Even more controversial after the mass penalty on MyBlogGuest.com and the “all nofollow” reaction from eConsultancy that followed. Guest blogging really seems like a gray area to find your marketing and link building efforts in right now.

But it’s a question everybody keeps asking: “Does guest blogging still help with SEO?”

The answer is neither yes or no, but actually slightly more complicated.

I got two writers to share their ideas for this post. Their insight makes it clear that things have changed, but not so much to the smart (and honest) business.

Read on and take away.

Guest Blogging Doesn’t Help With SEO Rankings As It Used To…

Deborah Anderson from Social Web Cafe recalls when it was easier to rank with guest blogging and why it doesn’t work as it used to:

Previously, there was some SEO benefit with guest blogging because of the “dofollow” links.  Of course, there is no such thing as a dofollow link.  What it really is is the absence of the “nofollow” rel tag connected to the link.  This told Google to follow the link (dofollow) and that provided SEO benefit.

What happened is that some people were putting up very inferior “crap” articles and the search results (SERPs) were reflecting poor quality content.  Therefore, Google singlehandedly put a stop to that benefit, to stop people from putting up poor quality articles only for the purpose of the SEO benefit.  That move hurt the rest of us who didn’t mind the SEO benefit but were guest blogging for the other benefits.

What I just described is the direct benefit.  The indirect benefits of guest blogging still exist.  Those include branding, exposure, building the writing portfolio, networking, etc.  Also, there are some sites that do not use the nofollow tag (in other words, dofollow), but those are becoming fewer and fewer.  What happened back in March of 2014, to MyBlogGuest’s clients (basically all of them) resulted in everyone changing their links, site-wide, to nofollow.  Those who did not remained under penalty from Google.  That caused other sites to also change their links to nofollow so that they would not be penalized by Google.

It was a brilliant move by Google, to inflict fear across the globe, for publishers and writers on the Internet.  In one fell swoop they were able to make a statement about the type of content they want to show in their search engine.  We, as consumers of Google products, are to blame, as well, because we gave them the power to be the top dog for search.   And, what can I say.  I love their calendar and I am the “hangout queen” using the Google hangout product.

There are still indirect SEO benefits to guest blogging (i.e. a viral article that happens to do well in the search rankings), but it is not the SEO benefit that it used to be a couple of years ago.  If you are a writer, your best bet is to write for other reasons and then count the SEO benefits as icing on the cake.  If you are a publisher, your best bet is to nofollow the links that are contained in the guest articles that you receive.

It follows that guest blogging as a way to build links and help with SEO is no longer a viable strategy, even though guest blogging always helped and still helps with your branding efforts and it definitely helps to pull links from the Web in indirect ways, like Deborah suggests, which the next paragraph is all about.

BUT You Can Still Guest Blog To Indirectly Help Your SEO Rankings

Not all is lost with the “guest blogging penalty”. Here is what David Leonhardt from THGM Ghostwriter Service has to say about it:

Anything that spreads your name is good for SEO.  Every time you put your name out there, there is a greater chance that people will look for your website, find something they really like and link to it or share it on social media, and that’s good for SEO.

If there is a hyperlink, even a NoFollow one, that serves the same purpose.  If the link is DoFollow, even better.

The value of guest blogging for SEO depends greatly on the quality of the content on your website.  If lots of people read your amazing guest post, then rush to see what’s on your website, only to ding boring stuff, forget earning links and social shares from them.

When you get nofollow links to your blog posts and articles, users will still find them and link back to them as helpful resources in their posts (editorially) if they deem your content trustworthy and authoritative. That is what I do here at Bosmol as a writer anytime I stumble upon an amazing resource that fits into a post I’m writing— I go ahead and link it, whether that link was originally nofollowed or not.

Continue to guest blog and let users find you, if not search engines. In the end, like the say “all chickens come home to roost”, you will still get backlinks that are beneficial for your SEO efforts.

Do YOU guest blog? Has your opinion of guest blogging changed over time or are you still a fan?

Share in the comments below.

The post Does Guest Blogging Help With SEO Rankings? first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Jun 10, 2022 @ 12:03 am

In the past, SEO companies used direct submissions and SEO tools to get links. These outdated tools and tactics are no longer useful. In fact, a few of the old techniques can actually attract penalization from Google.

Today, most webmasters are well versed with the advanced SEO tactics to find link building opportunities but analyzing these activities through Google Search is a whole new ball game. To remain on top of this game, you need to be well versed with the search operators.

Search operators enable you to clear the clutter from your search and make it more effective.

The infographic here narrows them down for you through an easy-to-understand description. Below, I’ve explained, in detail, some of the vital search operators that will aid in your efforts.

Find links to your website

 Don’t you wonder which other websites are linking to your webpages? Finding these links which are indexed by Google is easier than you thought.

All you need to do is type “link:” followed by your website and the search results will cough up all the webpages linked to your website.

For instance, if your website is seooptimizers.com, just type “link:seooptimizers.com” (without space and without quotes), but if you check this out then you will find very few links.

This is because Google restricts showing all the links publicly.

Instead, I’ve found a better approach. It involves simply removing the home page links from the query.

To get the complete picture, instead of the above search, try“Link:seooptimizers.com –seooptimizers.com” and see the magic.

Find your webpages pages indexed by Google

 Now, this can be a vital source of information.

To find out which of your webpages have been indexed by Google, simply type “Site: yourwebsite.com” and all the pages of this website indexed by Google will appear before you.

Guide Google to Yield Exactly What You Want

It can be quite frustrating to not get the exact results you are looking for.

