier to communicate with!

3. None that I have faced, but here's one recent comment from one of our users: it looks like his guest post has outranked content on his own domain, so I'd pay attention to what you are guest blogging it to avoid your own guest posts competing with your own pages in Google search.

Thanks for promoting it, just wanted to drop a correction that it's really MyBlogGuest.com

Can you probably ask the blogger to change the title for it to be absolutely different?

Now that some time has passed, is there still an issue with rankings? I assume his post was bumped above you because it was a fresh results (hard to say without knowing your actual key phrase).

Anyway, my advice is: just keep promoting your page and don't let guest posts compete with your own pages. Why do you need to guest blog on exactly the same topics? Go broader: expand your topics. Blog in neighboring niches (instead of your own). This way you'll get varied offers and hence links (and avoid any competition in the future).

As for the usefulness of guest blogging in general, I'd respectfully disagree with EGOL here. I've build my blog and personal brand on guest blogging only. I've given away my best content to SEOMoz, SEJ, etc. I have all my most powerful backlinks and leads coming from guest posts. Guest blogging is powerful, you just need to approach it properly!

Hey! Sorry I am a bit too late on this one, but hopefully I can help!

I think I have been fair, 500 words of unqiue content with 1 anchor text link in the body, thats it.

Quite fair, but not exactly enough. The thing is, that's guest blogging and for bloggers to really want your content, you need to make it blog-friendly ("viral", in a way).

MyBlogGuest is no different from the whole Internet in this respect. Some topics always do well and get attention.

Usually these topics get picked in no time here:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Apple
• Google

So if you want to get quick offers, consider changing the focus towards the above topics. You can easily do that almost with any niche. For example, if you are into "loans":

• Free iPhone Apps to Quickly Calculate Your Loans

• HOW TO: Use Google Shortcuts to Estimate Your Loan

• etc

If you add some screenshots, CC-attributed images, etc, your articles will be picked in no time!

I hope that helps!