Guest Posts on Sites With Irrelevant Outbound Links
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Suppose you came across a website in your niche with solid domain authority that accepts guest posts. However you notice some of the guest posts are linking out to somewhat off-topic sites. If you already have an article that you think would be accepted easily and all you have to do is spend 10 minutes to craft an email pitch, would you do it? Why?
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Francisco raises some excellent points. In evaluating the risk of the link being bad -- I'd avoid sites that are filled primarily with "guest posts" or have much (perhaps no more than 10 %) "off topic" posts and also consider how close (or far) the topics are "off topic" on the blog you're considering contributing too. Many websites feature almost entirely guest blogged stuff but remain consistently close in the topic. Most that accept lots of guest contributions seem to be no better than the old BMR sites (i.e., lots of off topic stuff). I expect the day is not very far away when only the strongest sites which consist primarily of guest posts pass along much juice. My $. 02
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Think about the short term gains vs long term gains. If this site helps you rank for the short term and you make money, then it may be okay.
Also, consider the business objectives of your site or client's site. I have a client who wants to retire. There is NO FREAKIN way I would do this because it can flag Google and then penalties may occur. If this happened, then my client would not be able to retire.
Also, you are entering into gray hat SEO practices. You can get away with it "if" your site is already an authority, but I wouldn't risk it if your site is new. If the site is new, then the link profile is weak and it's easy to point webmasters out who game Google's algorithm.
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