Is Guest Posting Done and Dusted? 6 reasons that prove otherwise

What is Guest posting?
What went wrong?
Should we continue guest blogging? 6 reasons which says you should
1. Brand awareness
2. Authentic guest post can’t go wrong
3. Popular blogs fueled by guest posts
4. Increased web traffic volume
5. Domain Authority
6. Backlink

It’s the year 2022. Driverless cars are a thing, coronavirus outbreak has changed the way we work, hyperloops are being worked upon, AI chatbots are in action, omnichannel marketing is compulsory, people are following memes to catch up with world news!

And here you are, in a fix and unsure whether guest posting still works or not?

Also, before reaching this blog, if you’ve read this statement, “So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done”, then a consoling hug for you!

I am assuming that you’ve already read Matt Cutts’s blog about guest posting being completely dusted. About that, the digital world is already in a lot of chaos and his blog just fueled the fire. Digital marketers, online publishers and content writers started opposing guest posts on their blogs and even deleted older guest posts and completely went berserk after that fearing heavy penalty from Google.

Matt Cutts himself mentioned in his blog that “Guest posting used to be a respectable thing” and I agree to that. Rather, I would also refer to guest posting as the online version of ‘word-of-mouth’.

But, did you observe the “used to be” from the above statement?

So, is it no more?

HODOR!

Before we conclude anything, let’s go through a layman explanation of what guest posting is.

What is Guest posting?

It is a content driven strategy of either writing blogs to be uploaded on somebody else’s website or inviting other bloggers and content writers to write for your website. In both the cases, the blog or the written content is not written by the website owners, hence, guest posts.

It is supposed to be a very organic and authentic way of reaching out to a wider audience who share similar interest in the industry or niche that the original website deals with.

What went wrong?

Primary factors associated with guest posting that created the turbidity are as follows:

Poor quality (wrong grammar, misspellings, irrelevant content)
Length of content (<700 words, a poor strategy of ‘multiple shallow posts-multiple sites-multiple backlinks’)

A study (ref #16) by backlinko stated that content with a word count around 2000 words are seen to rank higher.

Plagiarized content written by self-proclaimed guest posters (read imposters!)
Links from sites with poor domain authority
Article spinning (create a spinoff of the same post just for placing it in numerous websites to get more and more backlinks)
Posts with heavy keyword stuffing

However, most importantly, we shall be discussing in-depth on ‘backlinking’.

In the initial days, guest posting and guest blogging benefitted numerous websites to achieve their dream ranks in Google search page. Specifically, backlinking gained serious popularity and contributed to higher ranking on the SERP as well.

Backlinking was then a method to direct the readers to another website or another blog which had relevant content of similar nature that the user might like reading about. Linking relevant content that might add value to the users was the honest intent of backlinking. In addition, authors of those content could gain visibility themselves and help other genuine authors to get a piece of the pie as well.

With time, backlinking became one of the prime reasons to rank high in the SERP and this is where people started creating a business outta this.

Heard about bartering?

It is as simple as someone asking me to place their content on my blog and in return they want backlinks from my blog to their website. Here, I get new content (which is one of the many requirements for Google ranking) and in return I place a link to that other website on my user’s screen.

Where is the problem then? Well, we are after all humans and we are best at exploiting. Aren’t we?

As if pizza wasn’t enough, now we want pineapple on top of it!

So, people started trading backlinks and started linking random sites without even scrutinizing those websites in terms of content quality, relevance, context, domain authority etc.

Do you remember the 7 sins? “Gluttony” is one of those and it states that, ‘too much of nothing is good’.

Businesses were introduced in the name of ‘pay-per-post’ which incentivize people to browse the internet and post content on their behalf to gain more and more backlinks!

In 2012, Google even penalized its Chrome browser for manipulating the pageRank of its own homepage. As a result, the overall pageRank for the Chrome browser homepage was demoted for 60 days and the rank went from 9 to 7 which made it disappear from the first page of the SERP for certain keywords.

