The Strategic Importance of Guest Articles in SEO

Introduction to the concept of guest posting

A guest post is unique, relevant content written by a website owner or their SEO agency and then published on another target website. This text includes a hypertext link that redirects visitors from the “host” site to a website identified by the author of the article.

This type of content is not only a common practice in content marketing strategies, but also plays an important role in improving the SEO of the site that the hypertext link points to (also called backlinks). Publishing on relevant and authoritative sites in certain areas allows you not only to reach new audiences, but also to receive high-quality backlinks.

Backlinks are now necessary to strengthen the “web fame” of the promoted site and positively influence its ranking in the first Google search results.

Definition of Web Fame

Football analogy.

To better understand the concept of internet fame, it is useful to compare it to the career of a football player.

Registration of a player in the federation is equivalent to indexing the site in Google. Of course, he is a member of the federation and therefore indexed on the website, but that does not make him the best player ready to wear the colors of the national team during the next World Cup. The same applies to a site that will be “indexed” but not necessarily at the top of Google’s results, the global web selector.

To stand out, a player, like a site, must not only train to succeed, but also actively participate in high-level competition. Likewise, for a website to get the attention of search engine “selectors” (also called crawlers), it must be present on sites, blogs, directories and other influential platforms to receive backlinks from high-quality sites.

Impact of Backlinks

Backlinks or inbound links are key indicators of a website’s popularity. A quality backlink acts as a recommendation, signaling to search engines that the site’s content is useful and relevant. Such a recommendation increases the trust and authority of the site, which is favorable for its ranking in search results. This link can also, and is recommended, generate visits from the site on which the article was published. If the site was chosen wisely, this audience will be qualified and can be converted into leads.

Selecting a publishing site for a guest article

Selection criterion

The choice of the publishing site is not accidental. You need to make sure that the site in question has an audience that matches the niche of the site being promoted, as well as sufficiently eloquent metrics (statistics) to attract the attention of the Web SEO agency responsible for creating online fame.

Various technical aspects need to be taken into account, such as:

• Number of pages indexed : Indicates the amount of site content. A high number of indexed pages can mean more authority as well as better visibility.
• Presence on Google News : Being featured on Google News is an indicator of quality and can generate significant traffic.
• Publishing speed : A site that regularly updates its content is more likely to be ranked by Google.
• Domain age : Older domains with a positive history are often perceived by search engines as more trustworthy.
• Number of positioned keywords : Indicates the site’s effectiveness in positioning itself according to user requests.
• Referring Domains and Backlinks : The more diverse and high-quality referring domains a site has, the higher its visibility.

Types of links and their value

• Natural links : These links are spontaneously purchased and highly valued.
• Links throughout the site : Often placed at the bottom of the page, their impact may vary.
• Links in advertising articles : While useful, they should be used wisely to avoid penalties.
• Guest Posts : offer control over the context of the link and are generally well received.

Analysis of guest post results

Monitoring and evaluation

After publishing a guest article, it is important to track several metrics to evaluate the effectiveness and profitability of a given investment:

• Generated traffic : Using Google Analytics, monitor the direct and link traffic an article receives.
• Getting backlinks : Use specialized tools to monitor new backlinks being generated (or Google Search Console – Links).
• Positioning of an article in Google results : Check if the article is positioned well in search results for keywords that should be responsive.
• Positioning in search results : Check whether the site page associated with the article and target keywords have improved their ranking (also visible in Google Search Console – Performance).

Long term impact

The impact of a guest article strategy needs to be measured over several months to understand its true impact on organic SEO. It is important to measure ROI in terms of increased visibility, user engagement and conversion.

The choice of “host” sites can also have a big impact on this strategy.

Conclusion

Using guest articles in your web strategy is a proven method used by most SEO experts and web SEO agencies. This allows you to build quality backlinks and also reach a wider audience and attract new visitors to a particular website. When combined with an editorial strategy such as Semantic Cocoon, the results are often very unexpected.