Does Guest Blogging Help with SEO? | Marketing Q&A

Short answer: no, guest blogging doesn’t help SEO— and in most cases, it can actually hurt your rankings.

Long answer:

Guest blogging is one of the most misunderstood SEO strategies. While it was once a powerful ranking tactic, today it’s an outdated practice that can harm your site’s SEO instead of helping.

Yet you still hear some less knowledgeable SEO “experts” give this advice regularly.

Google’s SEO expert, John Mueller, has repeatedly stated that guest blogging for SEO doesn’t work. 

Mueller said specifically that these types of blog posts – where you put a blog on someone else’s website – should always have the links set to “nofollow” … meaning that zero SEO juice will be sent back to your website.

Mueller said it’s bad practice in 2020, 2021, and again in 2022. This isn’t new news (but of course, not everyone needs to stay as updated with SEO stuff as I do, so you may not be aware yet!).

“Nofollow” is the tag you add to a link that tells search engines NOT to take whatever SEO juice you’ve built for your page and transfer it to the outbound link instead. Obviously any SEO work you’re dong you don’t want everyone else to get all the benefit from.

Mueller said Google actually views these small backlinks the same as spam backlinks – such as from the old “link farm” or link exchanges that used to be a thing (and probably still are from some BAD SEO advisors).

So you don’t need to be trying to guest post on other people’s blogs (except as I mention below); and you don’t need to accept requests for guest posts on your blog unless it benefits you in some other way (like I mention below).

Should you accept guest posts on your blog?

I only recommend you accept guest post requests in a very few circumstances:

• The person you are allowing to guest post on your blog is a business you cooperate with on a regular basis anyway. This can be a good way for businesses to work together as a tool in cross-promotion if they have an overlapping audience.
• When you add their blog to your site, you set the outgoing link as “nofollow” like Mueller suggests.
• The friend shares a link to the post on their social media and elsewhere. This is beneficial to spread awareness of your business to their audience and perhaps get you seen by more people.
• The article they submit must be 100% original.

Is it worth guest blogging on other sites?

That covers people requesting to guest post on your blog.  But what about the practice of you guest posting on someone else’s blog?

The only time guest blogging is truly beneficial is when you contribute to high-authority publications like Forbes, Bloomberg, or industry-leading websites. Unlike small blogs, these sites help establish brand authority and credibility, even if the links are ‘nofollow’

Things like Forbes, or Bloomberg where I recently contributed to an article. Huffington Post. Or something well known in your industry specifically, such as for me Rising Tide Society or Template Monster.

These large publications are almost always high-authority websites. Where the small blogs with small traffic can seem like spam backlinks to Google, these big sites actually help with the perceived authority of your website, and are beneficial. Note that most of the time you don’t get to choose whether the link they share is no-follow or do-follow, but either way they help you establish authority in your field.

This type of posting may also occur as part of PR outreach during an interview with a publication – an earned media strategy.

Guest blogging should be seen as a brand awareness tool, not an SEO strategy. Publishing on high-authority sites can help establish credibility, but posting on small blogs won’t improve your rankings. And if you allow guest posts on your own site, always set links to ‘nofollow’ to avoid SEO penalties.

Similarly, since guest posts don’t really help, allowing others to post on your blog isn’t beneficial unless your main goal is increasing your awareness.  And in all cases, the links need to be nofollow.

Vicky