In another incident, New York Times conducted an SEO investigation on popular retailing firm J.C.Penney on the grounds of manipulating page ranking by misusing backlinks. As a result, they had to start rigorous cleaning of such links and also had to fire their SEO firm SearchDex.

This couldn’t go unnoticed for long and Google introduced their Panda and Penguin algorithms and ranked sites with genuinely good content and slammed sites involved in link farming. Also, it marked the end of pay-per-post.

Should we continue guest blogging? 6 reasons which says you should

Brand awareness

Guest posting has been a very effective and proven method to spread brand awareness for several years. If you believe that TV ads or Radio ads work, then you should also have faith in guest posts as it can help your blog gain the required exposure and publicity. Being able to post even one blog on a website with high domain authority could lead you to a bigger relevant audience.

Authentic guest post can’t go wrong

Ingenuity will always be held at a high position in every industry. Writing original, relevant and valuable content on other websites or placing such posts on your own website will always be a value add for the readers. No matter what Google might have in their algorithmic pipeline, authentic contents would never be attacked.

How do you react to a close friend who is stating his experience with a product he just bought? I would have believed him and might give that product a shot. That’s a ‘word-of-mouth’ way of advocating a product and it still works, provided it comes from an authentic source.

Increased web traffic volume

Another salient feature of guest posts is that it can bring in more visitors to the websites and increase the overall volume of web traffic. This means, more the number of traffic, better is the probability of conversion and obviously a bigger customer base. However, the sole condition remains the same i.e. Zero spam.

Domain Authority

Quality content even in the form of guest posting can help in increasing your website’s domain authority. It increases your visibility and can make you famous in the vertical/niche that you deal with.

Having a good domain authority is one of the many factors that Google uses to place any website at a higher rank and here is a study (ref #52) by backlinko which verifies the same.

Backlink

That’s right. Here we meet again! Did we come full circle? Not exactly. Like we already discussed, getting backlinks to your website is a good thing in terms of SEO provided the links are from a higher domain authority website. Also, providing backlinks from your content to other websites is a good thing in terms of SEO, collaboration and importantly, providing value and quality to your users. While you do so, please ensure that those sites provide genuine, relevant and spam free content whom you’re providing backlinks to. Whatever you do, please don’t buy or sell backlinks, ever!

Key takeaways from here are as follows:

Never spam and do not allow backlinks to irrelevant sites with poor content to be placed within your site.
Try to contribute to higher domain authority sites through guest posting with genuine valuable content
Be specific with your expertise and choose your niche strategically to generate quality content. And if you find someone who claims to be an expert in all fields, simply ignore! You’ve met ‘Jack’, of all trades. So, just avoid it.

Hence, guest posting has benefitted many in the previous years and will continue to benefit genuine people. It's true when Mr. Cutts said that guest posting has gotten too spammy but now I hope you know how you can make it work.

So, don’t stick a fork in it! At least not today!

How To Use Competitor Analysis To Build Powerful Backlinks

Building backlinks, along with having great on-page SEO can be an extremely powerful tool. But what many people don’t realise is, you can build a robust backlink profile by performing competitor analysis.

Keep reading to find out how valuable this strategy is and how you can implement it yourself.

What Makes A Powerful Backlink?

Building backlinks is about getting someone to link from their site to yours. Each back link to your website works as a vote. The more votes your page has linking to it, the better.
Google will see that you’ve got great content that other people find valuable.

What this means is, the more votes your page has, the higher up the SERPs your site will be.

Google introduced this way back in 1998, with the back link algorithm. When it first rolled out, it was flawed, to say the least. Google tended to side with sites with an extensive back link profile rather than a website that had quality links.

Luckily, Google has slowly rectified this, and now the quality of the link is held over the quantity. This update meant any site with bad backlinks got penalised.

This resulted in a lot of websites that were in the number one spot to tank.

Building your backlink profile doesn’t have to expensive, nor does it have to be challenging. But, before you think about building links, you first need to understand what makes a good backlink.

For a strong backlink, you need to consider:

The anchor text
DA/DR of the referring site
Dofollow links Vs. NoFollow
New Content Vs. Old conten

But, that’s not the only thing you have to understand, you also need to know how to make the links look natural.

