What Are Guest Posts Exactly? Here’s a Comprehensive Guide from SEOJet

Our mission at SEOJet is to make the link-building process easy and effective for marketing agencies, SEO professionals, and business owners. 

Guest posts are the key to building your brand’s authority and obtaining strong backlinks for your site.  

SEOJet clients have been experiencing unprecedented success with our backlink management software that guides them in building the right backlinks every time. 

But, the fact is not all backlinks or guest posts are created equal. There is a right way and a wrong way to build backlinks through guest posts.

Have you recently started a website and now you’re asking yourself: “what are guest posts?” Keep reading below to learn everything you need to know about getting started.

Anatomy of an Effective Guest Post

Most guest posting services offer clients a choice between targeting sites with high traffic or high domain authority. 

High domain authority is important but we’ve found it can be misleading. While conducting blog outreach our team has come across many DA 30+ blogs that have zero rankings and zero traffic. 

These blogs may have a high DA but they aren’t useful without traffic.

Here is what SEOJet focuses on when classifying blogs:

As you can see there are multiple factors to be considered. Sites with high domain authority sound nice but they don’t always give us what we need. 

We’ve found that a blog’s organic traffic on Google is the most critical factor. 

This means a blog has authority in the eyes of Google and the thousands of visitors who read it each month. 

When seeking out guest posts, you should focus on building branded anchors to your homepage and links from referring domains to individual site pages.

Guest Post Length

Nearly all guest posting services on the web offer 500-word articles. Even though it’s considered the industry standard, you want to avoid recognizable patterns when doing SEO.

By this we mean you don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. 

Here at SEOJet, 95% of guest posts ordered choose the default of 500 words.

This means there are hundreds of thousands of 500-word guest posts (usually with just one external link) on the internet.

Our team is concerned that this is a pattern leaving a huge footprint. That’s why we strongly recommended clients make their guest posts at least 750 words.

Even better would be ordering guest posts with a minimum of 1,000 words. 

Not only does this allow you to provide more in-depth content but it won’t get trapped in the 500-word pattern. 

Guest Post Sections

If you have ever written a regular blog for your website, then you know how to do a guest post. The only difference is that it will include specific anchor texts with a link back to your site (we’ll talk more about anchor texts later in this guide).

First, you’ll need to write a title and subtitle that include your targeted keywords. 

Remember that you’re writing for human beings, not Google bots. Therefore, your writing should be conversational and readable. 

Keep in mind that this blog will appear on a different website, so it needs to match that site’s style. 

The content or information you share should be accurate, up-to-date, and presented in a way to help answer a reader’s questions. 

And, most importantly, you want to add a compelling call-to-action (CTA) that gets readers interested in visiting your website to learn more. 

The bio you provide to appear at the bottom of the guest post can also build your professional authority. You want it to be written in a way that positions you as an expert in your niche. 

Learning What Are Guest Posts Types

We are big believers in the power of high-quality guest posts. 

In fact, we have built page one rankings for our own site with 70-80% fewer backlinks than our competitors because we focus on quality over quantity. 

So, how do we do it?

The best way to know what type of links you need is to do a competitor backlink analysis.

With these results, you can easily see how to beat your competitors with our Competitor Lock report. See below: 

This report looks at your #1 ranked competitor or a custom URL. Whichever you choose, it shows you why they’ve ranked ahead of you and what you can do to beat them.

There are some other really cool things the software does. To learn more, go check out this recorded demo. 

SEOJet can help you naturally build trust with Google. Our link maps will guide your guest posting efforts so that every link you build will have a real purpose and will move you toward a #1 ranked backlink profile.

We also sell guest post backlinks inside of SEOJet to make it easy to get started. 

Generating SEOJet Link Maps

For each page that you are trying to get ranked on Google, SEOJet creates a “link map.”

A link map is a road map for your backlink strategy. It also generates an anchor text suggestion that will help keep your anchor text ratios natural.

Not having a natural backlink profile can result in Google penalties. That’s why it’s so important to use the right anchor texts in your guest posts. 

High Traffic vs. Domain Authority

Clients can purchase guest posts from websites that get a lot of traffic or have high domain authority. 

Guest posts can be published on websites with thousands or tens of thousands of monthly visitors, based on their goals and budget. The higher the traffic, the more expensive the guest post would be. 

The idea is that a site with a high amount of traffic is seen as an authority by Google. 

On the flip side, clients can also request that their guest posts appear on-site with high domain authority (ranging from 0 to 100). 

Sites like Google.com, Microsoft.com, or CNN.com have a domain author of 96 or higher.

While these sites receive a lot of traffic as well, their true value lies in the trust given to them by Google. 

As a client, you can focus on them both equally or decide if there’s one that will give you a better return on investment. 

How Does Guest Posting Help Your Ranking?

SEO professionals have known for years that links are one of Google’s top-ranking factors. The theory behind this is that one website linking to another shows trustworthiness. The site receiving the link is also considered an authority on a specific topic. 

Google ranks sites based on guidelines known as E.A.T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Links between sites can hit all three of those. 

Years ago many in the SEO field set out making hundreds or thousands of backlinks for their clients. The problem was so many of them were low-quality or spammy. More recently, Google tightened up the guidelines for an effective backlink.

While it’s harder to produce quality backlinks, those that make it are that much more valuable.

