Of late, many blogs have started to offer others to do the ‘dirty work’ of writing posts for their blogs while they sit back and reap the benefits of getting good and high quality contents for free. Do a search for ‘guest posting’ and you will find blogs that has something that says, “Write For Us” in their navigation bar. Foolish bloggers, after reading many “blogging tips on how to increase blog traffic” see this as a golden opportunity for them to make their blogs known. They go on a guest posting spree, spending much of their time writing articles for others.
Alas, they should have used that time for themselves and their own blogs instead. They should have kept their best articles for themselves instead of giving it to others for free and let others reap the rewards from the efforts they have put in.
Before I went on to publish this article, I did too went ‘guest posting’ to find out if what those ‘so-called’ gurus advise that guest posting will increase your traffic is true. As expected, this is another ‘killer blogging’ tip that was cooked up by some half backed gurus with a highly imaginative mind that holds no truth. Guest posting WILL NOT and WILL NEVER increase your blog traffic.
Guest Posts Are Different From Review Posts
What kind of a post in a third party blog will increase your traffic? A review post or an introductory post. That is what will get that blog’s readers to come over to your blog. Whether you pay that blogger to write a review of your blog or whether that blogger somehow takes a liking for you and made an introductory post about your blog, you WILL see an influx of readers coming over from that blog. If that bloggers happens top be an A-lister with tens of thousands of reader daily, expect at least 60% of them to come a visiting.
On the other hand, if you submitted an article to him and it got published, don’t jump for joy. You have just done him a great favor. You just saved him a bundle of writer’s fees if he had outsourced it from freelance writers. Instead of him thanking you, you, the other way round, felt indebted to him for publishing your article, thinking you will become half as famous as him. Sadly, you won’t even be getting 10% of his traffic even though he has allowed you to add your blog’s link somewhere in the article.
It Is Just Human Mindset.
When you enter someone’s house, whatever you see inside the house will be deemed by you to be owned by the houseowner. He could have loaned the beautiful painting from a friend just for the occasion, and he did tell you that the painting was borrowed, but when you admire the painting, you will never give a thought to the original owner. What has been etched in your mind is you saw that painting in that house. Even after weeks when you think back about the painting, you will think of the houseowner whose house you saw the painting in. Not the original owner.
Same theory applies to your guest post. No matter where the blogger lets you insert your link or even if the blogger states it clearly in the beginning or in the end that this is an article by you, no one is going to pay any attention. If you have written something with a long lasting impression, that long lasting impression will be focused on that blog, not you, as the original author. So even if they return, they will be heading over to that blog, not yours. Oh well, maybe a trickle will check on you out of curiosity. Hopefully you net those and make them into your loyal readers.
Costa, I know what your intent is, but the last line of the first section is incorrect unless you go on to explain that “nofollow” links do no good.
If you write 100 guest articles on 100 different blogs (and Google is indexing those blogs) with 1 link each back to a specific site, that is 100 backlinks you didn’t have before (as long as none of them have link condoms on them).
It’s a painfully slow process, but it works. Otherwise, I wouldn’t continue to get posts as posturown.com , which is nothing more than a massive guest post system.
Well I see Costa’s point here.
While you will get the backlinks, at what cost are you doing it? At the cost of 100 articles, your very own unique fabulous content, that could have been sitting in your blog, instead on someone elses.
Given that you spend on the average 20 minutes to write a good 400 letter article, you would have spent 2000 minutes of writing. Doesn’t you time cost money as well?
Lastly with time these articles will grow old, bring more revenue on consistent basis, while you… you still get the same old link, if lucky with a higher PR.
At the end, you become nothing more than a writer for a big newspaper. Your wrote the articles, but people don’t go looking for Mitko, that great writer, they go buying the New York Times
At least writing is a paid job, while guest posting as Costa mentioned is done for free to get more exposure,backlinks, readers whatever.
So is guest posting worth it? That’s up to every blogger to decide depending on his/her goals. Just remember, that the most expensive commodity now days is ideas.
Well, guest posting doesn’t do any good for people who can’t keep up with their own sites. It works well for people who are prolific at writing, but probably wouldn’t do much good for someone who doesn’t like to write much in the first place.
I think I have to clarify here. I am talking about guest blogging per se. These are “genuine” blogs like this one which invites other bloggers to write for them.
It is not article marketing like what posturown.com offers, and which I treat as. Heck I do that in all those article directories and the main motive is backlinks.
Hi
I agree that if you are giving all your good information away at other blogs/websites with the expectation that you will get a flood of visitors, then you will likely be disappointed. However, I write guest posts at high authority sites for the quality back link.
I tested this out on just guest posting to high quality websites and had good results with my rankings.
Cheers
Agree. From the Internet Marketer’s point of view and from one who understands the importance of backlinks SERPs-wise, guest posting is a great way to get them.
What I am referring to is the misconception that guest posting will get you readers from the blog you guest posted in and spiral your blog traffic. That is what so called ‘blogging gurus’ have been propagating all along and that is the only thing that I am trying to straightened out.
From the SEO point of view, yes, do all the guest postings you can. The traffic you get will be from the Search engines due to your better SERPs rankings, not from the blog you submitted your guest post.
I knew this is what you meant, I just didn’t want to put the words in your mouth (or keyboard).
Rascal.
agree with you costa fong. i think many if not all newbies will fall into this trap of guest posting. sometime ago even alan liew of “make money online” started calling for guest posting, but it looks like he has stopped doing it. many gullible bloggers think that their post will be read by the original site’s enormous traffic.
Hi Lim,
Oh yes, the post will be read and even commented upon, but that’s the end of it. Not many will follow the guest poster’s link back to their blogs.