When you have too many links pointing to a page using the same anchor text, it sets Google’s alarm bells off. This factor could end up with your site getting penalised for manipulating links.

To ensure this doesn’t happen to you the best option is to use a mix of:

Brand
Page URL
Topic Keywords
Exact Keywords
Misc words like ‘click here’

By understanding and implementing the above, you can start creating your own backlink profile. But this takes a lot of time, so instead of working harder, why not work smarter?

The competitors for your keywords all have something in common, and that’s their backlink profile. And the absolute best way of finding this out is by performing a competitor backlink analysis.

What is Competitor Backlink Analysis?

It involves you taking a close look at all of your competitors’ backlinks for a specific keyword. One thing you can count on is your competitors have spent a lot of time and money developing their backlink profile.

And if you haven’t got deep pockets, it can hard to compete against them. Or at least it can unless you start working smarter.

This means using their own backlink profile to help you beat them in the rankings. To do this, there are several tools to help you steal a backlink profile, which you can check out here.

For us, the best tool is Ahrefs, but people also like tools such as SEMrush.

Ahrefs allows you to enter a competitor’s page and find out which sites are linking to it. It will show you things like the DR of the website and what anchor text they used to link with.

How To Perform Backlink Analysis With Ahrefs?

Below I’m going to guide you through the process I use to perform a backlink analysis. By following the guide below, you’ll know precisely what backlinks your competitors are using, which ones are good, and how to win them for yourself.

Sound good?

Great!

1. List of your competitors

You only need to pick the top five sites that are ranking for the keyword you want to hit. You don’t have to worry about how big or small the site looks compared to yours. We only want to know what links they are using to place in the top spots.

It’s best to use the search console you like to rank with, all consoles have different ranking factors. So, if you want to rank on Google, then use that to find the competitors.

And collect the top 5 organic URLs.

2. Find Their Backlinks Using Ahrefs

You’ll need to go to the Ahrefs site explorer page and search for your competitor’s page URL that you want to compete with.

Once the search is complete, go to the left and click the link called ‘Backlinks’. This page will give you a list of all the in-links pointing to that page.

Now you need to export the list of URLs for each one of your competitors.

3. Analyse The Backlinks

This is the point where things start to get a little bit tricky and can take a bit of time. You need to look through each list and open every URL.

You’ll then need to look through each page and ask yourself a fundamental question:

What did my competitors do to win the link?

This question will give you a great feel of what you need to do to replicate it. I’m not going to lie this is time-consuming and at times feels like you’re hitting your head against the wall. But the results really do speak for themself.

4. Create Outstanding Content

If you’re trying to win a backlink, your content can’t be anything less than outstanding. I mean let’s be honest, you wouldn’t link to a bad page so why should someone else?

You need to make sure that your content offers value to the reader and the person linking to your page. This could be by solving a problem or providing relevant information.

Once the content is completed, you can start pitching the owners of the website.

5. Pitching Your Content

Creating outstanding content isn’t the only thing that needs to be perfect. Chances are the website owner receives hundreds of emails a week, all asking for the same thing.

Bad pitches end up in the trash; it really is that simple. A good pitch, on the other hand, catches their attention and gets them speaking to you.

You only get one chance to pitch your content, so you better make sure you do a good job.

Round-Up

An excellent backlink profile is one of the most critical factors for SEO performance. Before you start building a backlink profile, all of your on-page SEO must be on point. If it’s not, your linking efforts could be wasted.

Remember each backlink to your page acts as a vote of confidence, which Google will take into account when ranking your page. In essence, the more votes a page receives the more trust it gets from Google.

Make sure you understand what makes a good backlink and how to make it look natural. If you don’t, Google could penalise your site for spammy looking Wikipedia backlinks.

Finally, the most effective way of creating a winning backlink profile is by analysing what your competitors are doing.

They’ve already invested a lot of time and money in creating a linking profile that works; all you have to do is copy them.

