Why Using Guest Blogging as a Link Building Strategy Is Actually Bad for You?

For decades, guest blogging has been popularly used as a link-building strategy. But as a matter of fact, it is “the worst strategy” you could think up to build links.

Often guest blogging is people’s weapon of choice for link building, and so was the case with us initially. But over time, we realized guest blogging, if truth be told, has no role to play in building links, although that might be the main or only reason you began writing guest posts.

Even today, this misconception that guest blogging can help in gaining links continues to float around.

This blog will discuss how guest blogging is the worst link-building strategy and why you shouldn’t trust it blindly.

Guest Blogging Is Expensive When Done Right

In its correct sense, guest blogging is a costly affair.

To put things in perspective, a very well-put column in the business-to-business niche can easily cost you hundreds of dollars on popular sites.

The thing is that the best copy is expected to bring in something special and unique, but not all guest posts fulfill that expectation.

Often only an actual specialist can share something genuinely worthy instead of rewriting what others have already shared and are ranking for in the search results notably.

Preferably, a good blog post is written by an expert in a particular field and then refined by an experienced and professional copywriter.

That’s how most people get things done. While the specialists don’t always have the time to hone each sentence of the post, they do a thorough synopsis indeed.

Needless to say, the more time a specialist spends creating a copy, the more it will cost you.

In a utopia, contributors who are genuinely proficient and can produce something genuinely unique do guest blogging. Nevertheless, as much as this copy will be insightful and valuable, it will also be a very costly affair.

Top Industry Blogs Won’t Link Back to Your Strategic Pages

While we do not intend to dismiss guest blogging entirely, if you do plan to use it as a link-building strategy, it’s better to prepare for potential rejection in advance.

The majority of the best industry blogs won’t allow you to add any links to your most valuable pages. By that, we are referring to your pages that have commercial intent, the ones displaying your products or services.

These are your business’s strategic pages, but they also deliver more or less zero value to the audience of the specific blog that published your guest post.

For those blogs, such strategic pages are not “really” educational and don’t give any deeper insights into a specific topic. Those pages are more transactional and less informative.

As a guest blogger yourself, you might disagree and feel that you should be allowed to link back to your strategic pages as a prize for your content contribution to the blog site.

Nevertheless, despite being link builders, we’ll have to side with the readers in this case.

Curious to know why?

Building links to commercial pages via guest blogging change the whole intent of the guest post.

While working on a column, writers try their level best to produce something unique and useful. But if they have to link back to their company’s product or service page in their post, it means they will have to start discussing their offers. And resultantly, their content will quickly go from being informational to a commercial one.

Undoubtedly, many blog posts are designed to generate a sale, but guest blogging is seldom about that.

Inserting a link to a strategic page will hardly help a brand stand out from the crowd and result in the blog post becoming a hard sell.

Guest Blogging in Bulk Results in Low-Quality Links

Sad to say but relying on guest blogging too much is not an option.

Here’s the thing: the more guest posts you write for link-building purposes, the lower the quality your links will turn out to have.

Why? Because there are loads of link-building companies using guest blogging as their go-to strategy for building links.

Now while the cost per guest post may differ, the pricing is generally somewhat decent and affordable.

Every link-building agency employs the same logic. The particular client picks the metrics (organic traffic, domain authority, and so on) for a website where they wish to publish their guest post(s). Thereafter, the client just has to sit patiently and wait for the link building agency to do all the work for them.

On the face of it, nothing seems wrong with building links via fresh content on a superficially reliable site, but things don’t work that way.

Link building agencies seek fast ways to publish content, and the website they work with might not bother much about the guest posts’ quality.

But wait, that’s not all. Another issue is that the majority of websites joining forces with link-building agencies who perform guest posting at a large scale are either content farms employed by link builders solely or PBNs that exist mostly to manipulate SEO rankings.

Now there is no way for you to find out for sure that it is not a PBN and if your link winds up on a content farm, count yourself fortunate.

To come to the point: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

In case your link winds up on a questionable site, you can harm your SEO instead of improving it.

That simply might be the price you need to pay if you choose to perform guest blogging on a large scale. If truth be told, publishing guest posts on a genuinely trustworthy site requires plenty of time as well as effort.

Unfortunately, overcoming this problem by performing guest blogging in-house is not an option either.

Even when you perform guest blogging on your own, you will not be able to target blogs with high editorial standards instantly. You will wind up seeking low-hanging fruits simply to get going and, therefore, in turn, get the same poor-quality links.

Hence, the key takeaway here is guest blogging at scale might bring in loads of worthless links.

If a site hands out backlinks easily, Google will disparage its priority. Resultantly, your months of hard work and efforts to build links will be wasted.

Google’s Recommendation: Insert “Nofollow” to All Links in Guest Posts

Since we have discussed so many problems so far, here’s another one – Google does not really like link building, and it frowns on guest blogging for links.

As a matter of fact, it recommends adding the “nofollow” tag to every link in all guest posts. And to give you some context, links that have this attribute do not bring any authority or benefit.

While Google won’t give websites a penalty for guest posts, its algorithms, however, are directed to spot and devalue guest post links.

Therefore, such links do not help improve the website’s ranking in the SERPs.

What Is the Point in Creating Guest Posts?

In light of everything we’ve discussed so far indicating that guest blogging doesn’t offer any actual value as a link-building strategy, we wouldn’t be too surprised if you feel a bit confused currently.

Nevertheless, publishing guest posts play a crucial role when it comes down to generating brand awareness.

This type of content demonstrates your authority in your respective niche.

In addition to this, if your guest blogs showcase high quality and expertise, it positively affects the way Google assesses your business and whether it deserves to rank higher in the search results.

So the point we are trying to make here is that you should not disregard guest blogging entirely.

Just remember your guest blogging activities should not lead to Google linking your business with poor-quality posts on shady sites.

Think of guest blogging as part of your overall public relations strategy and make guest contributions only to resources that your audience trusts.

Moreover, do not cut back on your content quality by guest blogging at scale. Be a little pickier and publish your guest posts only on credible resources instead.

Wrapping It Up

To summarize, whether you write content on your own or recruit a writer’s help, guest blogging can be a costly affair.

Linking back to one of your strategic or commercial pages in your guest posts is next to impossible because no high-quality industry blog would ever want to post it.

Furthermore, the more guest posts you create to build links, the more low-quality links you will acquire.

On top of all that, the search engine giant Google itself is not a huge fan of guest blogging for the purpose of link building.

Now you must be wondering what even the point in investing your time and effort to write guest posts is?

The quick answer is: for brand awareness and social proof.

As a PR strategy, guest blogging can work wonders for your brand and help your site rank higher in the SERPs.

How? Because if your guest content has decent quality and expertise, it demonstrates your brand authority in the niche.

But it is scarcely an ideal way to build links. In other words, guest blogging is more about social proof and less about link building.