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Many speculations left many digital marketers contemplating whether they should just drop their interest about guest blogging as part of their search engine optimization strategy. There was an overwhelming response about Matt Cutts’ statement that guest blogging is dead and bloggers and online marketers alike are now in the dilemma whether guest blogging is wasting their time for SEO marketing or it remains to be a worthwhile optimization process worth pursuing.
Is Guest Blogging Really Dead?
This is the most important question that online marketers are dying to get an answer. Many SEO bloggers and marketers don’t think so. Guest blogging for many years has been an effective SEO strategy for link building and in getting a better online exposure for websites. While Cutts’ statement about guest blogging becoming an obsolete form of content SEO has a weight with respect to its implication to your Google search ranking, he is most likely referring to the abusive use of spam content in many guest blogging sites in an effort to promote link building strategies for SEO. Internet marketers should not mainly depend on their marketing efforts through guest blog submissions. While it retains its value as a good medium for building links and boosting your business website presence, it is not the only source of traffic that can improve your website search ranking.
Guest blogging remains relevant for SEO
Guest blogging is not different from writing content to any blog site as far as the search engine is concerned. The algorithm is not capable of differentiating a guest blog site from a regular blog site. The only difference is that you are submitting a content to be published on another site that isn’t yours with guest blogging. What makes guest blogging ineffective is when you post content of poor quality and contains more links than necessary thereby flagging the issue of content spamming. This is what makes a guest post irrelevant to the search engine.
Whether you are submitting a guest post to another site or publishing content to your own blog site, the same rule applies to make your content valuable to the search engine algorithm:
Write 100% unique content about subject matters that will be relevant and significant to your target audience.
Keep the number of links to your content to a maximum of two in order to avoid alerting the search engine for content spamming.
Link to reputable websites that are relevant to your content subject matter.
Use appropriate keyword or phrases.
Don’t use the same anchor text within your content. Instead try to modify your keywords for better search ranking results. Leverage on social media channels to promote your guest posts to generate organic traffic to your site.
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The Golden Rules for good guest blogging
It is not true that guest blogging is dead. There are many good reasons why it remains to be a good form of content marketing especially in working out your website ranking. However, it is necessary to do guest blogging by following these golden rules that will make your guest post valuable to the search engine:
Strictly submit high quality and not spammy content.
Do not consider guest blogging as a form of link farming. Otherwise, you will defeat the purpose of making your content relevant to the search engine. Always stick to your goal of delivering high quality content when submitting content for guest blogging and your content SEO strategy will do just fine.
Submit only to reputable guest blogging sites that publish only high quality content. Guest blogging farms will usually publish just any content on their site including poorly written ones which the Google search engine frowns upon with disapproval. Avoid submitting content to these sites because they also affect your website ranking along the process.
Focus on building relationships instead of growing links. Guest blog sites are aimed towards promoting an interactive community where people can discuss or comment about a published content. Make sure that your content is engaging enough to your target readers.
Guest Blogging for the marketers
Crossing the new hybrids of digital marketing channels, every marketer should be able to maximize the use of platforms available for them in order to be at par and upkeep with the competitions. Combining social networks and guest blog sites can be a good channel of communications in reaching your target audience. Here are some ways to help marketers make guest blogging work for them.
Write hot topics to captivate your customers
The consumers are always looking for hot, new and fresh content. Posting hot topics fresh from the news will likely give your customers a significant interest to read your guest posts. An update about your marketing industry, the latest research work about your products and other related hot topics that are relevant to your business products and services will build the bridge between your customers and your business. Spread the news too in your social media web pages!
More content optimization process
Marketers are often too engrossed in using keywords and phrases that they tend to overlook the most important part of their guest post, the quality of content. Optimizing your content will produce better results alongside a good search engine optimization process to build your post’s organic traffic. Use bullet points, italics and bold fonts, numbers and graphics to optimize content for better SEO.
Use Google Authorship
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Using Google authorship will help you keep track of your post’s performance in the search engine. You can integrate your Google Plus authorship with Google Analytics tools to help you track all views and clicks including traffic sources and visitors to your guest posts. Google Plus authorship will also help boost your authority and integrity as an author that will build your business reputation too.
Last words in closing
To clarify the implication about Matt Cutt’s statement indicating that guest blogging is dead, the Google icon mainly refers to the spammy guest posts that bloggers are becoming habitually engaged in doing lately. The practice of posting low quality and spammy content in guest blogging sites has a negative impact to your search engine ranking however bloggers and digital marketers are not precluded from engaging in the publication of high quality content whether in guest blog sites or not.
Content marketing remains to be very relevant for search engine optimization whether you are submitting to your own blog site or another guest blog sites. What matters is making your content relevant without the spammy links that the search engine looks with high disfavor.
If you are unsure how to leverage on guest blogging and other search engine optimization strategies to grow your business rankings, DIGITAL WARRIORS can optimize your business marketing strategies for more productive results.
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