Wikipedia Backlinks: How to make Wiki edits that get 100% approval

This post covers the following points:

SEO Benefits of Building Wikipedia Backlinks.
Warming Up your Wikipedia Account.
How to build Wikipedia Backlinks?
Bonus Hack: How to get Wikipedia links in minutes?
What Doesn't work on Wikipedia?
Is it wise to Buy Wikipedia Backlinks?

“Wikipedia - Where the research begins and ends” 😎.

Wikipedia! The big daddy for all students, scholars, researchers and also the marketers like us. God knows how I would have cleared my exams, if Wikipedia wasn’t there. Thanks Wikipedia 🙌

Talking about today, most of the search queries we type on Google, contain a Wikipedia link in the SERP.

After all, there is a reason it is known as Encyclopedia of Internet.

No wonder, the site gets 20 billion page views per month. Huge 😮

Wait, here are some more numbers to surprise you.

Since, it is a free encyclopedia of Internet maintained by its readers, anybody can create or edit the content on Wikipedia. Even if you don’t have an account, Wikipedia allows you to contribute from your IP address.

SEO Benefits of building Wikipedia Backlinks

Since most of you already know the huge benefits of building Wikipedia links, I am going to keep it short. Afterall, this is not the prime reason you are reading this post 😛

Being Google’s one of the favorite sites (because of the authority it has), Wikipedia has immense benefits from SEO point of view.

Having a wiki backlink means:

A strong endorsement for your brand.
Genuinely relevant referral traffic.
A positive impact on your organic ranks.
Building opportunity of generating natural inbound backlinks from other websites as well.

These four points are also the ultimate goal of any successful SEO strategy and having a Wikipedia backlink serves all of them. What else do you wish for?

Note: FYI, Wiki links are nofollow and unless you are living under a rock, Nofollow links too add value to site and when it is from Wikipedia, a single link can bring drastic changes.

Before We Start

Wikipedia is a community for the people by the people. Do not think of it as a link farm. When creating backlinks from Wikipedia, always make sure to Be a giver, add value to whatever you contribute.

What if a spammy content/ link added by you come through your son working for school project. You wouldn’t like your son to consume wrong information would you?

If you plan to add any irrelevant content for the sake of getting backlink, you must drop the idea. Wikipedia is the place for very high authority content.

If possible, pay Wikipedia back. After all, It’s a site run by donations. Be a humble part of their donation campaigns. Here is the link.

Warming Up your Wikipedia Account

Do you know a Wiki moderator or user has the authority to check the entire history/contributions of any other user?

Yes, they do. And if they find only bad edits, false claims and promotional links, further edits made from that account are never likely to get approved.

That’s where this process of warming up your account steps in. The hack here is to offer value to the community first. Just like we do on Quora (or any other online community site), contribution comes before promotion. Wikipedia is no different.

It is all about Giving back to the community.

Wiki moderators always welcome insightful content and citations that helps to grow the community.

Hence once you have created an account on Wikipedia, don’t jump upon promoting your blog or webpage directly. Instead focus upon building authority first and that will happen only by posting valuable content without expecting anything back.

Wondering how? Let me share how you can warm up your Wikipedia account:

Start by proofreading and editing small typography or grammar errors on random Wikipedia pages. This shows you are a regular reader of Wikipedia and want this platform to convey an error free information to all.

Add some valuable content (one or two line statements or a paragraph) to the Wikipedia pages where you think there is a need of more authoritative information. Don’t be too pushy, add only where there is a scope. Add nothing but value, and approval won’t be difficult.

Add some high quality resources first as citations to Wikipedia pages. You can even add a Wikipedia link to the relevant Wiki pages.

Start slow and gradually increase your pace. Don’t make too many edits on your first day of signup.

Warming up your account this way gives it a good authority in the eyes of moderators. Populate your account with such edits before trying to add your promotional link.

Here is a quick history of my account.

Once your account is warmed up and you are all set to put your first attempt to get a wiki backlink, let’s jump to the real meat.

How to build Wikipedia backlinks?

There are three ways to acquire a backlink from Wikipedia:

By identifying broken link opportunities
By locating missing citations
By enhancing the existing content

Let’s go through all of these processes one by one.

