I continue to write in the series guest posting because it is such an important part.
If ever you are in doubt regarding which direction to go with your guest posting efforts, let me simplify things for you: You really don’t have much to play with as far as options are concerned.
Google is fast cracking down on spammy guest posting. If ever you’re in doubt as to how far and how hard you can push the envelope as far as Google is concerned, I would suggest staying out.
Seriously.
If in doubt, keep out because the health of your blog as well as your income may be in jeopardy. There are too many bloggers who play fast and loose with Google’s tolerance, and they are now paying the price.
Google can evaporate your income almost overnight. This is why there is really not much room to play in when it comes to guest posting.
You either have to play the game based on the rules Google is happy with and would prefer, or you are basically putting the health of your business in your hands.
It’s your call.
If it were up to me, I would just say focus on branding.
The good news about branding is that you can benefit in a wide number of ways. I’ve already spelled out the key benefits you would get from a brand-based approach to guest posting.
The downside to guest posting for branding purposes is the fact that you have to wait a little longer. Unlike a completely backlink-driven guest posting campaign, it may take a while for you to see benefits from all your time, effort, and energy.
In highly competitive niches, it might even take several months, if not a year or more. Regardless, the results are well worth it.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, you can actually get very quick results if you’re shooting for direct traffic or brand exposure. If you are, however, looking for SEO benefits, that’s when you have to be a little more patient.
That’s when you would have to look at a time horizon of maybe six months to even more than six months.
Still, given the fact that brand-based guest posting is fast emerging as one of the safest ways to build backlinks through contributed content, the wait is definitely worth it. In fact, there are no other options.
You can try social bookmarking, blog commenting, and other outdated forms of backlink-building. Considering how fast Google’s algorithm is evolving, using these old backlink-building methods might not take you far.
In fact, it might hold your business back or take it down several notches. If you don’t want to roll the dice with your business, you need to focus on brand-based guest posting.
What is brand-based guest posting?
This approach to guest posting is all about a building a solid brand. You build a solid brand by becoming credible in your niche.
You do this by offering high-quality information in such a way that it’s very easy to absorb and process. The more people like your content and spread the word regarding your blog, the more solid your brand becomes.
It’s not rocket science.
Unfortunately, for the longest time, bloggers have been spoiled. Google made it so easy to rank on search engines that people were able to get away with low quality content or content formatted in such a way that it’s hard to consume.
Well, those days are over.
You have to not only produce content that addresses the needs of your target audience; you also have to present this information in such a way that it’s very easy to consume and just as importantly, easy to share in social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
This might seem like a tall order.
This might seem you’re walking a tight rope between formatting, content quality, and audience cultivation.
You would be absolutely right.
The good news is that blogs in your niche are doing this already. All you need to do is study what they’re doing right and incorporate some of those techniques into your own blogging practices.
You should also continuously work on coming up with your own voice and your own blogging approach. Taken all together, this can lead to a cohesive blogging strategy that can help you build a solid brand sooner rather than later.
Keep the following discussions in mind if you’re still unclear as to the precise value and place of brand-based guest posting.
Branding is the wave of the future
Google’s Eric Schmidt is on the record of saying that Google is paying more and more attention to brands. I read this as Google is going to give a higher priority to brands rather than non-brands. This makes all the sense in the world.
You have to understand that in the good old days of SEO, almost anybody can put up a website and rank highly. This means that websites that nobody has heard of and who are not connected to any offline or media entity can dominate certain niches.
This is no longer the case.
Google understands that solid brands do not develop overnight and that people flock to brands because of the high level of trust and credibility there.
Since Google is always worried about being manipulated, tricked, or deceived by low value content, it’s quickly looking at brands as a shorthand. It’s looking at brands as some sort of shortcut to determining a website’s trustworthiness.
As you probably already know, even if you’re not an SEO expert, the main way search engines determine trustworthy content is the quality and quantity of links pointing to a particular website.
As you probably also know, this is very easy to simulate and manufacture. In fact, black hat spammers do this all the time all day everyday. It’s gotten so bad that Google has gone through several algorithm changes just to shake spammers off its search results and Google is essentially trapped in a losing game.
It would come up with an algorithm that would knock out spam assaults. After a few months, the spam assaults come back.
It seems that whatever filter Google adopts; spammers learn to identify and cope with.
