Guest posting… that’s a strange term if you’ve never heard of it before. And you know what-that’s perfectly OK.
Guest posting, just like blogger outreach, has become a key part of any SEO strategy and essential in this day and age if you would like users to find your website on the first page of Google. However, since it began in its caveman years, it’s definitely grown, changed, and transformed itself into something businesses owners, who are serious about their marketing efforts, shouldn’t ignore.
But why, you may ask? How can something so simple give so much power to your website?
How to harness the power of guest posting
Think of guest posting like a piece of art: Some of the websites you’re linking to are on the level of Michelangelo’s greatness, while others are those of what someone painted for 5 minutes in the back of a minivan.
Choosing the right site isn’t just about its good looks and charm. Just like when you’re going on a date, you have to dig a little deeper to see the real person behind the mask. This is exactly what needs to be done when you’re looking for sites to build links on. So, let’s look closer into what you should be searching for.
#1. Understand the key metrics
There are ways you can identify how much authority a website has by looking at a range of metrics which are easily accessible from a range of free or paid online tools like Moz and Ahrefs. When it comes to metrics, the big four to take note of are:
Domain authority (DA) – Domain Authority is a score created by Moz.com that helps predict how well different sites rank within search engines like Google. This metric took over when Google depreciated and stopped using PageRank. Generally, most websites will be DA 10-30. Sites that are DA 40+ generally tend to start heading into the high authority range, and are usually good sites to try to link to as long as you have a healthy budget and you link within the same niche.
Domain rating (DR) – Domain Rating is a metric used by Ahrefs for rating backlink profiles of websites. It measures the quantity and quality of backlinks that are linked to the domain. Domain rating is a score that’s out of 100. The higher the number is on the score, the better the backlink profile tends to be.
Trust Flow (TF) – Trust flow is the trustworthiness of a page or website, and how many quality links are linking to it. Trust flow works in combination with Citation Flow (CF). When the Citation Flow and Trust Flow is even or close, such as 10/12, it means it’s building content or links on the site evenly. If there’s a larger gap between the two numbers, then it can mean there’s more content and links going onto the site than expected. This can indicate a link farm in some cases. A good Trust Flow to start with is 10+ and up.
Traffic – Traffic is the amount of visitors that reach a site each month. If traffic is high on a website, it generally means the site may be popular and is easily found-which is great. Something with 1,000+ traffic and up is pretty good. Obviously, the more traffic the better.
Utilise Real Websites Vs PBNs
Found a good-looking website?
Wait up! Just because the website looks good doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good website.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
In the guest posting world, you have two different types of websites:
Real websites
Private blog networks (PBNs)
Some people would claim that PBN’s are destroying the internet, these websites were built purely to manipulate search results, they are fake, not real, pretend, total BS and you don’t want links from these types of websites because you’re likely to drop your rankings rather than improve. So in order to really harness the power of your guest post efforts, you need to focus more on metrics and real websites than PBNs. So what is the difference between real websites and PBNs? Here are the key differences to take note of:
Generally features a Services page, Resources page, About Us page, or something similar.
- Has contact details that feature a proper address, email contact or contact form, phone number, etc.
- Features unique images that aren’t stock images, or uses a stock image just once.
- Has an “Our Team” page with images of staff on it.
- The Wayback Machine doesn’t show that it’s picked up from an expired domain. Generally, real websites have been owned for years.
- You can generally see the owner of the site via websites like WHOIS.
- Content is typically very niche and is above average in quality.
- The backlink profile usually shows a clean background with links all in the same niche.They generally have a professional logo and uniquely designed website.
- They often have active social media pages.
- They may feature an online shop as well.
- The website generally only has an About Us page, Home page, and a Contact page.
- Graphics may be poor, or the same images are used over and over again.
- If you look at the history of the site through tools such as the Wayback Machine, you may find it’s been dropped several times and picked up again by new owners. This usually happens with expired domains.
- The quality of content on the site isn’t great.
- The information in WHOIS is often private and you can’t find out the owner.
- The backlink profile of the website has broken links or links that aren’t relevant to the current niche of the website. This can be found out in Ahrefs.