First of all, let’s define ‘Guest Post’. What is it? A Guest Post is a text that you create and publish on a blog as a guest author. It’s something positive for you, the content writer, and a positive outcome for the blog publisher or webmaster.
By writing guest posts, it’s possible to generate recognition within a particular niche and publicize your work within it. In addition, according to the requirements of that particular website where you’ll publish your work, you may also earn a backlink. By doing this, you’ll be establishing authority and interaction among your targeted audience.
This interaction, or engagement, is essential for you to get your website the required authority on Google and other major search engines and, therefore, a better ranking position in the search results.
However, to identify the ideal quality of the website where you’ll want to publish your guest post, it’s necessary to take into account a range of metrics or KPIs. Using industry leading tools for a better analysis of each site can help you do this.
To Identify High-Quality Websites, you will need to analyze:
The Niche
Google pays attention to the kind of websites that link to your website.
The more closely related a guest blogging opportunity is to your niche, the better the backlink it will be for your SEO efforts.
To better identify the niche, you can use an interesting metric called Topical Trust Flow. With this metric, it’s possible to see the topics that a website is primarily about, how much influence it has for each industry and also if there are any immediate spam issues that you need to address for your own site.
Do Follow Links
Ideally you want to find a site that offers DoFollow links. If a blog or site doesn’t use the NoFollow tag, Google will acknowledge the link and thus give it credit and ‘SEO juice’. If a site does use the NoFollow tag, Google doesn’t acknowledge the link. While there’s still an advantage to having NoFollow links (a diverse link profile, referral traffic, website exposure/recognition etc.), DoFollow links are much more influential in improving the authority of the linked-to webpage on your site. Check the source code of a website to see if your targeted site uses NoFollow links. These look like this:
<a href=”http://www.xpto.com” rel=”nofollow”>Example of NoFollow</a>
Content Indexing Engine
Essentially refers to the adding of a webpage’s content into Google.
Check “article’s title” or “article URL” on Google search to confirm that Google is indeed indexing the guest post or page.
Look ‘n Feel: UX & Responsive Design
Design affects how search engines perceive websites.
Intuitive site structure with easy navigation and proper use of HTML elements and multimedia will boost SEO.
Google favors websites that are optimized for people using mobile and smartphone devices.
Posting Frequency
Higher frequency of posting encourages Google to crawl a website site more often, which will result in your content getting index faster. Identify a website which is posting frequently to ensure Google is paying attention to it.
Where Will it be Published?
Will the guest post be published on the homepage? In which category will it be posted? Avoid so-called “ghost” or “orphan” pages to boost visibility of the article.
“Ghost” or “Orphan” pages exist on the web, but don’t have links into it from anywhere else on the website. They are not positive at all for your business’s SEO, since Google assumes that a page that doesn’t get any links from its own website has no importance. Plus, Google is often suspicious of the existence of these categories and that’s not something you want your site to be associated with!
Social & Audience Factors
Although these things don’t have a direct effect on SEO, social engagements (likes, comments and shares) are all important actions for giving content additional reach. Google indicated that Social signals are important when considering the quality of a piece of content.
Site Optimized Properly + SSL Certificate
Make sure the site you want to publish on is both easy for users to discover and easy for search bots to understand.Good indicators include page titles, headings, and meta descriptions.
Is the site HTTPS? SSL certificates protect websites from attacks and give visitors confidence that the site is authentic and trustworthy.
To identify High-Quality Websites, consider these site metrics and tools:
DA (Domain Authority) | MOZ Bar
The DA is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.
Organic Traffic | SEM Rush or Similar Web
Organic traffic refers to all the visitors that come to a site from search engines.
Percentage of Organic Traffic (Traffic Source) | SEM Rush or Similar Web
Find out which are the main sources of traffic and mainly the percentage of Organic Traffic to know how well a site ranks on the SERPs. The chance of the article being found in Google Search will thus be higher.
LIS – Link Influence Score (Quality Backlinks) | SEO Profiler
The link influence score is calculated based on the quality and the numbers of links that point to a site. The higher the quality of the links, the higher the LIS. The higher the website’s LIS, the greater influence it has on the rankings of linked-to pages.
The analysis of these factors and metrics help us to take the decision to the all-important question: to publish or not to publish!