It’s no surprise why they’re able to do this because there is so much money involved. Well, by focusing on brands, Google isn’t exactly making the spammers go away.
What Google is doing is it’s making it much more expensive to game and manipulate Google results.
If you want to safeguard your search results or improve your search results, you should pay attention to Google’s emphasis on brands. You should establish a solid online brand and be mindful of all your online activities.
As I’ve written in an earlier blog post, everything you do online impacts your brand. Everything from as simple as the font you use, the format, or the WordPress theme you employ can impact the overall perception of your brand.
Too many bloggers think that their brand consists solely of the quality of their content. While there’s a lot of truth to this, you have to remember that you’re not the only game in town.
I don’t care where you’re in. Regardless of how esoteric it is or how small your market is, there will always be somebody else out there that can format high-quality information in a more compelling way.
This puts you at a distinct competitive disadvantage and puts your brand in a less favorable light.
If you want to develop a solid online brand, you really have to wrap your mind around developing and cultivate the ultimate user experience as far as your niche content is concerned. You need to pay attention to details like formatting, font, theme, graphics policies, emotional triggers, and overall ambiance.
It’s too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when people go to your blog, they’re just looking to consuming content. While this may be true at a fundamental level, if you want your visitors to keep coming back or to tell others about your website, you have to do something more.
You have to deliver an experience
This is what separates truly great blog brands from generic, faceless blogs that exist solely to snipe keyword targets.
If you are still playing the keyword sniping game with your blog, you are essentially wasting your time. The clock is running out on that game; I’m sorry to report this.
Google’s policies as well as Google’s recent algorithm updates point to the direction where no name, low value, generic blogs are on the way out.
Sure, you can employ all sorts of link-building techniques and other tricks to hold off the inevitable, but eventually you should be able to see the handwriting on the wall.
Instead of playing that losing game, focus on what you should have been doing all along.
Building a solid brand
You should start building a solid brand.
If you haven’t done it with your guest posting activities, you need to start now. Look for solid brand partners, build a solid blog brand, and make sure that whatever contributed content you write helps establish your blog as a credible authority in your niche.
This is the only remaining game that is viable. The old tricks simply are on the way out.
If ever you are in doubt regarding which direction to go with your guest posting efforts, let me simplify things for you: You really don’t have much to play with as far as options are concerned.
Google is fast cracking down on spammy guest posting. If ever you’re in doubt as to how far and how hard you can push the envelope as far as Google is concerned, I would suggest staying out.
Seriously.
If in doubt, keep out because the health of your blog as well as your income may be in jeopardy. There are too many bloggers who play fast and loose with Google’s tolerance, and they are now paying the price.
Google can evaporate your income almost overnight. This is why there is really not much room to play in when it comes to guest posting.
You either have to play the game based on the rules Google is happy with and would prefer, or you are basically putting the health of your business in your hands.
It’s your call.
If it were up to me, I would just say focus on branding.
The good news about branding is that you can benefit in a wide number of ways. I’ve already spelled out the key benefits you would get from a brand-based approach to guest posting.
The downside to guest posting for branding purposes is the fact that you have to wait a little longer. Unlike a completely backlink-driven guest posting campaign, it may take a while for you to see benefits from all your time, effort, and energy.
In highly competitive niches, it might even take several months, if not a year or more. Regardless, the results are well worth it.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, you can actually get very quick results if you’re shooting for direct traffic or brand exposure. If you are, however, looking for SEO benefits, that’s when you have to be a little more patient.
That’s when you would have to look at a time horizon of maybe six months to even more than six months.
Still, given the fact that brand-based guest posting is fast emerging as one of the safest ways to build backlinks through contributed content, the wait is definitely worth it. In fact, there are no other options.
You can try social bookmarking, blog commenting, and other outdated forms of backlink-building. Considering how fast Google’s algorithm is evolving, using these old backlink-building methods might not take you far.
In fact, it might hold your business back or take it down several notches. If you don’t want to roll the dice with your business, you need to focus on brand-based guest posting.
What is brand-based guest posting?
This approach to guest posting is all about a building a solid brand. You build a solid brand by becoming credible in your niche.
You do this by offering high-quality information in such a way that it’s very easy to absorb and process. The more people like your content and spread the word regarding your blog, the more solid your brand becomes.
