Guest blogging opportunities – Become an author and contributor – Your Guide

So what is meant by guest posting for SEO?

Here is the thing

Google is getting very strict on the process of guest blogging or guest posting for SEO.

Google has even gone as far as to issue a warning about guest posting for SEO just to build inbound links.

They want all backlinks to be genuine and organic and authentic.

Google sees guest posts published simply to boost SEO as a very bad practice.

They see the webmaster and author as trying to cheat the Google algorithm to better their search results

Of course, this may not be the case. You may just not be knowledgeable about SEO and backlinking.

You may not understand the consequences and what you are getting into when you offer guest blogging opportunities and the negative effect it could have on your site.

The consequence is that you could find that you get in trouble with Google and that you’re penalized in some way or that the links are discounted.

Google is not totally against guest blogging. But it does want to make sure that guest articles inform visitors. That they educate another site’s audience or bring awareness to your cause or company.

Guest blogging do’s and don’ts

If you want to stay on Google’s good side then you just have to create great content that readers will love and read.

SEO is all about optimizing your site for search and Google rewards good SEO because it helps them understand what your content is about and whether or not it answers the user intent of a search.

But SEO only really works with great content.

You can optimize just 4 sentences but it is not going to rank page 1.

You will be lucky if it’s in the top 100 pages in the search results

The exception to this is of course if you are a big news site. Or you just have a great authoritative domain that Google loves.

1/ Long-form content

The first rule really is to create great long-form content as a guest blogger and if you are a webmaster to only accept good long-form content.

There are many advantages to creating and only accepting long-form content.

Longer articles are known to rank better than shorter content.

Brian Dean at Backlinko studied 1 million search results and found that long-form content consistently outranked short-form content with the optimal post length being around 1890 words.

Ok now not every topic or subject can carry such long content but when this is the case you just make sure that your contribution is longer than those articles that are ranking and where you want to be.

If the competition has written 1000 words then go write 1200, just go bigger.

More words when you accept contributions equals more keywords and keyword variations

Another advantage of contributing and accepting only long content is that you can rank for multiple keywords and phrases.

The more keywords and keyword phrases that you rank for the more your seen and the more organic traffic you receive.

Long-form content allows you to add in more LSI keywords. 

LSI keywords are words or phrases that are semantically related to each other.

Conventional SEO requires that you use your keyword phrase 6 or so times per 1000 words.

But try to keep your SEO plugin happy when you get up past 1500 words. It is much harder.

And if you manage it you’re probably stuffing your main phrase into your content too much.

Google fully understands related keyword phrases. It knows that “SEO course” is the same “SEO class” are really the same thing and that “guest post” is really the same as “guest contribution”

LSI keywords make your articles better to read and at the same time allow you to rank for more phrases.

Google doesn’t need to see the same keyword over and over again.

Long-form content discourages guest posting for SEO

If you are looking for guest opportunities for backlinks then will you want to write an article at around 1800 words minimum?

You could push 3 guest posts on unsuspecting webmasters and gain 3 different domain backlinks.

Long-form content discourages those looking for a quick inbound backlink.

Those who are looking to author content for the wrong reasons. 

The bloggers who are going to get your site into trouble

Google loves long-form content

We have already established that Google loves the long content that you write.

It also loves long-form guest blogs. They tend to be more informative, more educational. They are more of what Google wants to see from a blogger.

And as a guest blogger guest author, you should be looking for guest blogging opportunities that have strict submission guidelines and you should be willing and eager to meet them.

If you have your own blog and you are looking to author on someone else’s then your article must be as good as if not better than the content that you contribute to your own site.

2/ Nofollow and Dofollow links

It is common practice to link back to an author’s site when they contribute to yours.

This can be in the form of an Author Bio link. This is where you link to the homepage of their website. Or in the form of a link back to another related article that they have written.

This is where Google gets interested in your content and where you are linking.

If the article is long-form, well written, informative, everything that Google likes then there is no problem in allowing dofollow links. They are fine along with the authority links that should be added to authenticate and qualify what is written.

If your guest author is linking out to 2 or 3 of their own articles on their site or on other sites where they have contributed then I wouldn’t allow them unless they were intrinsic to the article and if they were I would nofollow them so that Google paid no attention to them.

Look for good signs

If your guest author accepts nofollow links then that is a very good sign that they are not guest blogging for SEO reasons.

Authors who are insistent that all their links are all dofollow, well then it really is just about SEO and if you allow this to happen then you know what is coming when you are found.

If you are just looking for dofollow links then it is really a lack of SEO knowledge that you have. Because yes a dofollow link is better than a nofollow because it passes on link juice but then you should also know that a good proportion of your backlinks should be nofollow so as to have a natural linking profile.

It is required that you have many more nofollow links pointing at your site than dofollow links because dofollow links are just so much harder to acquire than nofollow.

Too many dofollow links are not part of a natural backlinking strategy

If you are not sure what Nofollow and Dofollow links are then you can read my guide here

What are Nofollow and Dofollow links?

