Guest Blogging for SEO: Pros and Cons

Search engine optimization or SEO is extremely important to companies and online marketers these days. Everyone wants to rank well for appropriate keywords in Google Search and other search engines. SEO is one of the most cost effective and easiest ways to increase a brand’s exposure, visibility and reach. One of the most effective SEO techniques is guest blogging. For years, it has been used by brands and online marketers to increase search engine rankings and get more recognition online.

However, laying the groundwork for successful guest blogging campaigns for SEO can be very tricky and time consuming. In the worst case, guest blogging can be utterly useless and can become somewhat of a money pit if not done correctly. You need to weigh the pros and cons before you start guest blogging for your brand. Moreover, you need to make sure that you have the expertise or guest blogging and SEO experts in your company to carry forward the guest blogging efforts for search optimization.

Here are some pros and cons of guest blogging for SEO that you should consider before you take the plunge.

Pro #1: Gets your brand name out there

One of the biggest benefits of guest blogging is that it gets your name out there and makes the brand name more recognizable. When brands and their content creators are able to get their articles and other pieces of content like case studies, whitepapers and infographics published on reputed websites and blogs, they can definitely increase their reputation as a brand and reach out to a much wider group of people. However, getting published on reputable websites and blogs can be quite difficult as most websites only accept completely original and unique content written by authors who are already famous.

Pro #2: Boost SEO efforts

The reason why guest blogging has become so popular is because of search engine optimization or SEO. The reason why guest blogging is used is because it is an excellent way of getting inbound links to the brand’s website and blogs. The number and quality of the inbound links are of the utmost importance in search engine optimization as they are considered as important signals by the search engine algorithms. Even though Google Search is cracking down on negative and suspicious link building techniques, guest blogging still remains as one of the safest and most organic ways to build links.

You should also read about SEO tactics that are just a waste of time.

Moreover, keywords can also be effectively in guest blogs. Brands often have their content creators and authors optimize their content for specific, high ranking and appropriate keywords that are important for the brand. Without using suspicious techniques like keyword stuffing, brands can get their brand more visibility by using the right keywords in the guest blogs associated with their brand. Guest blogging on reputed websites allow brands to improve the amount of web traffic to their websites, social media pages and blogs. An increase in interaction between consumers and brands on social media is also very important.

Pro #3: Build reputation

Quality content is always appreciated and if brands have the capacity and the expertise to produce quality content then they should consider guest blogging to build a reputation. Brands want to be seen as though leaders in their industry and want to come across as experts in their field of work. Guest blogging is a good example of showing people the areas of expertise of the brand and to even show off its valued employees who are gurus in their respective domains.

This is a good way to get more people to trust your brand and to improve the amount of engagement with the brand and the number of web visitors to the brand’s pages. Speaking of online reputation, you need to find this article about how Google authorship is affecting SEO.

That’s quite a strong set of Pros don’t you think. Now let’s cover some of the Cons:

Con #1: Time and effort

Guest blogging can take up a lot of time and effort and for many companies it has proven to be fruitless. Not only do you have to create original and interesting content that is going to be appealing to readers, you also need to be able to impress the web administrators or owners of the sites that you want to contribute articles too. It is often quite hard to find guest blogging opportunities on good blogs and websites and a lot of time is wasted between submitting the article and actually getting it published.

Con #2: Tired ideas

Generating original content on a regular basis can be very difficult especially finding new themes to write about. This is why websites on the Internet have the same kinds of articles even if they are not copied. In fact, there is a lot of copied content on the Internet and many content creators often resort to copying content because they have nothing original to write about and this can get them penalized by search engines.

Guest blogging often has no effect because companies are all writing about the same thing and people are tired of reading the same kinds of articles everywhere. On the other hand, learn the secrets of how to write timeless and good content through this article.