Eliminating this problem is actually very simple. Use of quotes in your search query gives you the exact results you are looking for.

For instance, if you are looking for guest blogging opportunities, simply type guest blogging within quotes, like this – “guest blogging.” You’ll be amazed by the number of highly relevant exact matches that Google brings forth.

Check cache to look through Google’s eyes

Not everything that’s on your website might be indexed by Google.

To see how Google views your website, you just need to type “cache: yourwebsite.com”.

This will give you an idea of what Google saw the last time it visited your website.

Get comprehensive info about your website

Using “info:” is perhaps the best way to gather quick information about several aspects of your website at one go. Typing “info: yourwebsite.com” will give you information such as pages that link to your website, cached version, similar pages and all details about your domain.

These are just a few search operators at your disposal but there is a vast array of advanced search operators that can help you to find out more precise results.

I have highlighted several vital operators in the infographic below. Just explore them and get to know them better. Don’t forget to let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

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<p><a href=’https://seooptimizers.com/advanced-search-operators-for-seo-link-building-infographic/’><img src=’https://seooptimizers.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/A-Detailed-Guide-On-Advanced-Search-Operators-For-SEO-Link-Building.jpg’ alt=’Advanced Google Search Operators’ width=’540px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p><strong>Created by <a href=”https://seooptimizers.com”>SEO Optimizers</a></strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>

Extensive Guide on How to Use Google Search Operators

If you google almost all the time and do not know what the Google search operators are, you miss out a lot. These operators can make your search twice faster and more detailed because you will find what you are looking for at one go.

How Do I Get Google to Search a Word

Before you learn about Google search operators, review how you can search a word on Google in a fundamental way. You can use your computer or mobile devices like tablets and smartphones to open chrome browser applications.

On the top, you will see an address bar where you can type the word that you want to search.

After typing the word, press enter.

How Do I Do a Specific Google Search

Click the three dots aligned vertically on the top right of the page if you want to find the word within a specific page. After clicking it, click find. A bar will appear on the top right part of the screen.

You can place the word there and find what you want to see in highlights. You may also press CTRL+ F to make this process faster.

If you want to look for the word that you found on a webpage, you can highlight it, press right click and search.

For smartphone users, you can search what you find on a particular page by tapping the word to search to highlight it. A panel will pop below the webpage, tap it to see the results.

Please take note that you should set your default browser to Google to be able to do it.

Moreover, if you want to find the specific results for the word that you are searching on Google, you should use Google search operators.

What Are the Search Operators

Whether you are searching for SEO or anything, Google search operators can make your research easier. The result of Google’s search engine is most likely according to your preference for what you want to see.

These are special commands that you can use on the search engine that tells Google what you want or do not want to see on its search results. You do not have to memorize these operators because they are easy to remember. After all, they are short commands. Additionally, many of them are characters that symbolize their function.

For this reason, you do not have to worry about forgetting it.

Although search operators seem useful for researchers and SEO specialists, it seems like Google is starting to get rid of some of the useful ones. There were tons of helpful search operators in the past that people cannot use nowadays.

Therefore, you should know all the search operators that you can still use. Also, it will be helpful to know which are not working or require some trial and error.

How Do I Use Google Advanced Search Operators

You can combine these commands, but knowing the right combination is not easy to reach your target results. However, knowing how to do it will give you an advantage over the others who do not know it.

Here are the SEO tactics that you can use.

Aim for specific results.

The primary function of search operators is to help you get targeted results. That is why you can use their multiple combinations to acquire the results that you want to see.

Exclude the terms that you do not like to see on the results.

The exclusion symbol to get rid of the words or searches on the result is (-). Typing it before the term you want to exclude allows you not to see it on the results page.

This article will delve into this operator later.

Combine the exclusions with exact terms that you do not like to see.

If there are specific words that you do not like to see on the results, you can combine (-) with (“”). For example, you do not like to see the word ‘lorem’ on the search results. What you will do is this:

-“lorem”

Find out how Google indexes your site.

You can find out how Google indexes your site by using the operator (site:) before the domain name. For example:

site:loremipsum.com

Get rid of subdomains

You can get rid of the staging sites and subdomains by using the (-inurl:) search operator.

Find duplicate content

You can also use search operators to find duplicate content on a site. All you have to do is combine the search operator (site:) and (“”).

You use (site:) to index the domain. Use the (“”) to find the internal duplicate of the word inside this operator.

For example:

site:loremipsum.com “dolor”

Which Search Operator Does Google Enable by Default

There are three search operators that Google sets as default now. The first one is (AND), the second is (OR), and the third one is (~).

Google’s logical default is the operator (AND) between the terms of your searches. Google typically ignores both the operators (AND) and (OR) because these are the search defaults.

Also, Google ignores articles, single digits, and other non-valuable words.

The third one is an unreliable operator because Google’s default is now searching for the term’s synonyms.

How do I Search Without a Word

Google is not human, although it seems like it is intelligent enough to know almost anything. It does not know the specific results that you want to return. As a result, once you search for a word, such as ‘divergent,’ it will return all searches related to divergent, whether it is about the movie or the definition of the word.

To let Google know that you do not want it to include particular searches, use the operator (-). For example, you wish to search for a divergent definition, but you do not want it to return results about the Divergent movie. What you need to do is type this:

Divergent -movie -film

Typing these words will get rid of the search results about Divergent movie.

As you can see, using search operators is easy and fun. They allow you to find all you are looking for without cracking your brain to use more specific words to search on Google.

The post Advanced Google Search Operators for SEO Link Building first appeared on SEO Optimizers.