3/ Linking to products and homepages

If you are going to allow links to products or homepages then I suggest that you nofollow these types of links.

If your guest author is insisting that the homepage link they have added to a site they are not affiliated to is warranted as a dofollow link then you know what they are up to.

More than likely the link they are insisting on is an advertiser looking for inbound links.

Let me give you an example:

A while back I agreed to accept a guest post from an author who said all the right things.

They were new, wanted to get seen, etc. And they wrote a great article.

But ongoing through and checking their submission I found an odd link.

It was an SEO post and they were using the name of a person as an authority to qualify what they were writing about, I forget the name.

They were saying this person was part of a study and they linked to them. But when you clicked through you landed on a SEO Service company.

There was no related content about an SEO study.

There wasn’t even a blog section on the site. It was just a website offering their SEO services.

So I didn’t just nofollow the link I removed it because it just made no sense to link to the site.

When my guest author saw that the link had been removed they contacted and asked why.

I explained why and they just insisted that it needed to reinstate.

The article although good was just written for SEO reasons and the author was more than likely being paid to include the SEO service link.

Needless to say, the article was never published.

4/ Images and Pictures

Guest blog submissions are not just about text. For a well-balanced blog, you need a mixture of well-written text and rich content, images, and videos.

Someone looking for genuine guest blogging opportunities should be willing to source and add free-to-use images that add value to their article submission.

When I accept a guest post submission I am really looking for as little work as possible because I know that I will need to add 1 or 2 hours of my own time making any submission into an Infobunny article.

The time is spent on some keyword research, SEO optimization, the adding and optimization of images, and any other tweaks that I feel are required.

If you can get images with your text it is a bonus, just make sure that they are jpeg format and not png as they will load faster and that they are the correct size to match images that you add on other blogs.

5/ Internal and external linking

It is great if your contributor has an idea of who they should link to qualify what they are writing about. It is also good if they take the time to check articles already on your site that they can then link internally to.

Basically, it comes down to how hands-on you want to be with guest submissions. Me I like to make sure I’m linking to the best articles to qualify and from reading a guest post submission I know instantly which articles of my own that the author’s contribution should link to.

If your contributor shows an interest in the linking structure of the post then it is a good sign that they are guest blogging for the right reasons. Unless they are trying to sneak in links that shouldn’t be there.

Infobunny Guest Blogging Submission Guidelines

1/ Articles must be an absolute minimum of 1800 words.

Ideally, we are looking for around 2000 – 2500 words.

The longer the better.

We love long-form content and we know Google loves long-form content and we want to give you the best chance of ranking on Google. 

InfoBunny is not the place to post short-form content, we have accepted it in the past but normally from established writers who we know and trust are guest blogging for the right reasons.

 

2/ Your guest post must be 100% unique and not published anywhere else.

 

3/ We do not link to homepages or products as a rule unless you are writing a balanced review of a product where you comparing against similar products or if we mention a site.

When we do link to products and homepages they are always nofollow links.

The only time they will be dofollow links is if the article is a paid for sponsored post

 

4/ We do not link to gambling sites. Adult XXX or any sites or content that does not relate to the content we produce on Infobunny.

 

5/ You are allowed 1 dofollow link to a related article that you have written in your guest submission.

Your link must add value to your article. 

You will receive a dofollow author profile link that links to your business or blog – You MUST write a minmum of 3 guest posts to qualify for a profile!

You can also add your social channels, Facebook, Twitter etc to your profile.

If you are looking to guest blog for SEO reasons then you’re in the wrong place.

If however, you are here to write great content that informs and educates and just helps our visitors and you follow all our guidelines then you are absolutely in the right place and we welcome your contribution and you will be rewarded with your backlink

 

6/ If you do publish with us you are expected to follow up on any comments that your article receives. You need to answer any questions asked and just engage who take the time to read your submission and comment.

 

7/ Your article must be qualified. You must link to one or two authorities who are confirming what you are writing about.

And we also ask that you review articles on our site that you can internally link to as well.

 

8/ Infobunny has the final say on your finished article title and your optimized keywords. 

 

9/ We are happy to SEO optimize your post for you. If you know about SEO then great you can optimize.

But if we feel we need to make some changes to your SEO when we review the submission then we will make the changes.

Guest blogging opportunities – Become an author and contributor – Takeaways

So are you still looking for a guest blogging opportunity with Infobunny?

As you now know we have some very strict submission guidelines.

They are not designed to discourage or put you off on the contrary.

They are in place to reassure you that your writing for a site that is focused on getting your article seen. A site that will bring you the best result for the time you spend contributing.

We know only too well how long it takes to write killer content with awesome titles.

Allowing short-form content that just doesn’t do well. It is not worth your time in producing it and it is not worth mine in optimizing and publishing it. Publishing thin content will just undermine what we do here and the trust and authority we have built with Google.

You are here and reading this post and considering submitting a guest post with us because you found us and you found us because we know what we are doing.

So if you want to get some extra exposure as a writer or to your own blog site, you know the rules.

If you can live with them then welcome, you made a wise decision contacting the InfoBunny

Regards Dexter

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