SEO after the peguin update – Guest posting crticial to success

Posted on June 22, 2012 by In House Web Solutions No Comments

How to beat the penguin with guest posting

At the end of April Google released its latest update, the Penguin. This update has drastically changed the SEO world and is forcing people to be more innovative and find more creative ways to get their site ranked well in the search engines. This means that businesses are going to have to invest in White Hat SEO tactics in order to promote their websites. If you are unfamiliar with what White Hat SEO is, you can learn more about this here. Some of these unique ways include guest posting on highly ranked blogs, doing link exchanges with business partners, increasing their social media reach, blogging unique content that goes viral (easier said then done) and RSS/blog syndication across major networks. Some techniques that were once deemed very safe and brought great results are now extinct these include forum profile links (signatures are still good), blog spamming with your keyword (use your name like it says!), over use of the same keywords in your anchor text (Google likes a diversity in anchor text looks more natural), link networks such as build my rank (blog syndication still good) and smaller article submission sites with lower quality submissions (Others like Ezines, Hub Pages and Article base are still good). An company looking to stay on top of the latest SEO trends without hiring an in-house specialist may want to look into white label seo. For today’s post I am mainly going to outline the steps to guest blogging successfully and the power it has over the penguin update

1.Syndicate it and they will come

The first thing you should be doing is syndicating your blog posts and sharing it in various blog communities. I would also recommend that you have a hosting package that can deal with an increase in traffic, should your page take off! Why not try visiting https://www.hostiserver.com/ to view their packages? By doing this you are gaining some visibility and street credit in front of other bloggers you may want to approach for guest posting opportunities. If you are lucky you might even get approached by a blog owner. If your content is unique and informative this will happen without a doubt. Even if you never end up doing a guest post this step will still stick it to the penguin update as it will be creating back links to your site through people sharing your content and on the various syndication and blog communities that are out there.

Here is a list of three main sites I use to syndicate content:

• Technorati (This is free but can take a little bit to have your feed approved)
• Blog Interact.com (Free blog community and syndication. I mainly use just for backlinks)
• Blog Engage (One time fee but well worth it and highly recommended. This is where some of most successful bloggers hang out and love to find the next greatest thing. I have had lots of success here)

2.Find niche related blogs with high traffic

Your next step is to do some research and find a blog that has high traffic in your specific niche. For example I write about SEO and online marketing so I look for sites that are about online marketing. Now for people who don’t know how to tell if a blog has high daily traffic there are a few ways you can check this. The first is head over the Alexa.com and put their url in and it tell you the traffic stats. Another great way is to see how many social media shares and comments any giving post may have (look for ones with over 20 likes, follows and comments). You can also simply ask the blog owner themselves how much traffic they normally receive but I personally would steer away from this.

3.Ask nicely, show examples and have a post already written

Now that you have found your blog in your niche that is getting high traffic volumes its time to approach the blog owner. In some cases but not all, blog owners will have created a page with the process in which they would like people interested in guest posting to adhere to (be sure to check the site for these guidelines in order not to risk not getting accepted because you did not read them). If they do have guidelines be sure to follow them exactly and if not you will have to e-mail the owner through their contact form or directly to their e-mail if it is published. In this message be sure to include examples of your work, how you found them and exactly why you feel what you have written about is something they will benefit from having on their site.

4. Don’t forget to link back to your site!

It is very important that at the end of your post you include an about the author section (about you) that includes a link to your site and ways people can contact you. Most blog owners understand that a link back to your site is expected as you are helping develop their site with fresh unique content typically most blog will allow for two do-follow links to your site. What I normally do is put one in my about the author area and one in the body of the text with my keywords to a helpful post I created that ties in to the topic I am writing. The link in the main body of the text is going to be your main weapon against the penguin update as this will give you some really good natural link juice (which is something any seo companies melbourne or otherwise based would want) and because the blog has a high traffic volume you will have visitors come to your post and share them amongst their networks.

So what now?

START WRITING! SHARE YOUR BLOG! MEET OTHER BLOGGERS IN YOUR NICHE! Even if you don’t have a blog start meeting people and guest blogging just get that link back to your business or site. This will give you a long term solid natural link Google and the penguin update will love. Also Be sure not to give up as some blog owners are pickier than others but if you keep at it you will see the benefits very quickly in the search results.

Here are some great places you can start guest blogging today and meet other bloggers quickly

• Blog Engage (This is one time paid service but they actually have a guest blogging contest where the best blogger wins $500 USD. Great place to start and get recognized!)
• Blog Interact.com (Free blog community that allows their users to guest blog)
• Yawoop (New free community that is only guest posting. A little more restrictive of links but still a good palce to start to get the hang of it)
• Blogger Link up

Other great Ressources

• 5 benefits to writing guest posts
• Guest blogging list for many niches
• Example of a guidelines page
• Make sure you guest post gets accepted

Hope you enjoyed this post and happy guest blogging! Be sure to share this in your networks and leave a comment to get a do-follow link back to your site. Also I am always interested in having guest authors here on my site so please feel free to contact me at contact@inhousewebsolutions.ca or by filling out my online form here if you are interested. In House Web Solutions also provides this service to their clients so if you are interested in discussing how we can help you and would like a quote please do not hesitate to ask.