4 Tips to Keep in Mind If You’re Still Using Guest Blogging for Building Links

Still using guest blogging for building backlinks?
Although some experts in the online marketing and SEO world now think that guest blogging isn’t an effective technique anymore, we like to believe otherwise.
Guest blogging is still a valid technique to drive traffic, increase exposure, build backlinks, and even kickstart a new business. However, times have changed, and now you have to be much more careful with guest blogging to avoid a Google penalty.
In this blog post, we discuss a few very important tips to remember if you are using guest blogging for link building.
Ready? Let’s begin.

1. Don’t Overdo It

You know one of the biggest reasons why guest blogging is gradually losing importance when it comes to link building?
That’s because people tend to overdo it. Anything in excess, after all, lose its effectiveness, and over-reliance on guest blogging for the purposes of generating backlinks has produced a somewhat similar result.
It starts looking artificial, and that’s what Google hates and doesn’t want to see.
The goal is to build a natural link profile for your website. If 90% of your website’s links are coming from guest blogging, how is it going to appear to Google?
The links will appear to be forced and unnatural. This is why you must treat guest blogging as just a part of your overall backlink strategy. It can’t be the entire strategy.
In short, diversify.
Publish on other blogs to build backlinks — there’s nothing wrong with it — but don’t make it the only source of your links.

2. Choose the Websites Carefully

Here’s a truth about guest blogging:
It can be tough. Naturally, you want to incline towards easier routes, i.e., websites that are easily giving you the opportunity to get your posts published on them.
In the end, you will realize that there are a few very good websites that you want to target but are near impossible to get published on. On the other hand, there are plenty of websites that are willing to take your offer and have your post published but, unfortunately, they aren’t very good.
It is always simple and fast to take the easier route, but it isn’t always good.
Carefully choose the websites that you want to have your posts appear on.
For instance, if there a website that is easy-to-get but looks shady, appears to have a very bad user experience, over-optimises content with ads and affiliate links, does not have a mobile-friendly version, then you don’t want to be associated with a low-quality website like that.
Google could penalise it soon. So that’s not a good option for you.
Before finalising a website, carefully vet it and see if it’s a good source to have a backlink from.

3. Related Websites Only

Here is another important guest blogging tip to remember.
The websites that you pick to publish your posts on must be directly related to your niche and target audience.
If they are not, that’s a poor backlink, and Google penalises websites that have too many backlinks from unrelated websites. Google Penguin, ever since its introduction, has targeted websites with link farms and unrelated or low-quality backlinks.
So, for example, if your website is in the online marketing niche, build backlinks from other online marketing websites and blogs.

4. Diversify the Anchor Text

This is what most people do:
They have a keyword in mind that they want to rank for. So for every link they generate by publishing guest posts on other websites, they use the same keyword as the anchor text.
By doing so, they hope that Google would — eventually — associate their web page for that keyword and rank their web page higher in the SERPs for that keyword.
This used to be a valid and effective SEO technique years ago, but it’s not anymore.
Like most other things in the search engine optimisation world, things have evolved. Search engines like Google have become smarter. They can’t be gamed so easily by feeding them a certain keyword over and over again.
To Google, this is unnatural link-building behavior.
Ask yourself: do people on the web — without your interference — would use the same keyword over and over again, every single time, to link to a certain page on your website?
No.
Never, in fact.
People would use various anchor texts, and that’s what makes a link profile look natural.
Just because this time the anchor text is in your control — because you’re publishing the posts on other websites and creating the link — you should not repeat the same keywords in the anchor text every time.

Final Words

Contrary to common belief, guest blogging is not dead.
It is still up and kicking if you do it the right way.
Make sure to follow the tips mentioned above in this article — and avoid the mistakes, too — when using guest blogging to build backlinks.