It’s not rocket science.
Unfortunately, for the longest time, bloggers have been spoiled. Google made it so easy to rank on search engines that people were able to get away with low quality content or content formatted in such a way that it’s hard to consume.
Well, those days are over.
You have to not only produce content that addresses the needs of your target audience; you also have to present this information in such a way that it’s very easy to consume and just as importantly, easy to share in social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
This might seem like a tall order.
This might seem you’re walking a tight rope between formatting, content quality, and audience cultivation.
You would be absolutely right.
The good news is that blogs in your niche are doing this already. All you need to do is study what they’re doing right and incorporate some of those techniques into your own blogging practices.
You should also continuously work on coming up with your own voice and your own blogging approach. Taken all together, this can lead to a cohesive blogging strategy that can help you build a solid brand sooner rather than later.
Keep the following discussions in mind if you’re still unclear as to the precise value and place of brand-based guest posting.
Branding is the wave of the future
Google’s Eric Schmidt is on the record of saying that Google is paying more and more attention to brands. I read this as Google is going to give a higher priority to brands rather than non-brands. This makes all the sense in the world.
You have to understand that in the good old days of SEO, almost anybody can put up a website and rank highly. This means that websites that nobody has heard of and who are not connected to any offline or media entity can dominate certain niches.
This is no longer the case.
Google understands that solid brands do not develop overnight and that people flock to brands because of the high level of trust and credibility there.
Since Google is always worried about being manipulated, tricked, or deceived by low value content, it’s quickly looking at brands as a shorthand. It’s looking at brands as some sort of shortcut to determining a website’s trustworthiness.
As you probably already know, even if you’re not an SEO expert, the main way search engines determine trustworthy content is the quality and quantity of links pointing to a particular website.
As you probably also know, this is very easy to simulate and manufacture. In fact, black hat spammers do this all the time all day everyday. It’s gotten so bad that Google has gone through several algorithm changes just to shake spammers off its search results and Google is essentially trapped in a losing game.
It would come up with an algorithm that would knock out spam assaults. After a few months, the spam assaults come back.
It seems that whatever filter Google adopts; spammers learn to identify and cope with.
It’s no surprise why they’re able to do this because there is so much money involved. Well, by focusing on brands, Google isn’t exactly making the spammers go away.
What Google is doing is it’s making it much more expensive to game and manipulate Google results.
If you want to safeguard your search results or improve your search results, you should pay attention to Google’s emphasis on brands. You should establish a solid online brand and be mindful of all your online activities.
As I’ve written in an earlier blog post, everything you do online impacts your brand. Everything from as simple as the font you use, the format, or the WordPress theme you employ can impact the overall perception of your brand.
Too many bloggers think that their brand consists solely of the quality of their content. While there’s a lot of truth to this, you have to remember that you’re not the only game in town.
I don’t care where you’re in. Regardless of how esoteric it is or how small your market is, there will always be somebody else out there that can format high-quality information in a more compelling way.
This puts you at a distinct competitive disadvantage and puts your brand in a less favorable light.
If you want to develop a solid online brand, you really have to wrap your mind around developing and cultivate the ultimate user experience as far as your niche content is concerned. You need to pay attention to details like formatting, font, theme, graphics policies, emotional triggers, and overall ambiance.
It’s too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when people go to your blog, they’re just looking to consuming content. While this may be true at a fundamental level, if you want your visitors to keep coming back or to tell others about your website, you have to do something more.
You have to deliver an experience
This is what separates truly great blog brands from generic, faceless blogs that exist solely to snipe keyword targets.
If you are still playing the keyword sniping game with your blog, you are essentially wasting your time. The clock is running out on that game; I’m sorry to report this.
Google’s policies as well as Google’s recent algorithm updates point to the direction where no name, low value, generic blogs are on the way out.
Sure, you can employ all sorts of link-building techniques and other tricks to hold off the inevitable, but eventually you should be able to see the handwriting on the wall.
Instead of playing that losing game, focus on what you should have been doing all along.
Building a solid brand
You should start building a solid brand.
If you haven’t done it with your guest posting activities, you need to start now. Look for solid brand partners, build a solid blog brand, and make sure that whatever contributed content you write helps establish your blog as a credible authority in your niche.
This is the only remaining game that is viable. The old tricks simply are on the way out.
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