Guest Posting Mistakes That Can Kill Your Rankings (And How to Avoid Them)
Improving SEO is straightforward if you know which guest posting mistakes to avoid. However, keeping tabs… Read more.
Guest blogging can truly help any website to boost its SEO metrics. However, it can only present a credible result when it is done right. Cutting corners or making guest posting mistakes would not lead you anywhere but circles.
As a result, websites and their handlers must avoid these mistakes at all costs. But the real question is: what are those mistakes? Why should they be avoided? And how can they be avoided? We will be answering all of these questions.
The following are some common outreach mistakes that guest posting services should avoid. Therefore, follow along to boost your SEO and improve your ranking.
Guest Posting Mistakes You Must Avoid
Guest post blogging is a very powerful tool. It helps websites build an ecosystem of content and links. This ecosystem enables the website to flourish and generate revenue. This is why digital marketing businesses need to take special note of some important pointers that can help make a website perform better.
Here, we will list some mistakes that SEO professionals should avoid at all costs, unless they want their website to suffer a painful decline. Therefore, let us dive right in.
#1 Low-Quality Guest Post Sites
The foremost mistake to avoid is selecting a low-quality guest blogging website. This is because a low-quality webiste is like that bad friend you do not want to be seen hanging out with. Similarly, associating with subpar websites can have disastrous consequences.
How To Solve It?
The only way to solve the problem is to have a clear understanding of some of the metrics that reputable websites do not typically demonstrate. Here are some of the flags that you need to look out for:
-
The Domain Authority (DA) score is under 20.
-
Riddled with advertisements that feel irrelevant.
-
Outdated website designs.
-
General lack of editorial standards.
-
Contains random and irrelevant topics.
-
No reader interaction, such as comments or shares.
-
Spammy promises of guaranteed backlinks.
-
Instant acceptance of content without proper review or editing.
Websites demonstrating these markers are generally of low quality and would not be beneficial to you.
#2 Off-Topic Content
Niche is a very important aspect of writing for a website. The niche must align with the website's theme at all costs. This is one of the more imperative requirements that cannot be ignored. Google is quite quick to recognize these shifts and penalize websites for not adhering to them.
General Impact On SEO
Creating off-topic content will not just put off readers, but can also affect some key aspects of your website, like:
-
A general increase in the bounce rates.
-
Search engine penalties.
-
Loss of trust of readers.
-
Decline in social shares due to dipping metrics.
-
The reader spends less time on the page.
To counter these effects, please ensure that you write in accordance with the niche of the host website. Otherwise, your website would face challenges attracting an audience and turning clicks into revenue.
#3 Avoiding Research To Understand Relevance
Before you dive into the task of writing for a website, you need to do some preliminary research. The research needs to be multi-pronged. In other words, you need to research the topic you are writing about, along with a detailed look into how the host presents a subject. This is again an important guest posing mistakes that you need to address.
How To Understand Content Relevance?
Understanding content relevance is imperative. In other words, your job does not end with writing. There are some things that you need to ensure after you are done writing. Such as:
-
The quantity and the quality of the earned backlinks.
-
Referral traffic earned from the post.
-
General reader interaction, like comments and reshares.
-
Social media engagement.
-
Average page views and time spent on the page.
Measuring these pointers is very important, as they will help you understand how your content is performing in the long run. Additionally, it also informs us about the relevance of the research.
#4 Ignoring Site Guidelines
Your SEO strategy can take a serious beating if you make one of the most blatant guest posting mistakes, like ignoring the guidelines of the website you are writing for. Overlooking these rules will not only undermine the efforts that go into creating a strategy but also compromise business relationships with publishers.
Common Violations Noticed
Ignoring site guidelines is a futile endeavor. This is not just one of the most common guest post rejection reasons, but can also affect business reputation:
-
Submitting a 1,000-word content when the limit set by the website ranges between 1,500 and 2,000 words.
-
Blatantly adding promotional links to the content and not the bio.
-
Not following the headers and image requirements set by the website.
-
Writing topics that do not go well with the websites accepted niche or scope.
-
Using an incorrect tone of voice, which results in inconsistency.
These small mistakes can become detrimental over time. Therefore, spend some time researching the website requirements, studying recent posts, creating a content checklist, and communicating with the editor for any confusion.
#5 Keyword Heavy Author Bio
Using keywords is essential for SEO. It allows crawlers to identify a topic and get indexed. However, overusing keywords is also not advisable, especially in the author bio. Therefore, refrain from using too many keywords in the author bio, as that can incur a penalty.
Best Practice
Keyword usage is a nuanced concept that does not follow the more, the merrier outlook. Which means, to make a piece of content useful, here are some keyword hacks you need to understand:
-
Use it in just one or two sentences to avoid coming off as spammy and repetitive.
-
Including your name and current role without flowery language.
-
Highlight expertise with the help of a naturally integrated keyword.
-
Mention relevant and industry-specific achievements that can be beneficial.
-
Adding a link to the branded website.
Failure to follow the points mentioned above will eventually lead to spamming, which can affect the overall essence of your website and make it feel subpar.
Improving SEO One Blog At A Time
Improving SEO is simple if you know which guest posting mistakes you need to avoid. However, keeping track of these mistakes can be a challenging task. Still, we have managed to highlight five key mistakes that can make your website feel shabby and spammy. Therefore, consider the points we have discussed to improve your websites ranking.
