Guest posts have become a widely-used method of generating backlinks and increasing traffic over the years. However lately they have come under scrutiny and Google has even issued several warnings about them, which is why you may want to know whether they are still relevant in 2019.

The short answer to that is: Yes, guest posts are still relevant – but only if they are used correctly.

Why Guest Posts Are Still Relevant

The reason why guest posts are still relevant is because they provide benefits on multiple fronts.

Some of the reasons why you may want to carry out guest posting include to:

• Build backlinks for the SEO value that they can provide.
• Generate traffic from popular blogs to your website.
• Establish yourself as an authority within a particular niche.
• Create relationships with bloggers (i.e. blogger outreach).

The fact of the matter is guest posts can still provide all of those benefits if they are used correctly. But as you can imagine that involves more than just publishing any old articles on any old website.

How to Use Guest Posts Effectively

To benefit from guest posts you need to employ them effectively. That isn’t as complicated as it sounds – but it does mean there are several bases that you need to cover:

• Look for high quality guest post opportunities

The websites that you choose to publish guest posts on should be carefully selected with quality in mind. It is best to look for popular and well-established websites that have good authority and curate content carefully.

By limiting your guest posts to websites of quality, you’ll avoid the appearance of ‘spammy’ guest posts on low quality websites – which Google definitely frowns upon.

• Avoid using optimized anchor text

One issue that is very important in 2019 is optimized anchor text. Recently Google has specifically warned against optimized anchor text in its Link Schemes document.

In short the safest option for backlinks from guest posts is to link using your brand name as the anchor, or using an unanchored link.

• Write for people – not search engines

Although you may have an eye on SEO when publishing guest posts, you should avoid writing solely for that reason. All of your guest posts should be written to appeal to the people that make up your target audience – not search engine bots.

It is especially important to avoid keyword stuffing any of your guest posts, or mass-producing low-quality content.

• Add more meat to your content

Overall longform articles have started to shine of late, and that trend applies to guest posts as well. Adding more meat to your content can help set your guest posts apart – provided it has substance.

Right now it seems as though articles that are between 1,000 and 2,000 words tend to do well.

By following these guidelines you should be able to effectively use guest posts without running afoul of search engines in any way.

Final Words

As you can see using guest posts correctly and in an effective manner is critical in 2019 and you’ll want to make sure that any guest post agency that you enlist keeps that in mind.

Used effectively the benefits that guest posts provide can definitely give your website a boost on multiple fronts – and that should be all the relevance that you need.