Google will analyze all of the backlinks leading to your website and determine their quality based on several factors. If the content is good and the referring site is authoritative, you’ll see a bump in your search rankings. 

That’s why it’s so important to obtain quality backlinks with a service like SEOJet.  

Anchor Text Best Practices 

Why are anchor texts so important?

Not only do they signal to Google and website visitors what to expect from the link, but how you make anchor texts can have positive or negative effects on your SEO. 

Here at SEOJet, we’ve identified 12 anchor text categories:

• Brand
• Generic
• WebsiteName.com
• Full URL  
• Keyword 
• Brand plus keyword 
• Keyword plus 
• Page Title 
• Partial Keyword 
• Empty Anchor 
• Home URL
• URL with no HTTP 

Furthermore, we consolidated all 12 into three main groups: Blended Anchors, Exact Match Anchors, Natural Anchors.

This means you have many options when writing anchor texts. The problem is you need to have a natural-looking mix of different anchor texts to avoid being penalized by Google. 

The thing that makes SEOJet so much different than any other source for guest posting is that our entire service is built around backlink software that guides you through the link-building process.

For every page that you build links to, we show you how natural your backlink profile looks to Google and give you anchor text suggestions that will actually get you positive results in Google.

There is no guessing what to do next.

Imagine getting top value out of every single backlink you get.

What’s even better is that we analyze the top-10 ranked pages for your main key phrase and build out a plan to match and beat top-ranked sites.

What Is a Typical Guest Post Turnaround?

One of the first questions we get from clients at SEOJet is what are guest posts turnarounds and how long it will take to start affecting their rankings?

Our average turnaround time for a link is 30 days or less, but our team is always working on revamping our systems and improving efficiencies.

New clients can immediately begin ordering high-value guest posts through their SEOJet account.

SEOJet’s emphasis is always on obtaining high-quality and niche-relevant guest posts because those will always perform better.  

Each guest post will include links out to authority sites (a huge natural signal to Google), internal links to other pages in the blog (another signal), and of course the link.

Buying Guest Posts vs. Manual Outreach

You do have the option of obtaining your own guest posts. This involves you or a member of your staff manually reaching out to hundreds of websites asking for a backlink. 

Doing it on your own takes a lot of time and effort to get the results you want.

With SEOJet, on the other hand, all you have to do is click on the green “Order This Link Now” button inside your link map. Provide us with your anchor text and we’ll create the content around your key phrase. 

Our team will even coordinate outreach to the most relevant publisher. 

If you still need some convincing, here’s some information about our new JetFuel system. 

What Is JetFuel?

JetFuel is a backlink scoring system that uses organic rankings and organic traffic as a key performance indicator.

This means we are not just looking at domain authority anymore. We want to see how much authority a blog has by looking at the metric that actually matters: organic traffic.

How We Calculate JetFuel For A Blog

The calculation of JetFuel is very simple. We’re just using the minimum organic traffic levels (according to Ahrefs) as the score.

For example, blogs with 1,000-5,000 organic visitors per month get the score of JetFuel 1000+.

Blogs that have organic traffic from 5,000-10,000 are scored JetFuel 5000+. And so on.

The higher a website’s organic traffic and rankings, the higher its JetFuel score will be.

Next, we filter out blogs that have under 1,000 organic visitors per month.

We believe a DA 18 blog that ranks for 1,000 key phrases and gets 1,500 visitors a month from Google traffic is way more valuable than a DA 42 blog that ranks for nothing and gets no traffic.

Note: We understand that the ranking and traffic numbers aren’t totally accurate from Ahrefs but it is close enough to give us a baseline to work off of.

This is how you ensure that backlinks from guest posts have real SEO value.

We help you get faster rankings with fewer links by obtaining links from blogs with real traffic and rankings.

That is the SEOJet commitment to you.

Looking for Effective Guest Posts?

Because we are so heavily involved in the link-building process we understand exactly what it takes to build a natural backlink profile.

We can help you answer the question: what are guest posts for my business or niche? Then we’ll tell you the exact type to build. 

Contrary to what others may say about SEO, link building is still the most effective way to climb the search results.

Guest Post Prices

SEOJet account holders enjoy discounts on guest posts based on our system of domain authority:

We also offer SEOJet members-only pricing for JetFuel:

Even though the guest post links are high-quality we can bring them to you at hugely discounted prices because we have so many SEO agencies ordering through our system.

Here are some sample guest posts from each of the JetFuel scoring ranges. This will help you get a good idea of what you can expect.

JR 1000+ Sample Guest Post

Post: https://womenlite.com/most-popular-dog-breeds/

Organic Traffic: 1.8k+ visitors/mo

Organic Keywords: 4.4k+

JR 5000+ Sample Guest Post

Post: https://www.rafichowdhury.com/what-makes-for-effective-seo-and-how-to-take-advantage-of-it/

Organic Traffic: 7k+ visitors/mo

Organic Keywords: 13.8k+

Ready to Sign Up for SEOJet?

SEOJet is software that helps you build a #1 ranked backlink profile really fast using proven data from Google.

It gives you a road map to follow for every link you build.

It looks at the backlinks you already have to each page and then shows you what you need to do to build out a #1 ranked backlink profile.

In other words, combined with our guest post service it puts your link building on (legal) steroids. And what are guest posts exactly? They’re blogs you write for other publishers that contain a link back to your site for better SEO. 

Try our 14-day free trial to see how it works for your business.