I did initially write the post because everyone and their brother’s dog was running toward guest blogging likes lemmings to a cliff. So it was meant to provoke people to think more about how it could be used effectively.

For many sites, brands and even some people, guest blogging is nice supplementary activity if you’ve got your own house in order and you’re approaching it strategically. I think you make a good point about it being consistent as well. I often see people go on guest blogging sprees which feels more reactive than proactive.

I love this post simply because it helps people think more deeply, rather than buying in things at face value.

I think guest blogging is valuable and worth your time, if you really know how to do it, like finding the right sites to blog on and doing it consistently. And I agree that guest blogging on industry related sites, not within your niche, is a good strategy.

But just like building your own brand or website, guest blogging takes time to see results. And even when you see results, they are not lasting. I believe more time should be spent establishing your own site. Guest blogging can be used as a supplemental strategy but should be used consistently.

What that means is that guest blogging is a small part of your strategy because those opportunities are few and far between.

I am an injury attorney and I gotten far more out of my guest blogs on the several non-legal sites than all of the industry sites that I have written for. However, finding those truly worthwhile opportunities is the hard part.

I think it depends on the vertical and your goal. It might be effective if you’re using it purely for lead generation, particularly in the B2B space. Also, you’d already built one blog so you were likely getting a tailwind from that experience, right?

I still think guest blogging works for brand on a limited basis but is generally difficult for personal bloggers. There are plenty of positive examples of those ‘making it’ using the strategy but … I tend to think of those as outliers.

I too built my first blog using time and brand building and no doubt it worked. However my second blog was created solely on guest posting as the backbone and I found it demolished the time factor and shot the blog to stardom and branding quickly.

I was shocked myself and I am still not too happy about building other peoples brands with my content, but I am certainly building mine too.

I see that other blogs have followers and readers that would enjoy my site, so I steal them. (I could make this sound nice but..)

The blog owners let me in to their office to poach their clients. That is really what is going on here. So do I like quest posting? Yes I do.

Thanks for your comment and your intriguing idea. Could Google see Authorship on a guest post but understand that it’s not the ‘home’ for that author and thereby discount the links going to that ‘home’ domain.

The question is whether Google can determine the domain that is of self-interest. I’m guessing that looking at the pattern of Authorship across domains you could identify the domain of self-interest. The next question is to what degree would Google see this as an abuse and take action.

This speaks again to Google’s Heisenberg problem. The fact that they’re measuring the link graph changes the way the environment behaves.

Can you establish a benchmark for this activity and find those who are outside of the established patterns? Can you do so knowing that the environment was bound to change to some degree even if Google weren’t observing?

Certainly lots to think about.