Guest posting

What is guest posting?

Guest posting is writing an article published on someone else’s website under your name, usually with a bio and a link back to your site. It can build your reputation and reach a new audience. It is grey hat, because the same activity, done mainly for links and at scale, is a link scheme under Google’s spam policies.

Google warned about this directly in 2017, saying that large-scale article campaigns with keyword-rich links break its guidelines, and its spam policies list links with optimised anchor text in articles and guest posts distributed on other sites as link spam. Google also suggests that links in guest posts written mainly for the link should be qualified with `rel="nofollow"` or `rel="sponsored"`.

Why guest posting matters for SEO

Where the line falls: one well-researched article for a respected publication in your field, written to share expertise, with a natural brand or bio link, is ordinary publishing. It tips into spam when you write many thin posts for unrelated sites, use exact-match commercial anchors, pay for placement on sites that publish anyone’s posts (which makes them paid links), or pay with the same article spun across many blogs.

A simple test: would you still want to write this post if the link were nofollow? If the only value is the followed link, Google is likely to see it the same way. Many “write for us” sites exist mostly to sell posts, and their links carry little weight.

Risks of guest posting

• A manual action for unnatural links if Google sees a pattern of guest posts built for links, especially with keyword-rich anchors.
• Links from guest-post farms being ignored by SpamBrain, so the time or money spent earns nothing.
• Your brand appearing on low-quality sites that sell posts to anyone, which can hurt your reputation with readers.
• Wasted spend if you pay for posts on sites that later get penalised or deindexed.

How to guest post without risking a penalty

1. Write only for sites that are relevant to your field and have a real readership.
2. Pitch genuinely useful content, the kind you would publish on your own site.
3. Keep links natural: a brand or author bio link, plus in-content links only where they help the reader.
4. Never ask for exact-match commercial anchor text.
5. Do not pay for placement. If money or goods change hands, the link must be marked `rel="sponsored"`.
6. Keep volume modest. A handful of strong posts beats dozens of weak ones.

Guest posting example

Fine: a security engineer writes a detailed explainer for a well-known developer blog, with an author bio linking to her company. Link scheme: an agency publishes 50 near-identical 600-word posts on unrelated “write for us” blogs, each paid for and each linking to the client with the anchor “best personal injury lawyer”.