If you have read the guest posting guide, then you know that having a strategy for outreach can be an excellent way to increase your SEO efforts and build solid relationships with powerful sites. These relationships will hopefully lead to guest posts which then might generate leads and of course juicy back links. These guest posts might even open up new opportunities to work with other like minded bloggers. However, there are some signs that reaching out to a site and attempting to develop a relationship might be a bad choice. Here are five of those reasons.
No Social Optimization
You will want to be developing relationships and guest blogging for sites that will general social links and discussion. The idea is that the more times that the post you have written is shared, you increase your chances of getting a click through on your links. If a site does not have a consistent social media policy, or simply does not include a social toolbar, you may want to consider this site with caution. Also make sure to check if the comment section under posts generates useful comments and discussions regularly. Check if it has spam. If it has spam or does not generate comments, you may want to consider skipping it.
Lack of Post Frequency
This is a very important factor that you must look for. There might be some excellent blog posts on a site or it is a niche that is very closely correlated to yours, but if you do not see posts appearing regularly, you might consider finding a better target. Check the content of each page and notice if the webmaster is producing high quality posts of their own or if they are taking lots of very low quality guest posts. The point of guest posting is to get high quality links so do not settle for less.
Not Indexed by Google
If you find a target site or a target page that is not indexed by Google, proceed with caution and suspicion. The fact that it is not indexed could be due to several factors such as a new blog or a change in the URL structure of the site. If a webmaster did not take steps to get the site indexed, it may be that the site is not updated very often or that the site is structured poorly. Pages that have no sitemaps or bad HTML headers should probably be skipped in my opinion but it is up to you. If the entire site, or even the homepage is not indexed by Google, this may show that the site is penalized and should not be contacted. If the site is not indexed, the link is not going to help you.
Complex Guest Posting Rules
So you are looking for targets for guest posting and found a great site. However, that site might have extremely complicated guest posting rules that will waste your time into fitting those rules instead of delivering great content and hindering the writing process. You must weigh how much time it will take you versus how much value the site can provide. Quantity and quality will always be the question here. I would advocate that you always go for quality as that is what Google seems to be eating up now days. If the site you want to guest post on does not have a large readership or small social value, then it may be worth your time to pursue a site with easier guest posting rules.
Weak Site Content
If a site has a lot of guest posts or posts that are spun or “thin” then it should be easy to see. Check for content that has been re-purposed for the site or even posts that have been directly copied and pasted. Pages that deal with content like this, (rehashed, spun, copied) are being phased out by Google. You will want to avoid these links at all cost if you do not want your link to have negative association. This stands true even if the webmaster wants your post.
Just remember to keep a vigilant eye when you are searching for target sites. A great link is going to be worth way more than a link from a terrible content spun site.
