Guest Posting: How It Works, What Google Says and What It Costs
Guest posting means writing an article for another site in exchange for a link. What Google says about it, how to find good sites, and what it costs.
Guest posting (also called guest blogging) is writing an article for someone else's website, usually with a link back to your own site in the body or the author bio. The host site gets free content, and you get exposure to their audience plus a backlink.
It's one of the oldest link building tactics and still one of the most used, because it gives you more control than almost anything else: you pick the topic, you write the words and you usually choose the anchor text. That control is also why Google watches it closely.
How guest posting works
- Find sites that accept guest posts in your niche and actually have readers.
- Pitch a topic that fits their audience, not just one that suits your keyword.
- Write the article to their guidelines and standard, with one or two links that genuinely help the reader.
- Submit and revise if the editor asks for changes.
- Check the live post for the link, the anchor text and the rel attribute, then log it.
Most of the work is in steps one and two, which is the same prospecting and pitching covered in blogger outreach.
What Google says about guest posting
Google doesn't ban guest posting. It bans guest posting done mainly to build links at scale, and it has been specific about where the line is.
In a 2017 post on the Search Central blog, a reminder about links in large-scale article campaigns, Google's webspam team said it does not discourage guest articles that "inform users, educate another site's audience or bring awareness to your cause or company". What violates its guidelines is when "the main intent is to build links in a large-scale way". It listed factors that, taken to an extreme, point to a problem:
| Google's warning sign | What it looks like in practice |
|---|---|
| Stuffing keyword-rich links into the articles | Every post links with the same money keyword |
| Publishing across many different sites, or lots of articles on a few large sites | Dozens of near-identical posts on sites with no connection to each other |
| Writers who don't know the topic | Generic articles that could be about anything |
| The same or similar content across articles | Spun or lightly rewritten versions of one piece |
Google's current spam policies say the same thing more briefly. They list "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as an example of link spam, alongside paid posts that pass ranking credit. And in a July 2021 post on its link spam update, Google said that when it detects sites "publishing or acquiring links with excessive sponsored and guest posting without proper link tags", algorithmic and manual actions may be applied.
The practical reading: a guest post written for a real audience on a relevant site, with a natural link, is fine. A campaign of keyword-anchored articles on any site that will take them is what Google is describing as a link scheme. More detail is in link schemes.
What makes a guest post placement good or bad
Traffic is the quickest check. A site that Google sends real visitors to is a site Google trusts. A site with a high Domain Rating but almost no organic traffic is often selling links to anyone, and the DR and DA scores alone won't tell you that.
How to find guest posting sites
The search results for "guest posting sites" are full of long lists of sites that accept posts. Most are useless, because any site on a public list is being pitched by everyone and often publishes anything. You're better off finding your own.
| Method | How | Quality of results |
|---|---|---|
| Search operators | Your topic plus "write for us", "guest post" or "contribute" | Mixed, needs heavy vetting |
| Competitor backlinks | Look for guest posts in your competitors' link profiles | Good, sites already proven in your niche |
| Author bios | Find people in your niche who guest post and see where | Good |
| Industry publications | Trade sites and association blogs that take expert contributors | Often the best, harder to get |
| Public "guest post site" lists | Download a spreadsheet | Poor, avoid |
Whatever the source, vet each site the same way: topical fit, organic traffic trend, what it ranks for, the quality of recent posts and how many outbound links each one carries.
Guest post services
A guest post service handles prospecting, writing and placement for a fee per post. Some let you choose from a list of sites with metrics shown, others pick sites for you. The same questions apply as for any blogger outreach service: where the sites come from, whether you can approve them, who writes the content and what happens if a post is removed.
Paying for a guest post that carries a followed link is, in Google's terms, a paid link. That's the reality of most of this market, so be clear-eyed about it and put your effort into site quality. There's a comparison of providers in the best guest post services.
How much does guest posting cost?
Writing and pitching your own guest posts costs time. Buying them through a service is priced per post, and the main drivers are the site's traffic and authority, the niche, the article length and whether you choose the site.
| Approach | Money | Time | Control |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | Low (tools only) | High | Full |
| Freelance writer plus your outreach | Medium | Medium | High |
| Guest post service | Medium to high | Low | Medium to high |
| Marketplace | Varies by site | Medium | High |
For price ranges by site quality, see link building cost. Link building marketplaces are covered separately.
Guest posting best practices
- Write for the host site's readers first, your link second
- Keep links few and useful, one to your site is usually enough
- Lead with branded or descriptive anchor text rather than exact-match keywords
- Spread posts across genuinely relevant sites rather than piling up on a few
- Never reuse the same article on several sites
- Keep a log of every post, link and anchor
The short version
- Guest posting is writing for another site in exchange for exposure and a link
- Google is fine with guest articles that inform an audience, and treats large-scale, keyword-anchored campaigns as link spam
- Organic traffic and topical relevance are better quality checks than DR or DA
- Ignore public lists of guest posting sites and build your own prospect list
- Paid guest posts with followed links count as paid links in Google's eyes, so quality and restraint are what keep them useful