Writing a guest post is used to promote brands and boost website traffic. Is that all?
Publishing posts with links leading to websites is one of the methods to build quality backlinks. After all quality of backlinks is one of Google ranking factors. The number of backlinks is also important, it’s better to have few, but valuable ones than a lot of poor quality links. This means that publishing a guest post on a poor quality blog isn’t a good idea. Acquiring links from poor quality websites is risky, hence you should choose your guest post placement really carefully.
How to check if backlinks from a given blog are profitable and won’t risk your SERP position?
SEO specialists needs to evaluate website (blog) quality, and focus on its particular elements. These are:
Clear and eye-catching layout
It may seem that website layout, where we get backlinks from doesn’t matter. Yet, it’s the other way round. The person who visits clearly designed website is more likely to spend there more time and read a nicely looking and edited guest post. Website layout, including headers, optimized images and clear menu are just small elements, which influence website ranking positions. SERP ranks have a huge impact, this will be discussed in the following parts.
It’s worth to note that sometimes SEO agencies clients want to know where do backlinks come from and look over the websites mentioned in the reports – it’s good for the websites to be nicely looking.
SERP position
While seeking a place for a guest post we should definitely check how does a given blog look. It’s a good idea to check a few sub pages, including posts older than a month. In order to do so we paste part of the header including keyword phrase (of medium competitiveness) and paste in Google search box. It’s perfect when the blog ranks within 10 top search results.
Backlinks
Backlinks constitute an important part of SERP ranks, hence it’s worth to give them more space to discuss. Backlinks from website (blog) need to have proper quality. This can be verified by using Majestic plugin in Google Chrome search engine. SEO specialists say it’s a good idea to compare trust flow factor and citation flow, you can read more here.
Number of visitors and their engagement
When it comes to backlinks acquisition it’s good to choose websites with high traffic and a huge number of visitors. It’s not only about visiting website but performing certain actions. In case of blogs, it’s worth to take into account number of comments and bloggers appearance in discussion. It’s a good idea to check whether below older posts new comments appear. It’s also important if bloggers are active in social media channels and how many shares their posts have.
