Is Backlinks from Guest Blog Posting A Good Idea?

With all the recent updates Google has made to their Algorithm and all the penalties being issued it is now more important then ever to ensure you are only using tactics to build your search engine rankings that are looked upon favorably by Google.

If you were to find that all of a sudden your website was wiped from Google search it could potentially ruin your business if this provided your main source of income.

Back linking is the process of getting your website URL placed on other websites and has been the main tactic used by many SEO companies to build website rankings.  However, the problem with this was that many companies just gathered hundreds or thousands of back links and not being concerned about the quality of those links.  These links have now been penalised by Google in most cases.

So what backlinks are good links?

Guest blog posting is a great way of getting back links to your website, however it isn’t a quick and easy process and you must proceed with caution.

Here are some points to follow:

• Ensure the post is of good quality with valuable information.
• Ensure the post is unique and not posted any where else online.  Slight differences are not enough.  It needs to be totally unique.  You may have heard of “spinning articles” to produce more than one article from one post.  Proceed with caution here.  The article must be totally unique.
• Ensure the article consists of at least 300 words – once again showing the quality of the article.
• Don’t outsource the post writing unless you are 100% confident of the quality being provided.  And if you are outsourcing, proof read and check the posts before publishing.

These points also apply if you are posting guest blog posts onto your blog.  You want to ensure that each article is unique and provides valuable content for your readers.

My view is, guest blog posts are fabulous for providing back links to your website as long as the above points are adhered to.  Don’t try and take short cuts as it won’t do you any good.  And as with anything that works in the long term – it does take time and effort to see the results.

Here is a video from Google’s Matt Cutts which confirms these points.