Guest blogging has long been an effective method of link building legitimately. People with relevant information used to write about it and post it on others website for the masses to benefit. The practice was beneficial for both bloggers and the website owners. Bloggers could present their knowledge and skill in the name of guest posts while website owners used to get good content for their site. The process was cyclic in nature and completely authentic. Informative blogs attracted more visitors to the website while the greater web-traffic towards the website provided more exposure to bloggers. However, it may be the thing of the past soon.
Guest blogging has been misused and overdone. What was once purely genuine and effective for SEO is now a highly suspicious activity. Moreover, growing concern of Google regarding guest posting may result into strictly preventive measures taken by the search engine. Thus, the impact on SEO is inevitable. What disturbs is that the actions of a few miscreants contaminate entire SEO even though it can be tremendously effective without malpractices.
The trend that tarnished the image of guest posting was sending of emails by bloggers to webmasters as request for posting blogs. Bloggers present themselves as qualified writers with unique information and request webmasters to post their blogs with do-follow links, for which they even agree to pay. At times, such links are even secretively inserted into the content. While some webmasters fail to comprehend the situation rightly, others deliberately become part of such practice. Clearly, it is paid-linking in the guise of guest blogging.
The decline of guest blogging was predicted in 2012. However, the fine line between legitimacy and malpractice was ignored as non-existent. By 2013, excessiive guest blog posting had already plagued SEO. Today, even genuine writers may face extensive process of convincing the largest search engine about the authenticity of their blogs.
Guest blogging might be on the verge of demise but both bloggers and webmasters can prevent it from fading out. Webmasters have to have a solid process for blog posting. Website should feature only relevant blogs by known writers. They must be unique and contain any link. Exchange of money, products and service in lieu of blog posting also has to be strictly avoided. Meanwhile, bloggers can contribute by writing on subjects in which they specialise or have considerable information about. Good English and informative content is bound to attract readers’ attention to them.