Method 1. Identifying broken link opportunities on Wiki pages

Just like any other website on the internet, Wikipedia too contains a lot of pages with broken links.Wondering what’s in there for you? Well, a great opportunity to replace this broken link with yours. Here’s how!

Step 1: Finding wiki pages with broken links:

You would be surprised to know but Wiki moderators have made an archive for the Wikipedia pages having dead links inside. Isn’t it great? All you have to do is to check them one by one and see where your link suits best. Sounds easy, right?

However, as opposed to being handy, it is rather a time consuming task to manually sift through all the pages in the find of a suitable one for you.

But, don’t worry, Google holds your hand here with its advanced search options. Let’s have a look, how Google does it.

Google advanced search:

There are some common footprints to be used with Google advanced search queries that help you with finding a Wikipedia page which is in need of editing. Some of these are:

“This page needs citations”
“deadlink”

Type a Google search query in the following format and Google will fetch you a list of Wikipedia pages that need backlinks.

For example, here I have used the following search query for this post.

site:Wikipedia.org “marketing” “deadlink”

With an extensive list before you, the next step for you to do is to find the most relevant page that you can add your link to.

For me, this page of “Negative Campaigning” (highlighted in Blue) is a great opportunity for my edits. You are most likely to find deadlinks in the references below the main content. Just like I did! (Highlighted in Blue)

When you find the one that looks fit, move ahead with the further process.

Since I am not a big fan of using tools here, I am not adding any. For me, tools tell only half of the story and I believe in complete execution. However, if you want, you can try WikiGrabber for the purpose.

Step 2: Perform a quick run check for the dead link’s history

The next step is to check the history of dead link. Because, without checking what the links was about, you can’t be sure of your relevancy, right?

Wayback Machine can help you with this. Use the Wayback Machine to extract the original content.

Simply type the dead URL into the Wayback machine to track its history. This is what I got when I checked for my dead link here.

Similarly, you too need to check the dead link for what it used to contain before it went dead. This is essential to get a clear idea of what information you should include in order to get a fast approval from moderators. It works as an overview for you.

Step 3: Recreate a valuable content on your site for that 404 page

Don’t write a content just for the sake of getting a backlink. I understand that no matter how much we deny, that’s our end goal but if you ignore quality, this link won’t stick around for long.

You need to make sure your link is backed by high quality content that aligns with your blog voice and theme. Be relevant and follow all the aspects that Wiki moderators are expecting from a content. Here’s how you can do that:

Be a giver:

As I have mentioned before, Wikipedia is a community by people, for people. If your sole purpose is to get a backlink, it won’t work out. Wikipedia is known for providing value, be a part of it. Do a value addition first and you will notice that getting a backlink isn’t that difficult.

Quality is never optional:

As they say, if your attention to quality is overlooked, things will soon start falling apart. Wikipedia is no different. Here’s how you can ensure quality:

Take grammatical errors seriously. They can ruin your whole content in seconds.
Add images, screenshots, and graphs wherever necessary.
Use short paragraphs, add proper formatting to make it easy to read.

Back it up with extensive research:

Wikipedia is known for having well researched content. To that end, if your plan is to add any fluff over there, I suggest you drop the idea. Here’s how you can present your content as the authoritative one:

Add relevant links to high authority resources. After all, without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.
Include research by industry experts.

Step 4: Getting Wikipedia editing done:

Go to your desired Wikipedia Page
Find the piece of the content that you want to edit. (ctrl+f can come handy).

The last and the final step is to edit the wiki page. I am doing it with my registered account here(you can pick any option here, the process remains same).

Click on the edit( shown in the above screenshot) and Choose your preferred editing mode.

Since I am much more comfortable with visual editing, I prefer visual one. You can prefer whichever format you are comfortable with.

Next, you need to go to your desired text and click on the link you want to edit.

This will open up the editing window, similar to this one.

That’s it. Place your URL and provide the other necessary information.

