Guide
Guest posting for SEO
This is the one tactic in the set that Google’s spam policies name out loud, which is why the writing about it splits into two useless halves: articles selling placements that never mention the policy, and articles insisting guest posting is dangerous and you should stop. The policy is more precise than either, and once you read what it actually describes, the line is easy to find and easy to stay on.
What the policy actually names
Not the format. What the link spam policies describe is large-scale article campaigns: content produced and distributed across other sites in order to carry links, and links given in exchange for that content or for money. The subject of the sentence is the campaign, not the guest post.
That distinction matters because it is the difference between a normal thing writers have always done and an operation. One piece for a publication whose readers you want to reach is not a campaign in any sense the policy recognises. Forty pieces of near-identical filler placed across forty sites, each carrying the same anchor, is exactly the thing it was written for.
The test, in one question
Ask yourself this before anything else
Would you still write this post if the link had to be nofollow? If yes, you are writing for an audience and the link is a by-product. If no, you are buying placement with labour instead of money, and an article has been wrapped around a link to make it look like something else.
The useful thing about this test is that it needs no judgement about anybody else. It does not ask whether the site is good enough, or whether a policy applies to you. It asks what the post is for, which is the only fact in the transaction you have direct access to.
Where the “write for us” lists lead
Searching for sites that accept guest posts returns lists of sites that accept guest posts, which sounds tautological until you notice what that selects for. A site advertising for contributors is optimising for supply of articles, and the people supplying them are link builders. So the readership converges on other link builders, and the link you earn sits on a page whose entire audience is people doing what you are doing.
The alternative is unglamorous and much smaller: the handful of sites in your subject that you already read. If you cannot name a few without searching, that is worth noticing, because it means you are looking for a place to put a link rather than an audience you have something to say to.
The nofollow question, answered properly
Many publishers apply rel="nofollow" to every contributor link as blanket policy, and some apply rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc". Given how much of an editor’s inbox is people buying links, that is a sensible thing for them to do rather than an insult to you.
It also costs you nothing worth minding. A one-way link with a nofollow still sends readers, still puts your name in front of an audience, and is a perfectly ordinary part of a healthy profile. We only ever treat nofollow as a bad deal in one place, and it is not this one: a reciprocal badge spends a permanent slot on your own homepage, so getting a nofollow back is a bad trade. Nothing about a guest post is a trade of that kind.
If the nofollow changes your mind about writing the post, the test above has just answered its own question.
Read the page once it publishes
Agreement is not publication, and publication is not the link you agreed on. Editors rewrite, CMS templates apply their own rel attributes, and contributor archives are sometimes noindexed without anybody thinking about it. None of that is malice and all of it is invisible unless somebody looks.
- Is the link still yours? Anchors get edited, and a link occasionally comes back pointing at the homepage rather than the page you discussed.
- What does its rel say? Worth knowing rather than worth worrying about, for the reasons above.
- Can the page be indexed and crawled? A post on a noindexed section is read by the audience and by nothing else.
The anchor, its rel and the page’s indexability in one fetch, which is the whole answer to what you actually received. Read the published page, no account needed.
And check again later
A guest post is among the most fragile links there is, because it lives entirely inside somebody else’s content decisions. Sites redesign, contributor sections get retired, archives move behind a new URL scheme, an editor prunes old posts. Nothing notifies you when any of that happens, and the piece you spent a weekend writing disappears as quietly as a directory listing does.
What we are not going to give you
A target number. We refuse it for backlinks generally and it is worse here, because counting guest posts is the exact habit that turns writing into a campaign.
Nor a list of sites, nor an outreach template. We keep a curated pool of directories and we do not publish it, so publishing somebody else’s harvested list would be a strange thing for us to do, and the template is what taught every editor to recognise these on sight.
Questions people actually ask
Is guest posting still good for SEO?
Writing for a site with real readers is still one of the better things you can do, and it was never mainly about the link. The version that stopped working is the one built for links: posts produced to place a URL, on sites that exist to publish them. Those are the specific thing Google’s spam policies describe, and they were also always the ones nobody read.
Is guest posting against Google’s guidelines?
Guest posting is not. What the link spam policies name is large-scale article campaigns where content is distributed to other sites in order to carry links, and links given in exchange for content or payment. The format is not the issue; the reason the article exists is. One post on a site whose audience you want to reach is not a campaign.
Should the link be in the bio or in the article?
In the article if it genuinely belongs there, in the bio otherwise. An in-content link the reader would follow is worth more than a bio link nobody reaches, but a link forced into a paragraph that did not need it is obvious to the editor, to the reader, and to the systems built to notice exactly that pattern.
What if they make the link nofollow?
That is normal and it is not a problem. Many publishers nofollow every contributor link as blanket policy, which is a reasonable thing for them to do given how much of their inbox is link buyers. The link still sends readers, and a one-way nofollow link costs you nothing. It only matters if the link was the entire point, which is the case this page is arguing against.
How do I find sites that accept guest posts?
Not from a "write for us" list. Those are harvested and resold, and most of what is on them are sites whose only readers are other people doing outreach. Start from the sites you already read in your subject: if you cannot name a few without searching, that is a useful signal about whether you have something to say to their audience.
Should I pay for a guest post?
Paying for placement is buying links, which is against Google’s spam policies and is your responsibility rather than the publisher’s. It is usually a bad purchase on its own terms too: the sites selling placements have audiences made of other link builders, so you are paying for a link that commonly passes nothing on a page nobody reads.
How many guest posts do I need?
Nobody can give you that number, and the shape of the question is the problem. Guest posts are not a quantity you accumulate: one piece on a site your customers actually read does more than twenty on sites that exist to publish twenty. If you are counting them, you have already slipped back into the version that does not work.
The link you wrote two thousand words for deserves watching.
A guest post lives inside somebody else's redesign schedule, and an editorial link can turn nofollow, lose its page, or vanish entirely without a word to you. ShipDR reads every backlink you record on a schedule and tells you the day one changes, whether it came from a directory form or from a weekend of writing.
- Every listing rechecked on a schedule, not once
- Live, dofollow and indexable, read from the page itself
- Told the day a backlink drops or flips
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