Guest Posts- A Website Enhancement Tool

In the aftermath of the Google Penguin updates, discussion was rampant about whether guest blogging can be considered as a form of unnatural link building. There was also this fear whether Google, will start penalizing those who write guest blogs as well the sites that accept them.

It is, however, important to understand that Google wants websites to ensure that content & links are relevant & natural. If one was to blindly stop accepting Guest Posts, it would be a classic case of throwing the baby with the bathwater. It is important to ascertain the value being added to the website through the guest posts. Quality Guest Posts clearly have a number of advantages:

Constant Flow of Content

The first & foremost advantage of guest posts, is that they add targeted content to the website. This adds to the freshness of content, which in turn increases traffic & popularity of the website. Typically, it also adds a new perspective and hence helps expand the audience base.

High Quality Content

Guest bloggers try to put their best foot forward & hence give their best work in the form of guest posts. Original content can go a long way in adding to the richness of the website. Each person is unique, and therefore, allowing more voices also adds variety to the site.

Accepting guest posts on the site, also frees some valuable time for the webmaster, which in turn allows focus on other important aspects of the online business.

Credibility

While the website readers already consider the site as an authority in the niche, having reputed names on the site as guest bloggers, boosts the image & further enhances credibility.

SEO Tool

Guest blogging is an effective search engine optimization tool. A quality guest post can drive steady traffic to the website and help obtain one way natural links from popular blogs.

Relationship Tool

Typically, websites encourage guest posts from experts in the domain. It therefore turns out to be an excellent way to build relationships with industry influencers. Some guest bloggers who publish content on the website, share their posts on social networks and forums, which further adds to exposure.

Having enumerated the advantages of Guest Posts there are certainly some important factors that are to be kept in mind before publishing them:

• Each post must be thoroughly evaluated for its quality. If quality is not checked, the site always runs the risk of carrying low quality spamming & being devalued.
• Authors should not be allowed to add unnatural links either in their bios or their posts. Google has a new Co-Citation Algorithm that associates people with one another. The website is likely to be devalued, if found associated with spammers. Instead, genuine author bios with social links should be posted.
• In fact, links should not be promoted as an incentive to submit guest posts. Only natural outbound links should be allowed in the posts.
• Last, but definitely not the least, there needs to be a fundamental understanding that the content should be owned by the website, and it should not be re-distributed elsewhere.

By taking into account the above pointers, the website is likely to benefit from Guest Postings without falling prey to the pitfalls that can lead to the site being devalued.