Before saving the edits, Wikipedia asks for your description for the links you’ve made. You don’t get much space here, so be as clear and as direct as possible. This is where you can explain editors why the change is necessary.

Now leave everything to Wiki moderators. They take 24 to 48 hours to review your changes and approve them. Usually your edits get live right away and are moderated later on.

Keep an eye on the pages for a few days and celebrate, if you find your edits there 🙂

After all, you achieved a milestone here.

Method 2. Locating missing citations

Another way you can get links from Wikipedia is by finding the “Relevant”Wikipedia pages that are in dire need of backlinks(read citations).

Let’s see how.

Explore Wikipedia “all-articles-to-be-expanded” category:

Wiki moderators have made a separate archive which currently has 133,324 articles that needs expansion. If we put it in another way, moderators want their readers to be a part of Wikipedia, contribute quality content and expand the knowledge shared on that topic.

Visit this link and you will find a list of contents that are further classified according to months. Take advantage of this huge data and be a part of an endless editing.

Once you have finalized a few pages that are in need of missing citations, follow the same process as mentioned above. To summarize,

Create high quality content.
Be a value giver( can’t say this enough)
Get the wiki editing done.

Method 3. Enhancing the existing content

You are not the only one looking for wiki backlinks out there (These are SEOs who keep looking for such links day and night!) and therefore there are high chances that you are not able to find any dead links or missing citations.

So should you leave the idea? Absolutely not!

No article is perfect. If you can find a Wiki page and add relevant content to it, it can also work as a great way to get you Wiki backlinks. Let’s get into the details to provide you a better idea.

Look for relevant wiki pages into your business.
Once you have finalized one of the pages which is extremely relevant to you, think about how you can enhance the existing content over there.
Be smart! Don’t write what’s already there. The idea is to add value. So identify gapes if any and fill it in with your content.

Once you have a page and the content skeleton, go ahead and follow the previously Steps mentioned in “Method 1” above.

The best part about this approach is that you have more opportunities to get backlinks. All you have to do is to think about how you can enhance value in existing content and add value.

Bonus Hack: How I get Wikipedia links in minutes:

Take advantage of Regional subcommunities of Wikipedia

Apart from serving unlimited information in your preferred language, these regional subcommunities of Wikipedia can also play a good role in enhancing your Wikipedia link building efforts.

Think of it this way.

Let’s say I search for a term “Backlinks” at en.Wikipedia.org. You are sure to find a full length description about Backlinks here.

Now, just check the same term in your preferred language. I am searching “Backlinks” on https://pt.Wikipedia.org/ and this is what I found.

See the difference, while the English Wiki page for Backlinks is already optimized, the portuguese page? Not so much!

Same goes with https://it.Wikipedia.org/ too!

While it’s quite challenging to edit the English Wiki Page of “Backlinks”, the “Portuguese” and “Italian” gives a lot of opportunities to not only add valuable content but also one can add enough resources here.

Communities on Wikipedia maximise your scope of building wiki links. And I am sure you are less likely to find your competitors here. So why not take advantage of it, right?

What doesn’t work on Wikipedia?

Now that you are all set to put your first foot forward, let’s go through a few things that don’t work on Wikipedia:

Fluff and irrelevancy: Relevancy comes first. Trying to add irrelevant content on wiki pages can get you banned. Wiki is not a place to write stories. Be straight, and on-point.
Content full of errors: Wiki moderators don’t have time to correct your errors. If you don’t make quality your top priority, your content has no chance of getting approval.
Content without any data: Wiki is all about data, without it, you are adding nothing but an opinion. To get a positive outcome, make sure your data is well-researched and backed by data.

Is it wise to buy Wikipedia backlinks?

Link building is tricky and time consuming. And when you talk about Wiki backlinks, the process requires effort and the right approach. Sometimes, we don’t have the right resources for the same and in such cases, getting expert help is actually a wise idea.

Wrapping it up!

Kudos, you are all set to build a Wiki backlink now. Though, it might be hard work initially, Wikipedia pays it off at the end. If you still have some doubts or queries, connect with us through comments. We are more than happy to be a helping hand.