This past week I have been reading a lot about guest blogging to write this article in which I try to gather all the techniques to use
guest blogging without penalties and in the most effective way
. I will not enter into the debate of whether guest blogging is alive or dead, because if I write this article it is precisely because it is still useful for our SEO or to improve our image or get more sales.
This article has the following sections:
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What is guest blogging?
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Define the purpose of our guest article.
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Define the appropriate theme of our article.
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Characteristics of our guest article.
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Establish ourselves as a relevant and authoritative author.
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Choose the right websites.
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Put everything together in our guest article.
What is guest blogging?
Guest blogging is a common practice among webmasters with which we allow a guest author to write one or more articles on our blog.
Allowing other authors to write for our blog does not have to be a bad thing, since invited authors may have some kind of specialization in the subject of their article by contributing valuable content to our blog.
On the other hand, when we are the invited authors, we must take into account a series of guidelines so that the guest blogging is effective and without penalties. Next we will see step by step these guidelines and that we must take into account to create an appropriate guest article.
Define the purpose of our guest article.
When we write a guest article we have to take into account that it must be of the highest quality content but just as important is to define the objective of our guest article.
There has been much talk about guest articles to get links and improve SEO, but the truth is that these articles are an excellent opportunity to:
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Gain authority as a blogger or author.
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Let us know on social networks.
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Get customers
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Improve the image of our brand.
Surely there are more possibilities, so we have to clearly define the objective of our article. For example, if what we want is to gain authority as a blogger or author, we must write a really good article that catches the reader's attention. In this way, the next time the reader encounters an article of ours in another blog, he will know that it is quality content.
Another example would be to improve our professional profile through high quality articles that demonstrate to the public that we have specialized knowledge in some subject. With this type of articles we not only improve the image of our brand, but also allows us to get customers.
Define the appropriate theme of our article.
We have to stop to think about what we are going to talk about in our article. Generally nobody invests time in this step and is one of the most important for the guest blogging to be effective.
In general, the best result is to choose topics in which we are specialized and that we easily develop. This will allow us to write quality content with great value for readers, as they will see our experience reflected.
Characteristics of our guest article.
Our article must have the same characteristics as a quality article for our own blog. We talk about extension, number of links, add images, take care of spelling, presentation, etc ...
I will not repeat myself, since the applicable norms are the same as we wrote in the articles
how to make quality reviews
and
keys to create articles with quality content
.
In what I am going to stop is in the links, since the desire to have a link pointing to our website can lead us to make mistakes.
When we add a link to the guest article, we must ensure that that link is there to complement the information in the article, it must be a useful link.
Imagine that our guest article is about creating a WordPress blog and we link to our website that deals with cooking recipes, it makes no sense and we can be penalized if we do this as usual practice our guest posts. Now imagine that the article is about Linux Ubuntu LTS and in our blog we have an article that explains the meaning of the acronym LTS, because that would be a valid link and that is to complement with useful information.
Establish ourselves as a relevant and authoritative author.
Many times it is interesting to
have several guest articles on the blog and that users know us by our articles
. To achieve this, you have to prepare quality articles that capture the attention of readers.
Being a recognized author in a blog that is not ours is a great opportunity to improve our image and reach more public.
Choose the right websites.
A very important step is to choose the right blogs or websites for our guest blogging purpose. As we are going to write high quality content, we must point to websites with authority or with a minimum of recognition.
When we talk about websites with authority we do not only mean that they are well positioned in search engines, since there may be websites that have a bestial traffic of social networks and would serve us perfectly if our goal goes beyond getting a link.
Put everything together in our guest article.
Finally, we have to combine everything seen and we will secure an effective guest blogging. Following these steps, which in all of them prioritizes quality content over getting a link, we will never have problems with penalties from Google.