The Risks of Unrelated Guest Posts
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Hi Mozzers!
I'm really interested to get some opinions on whether a guest post on a blog that is far outside your niche could be a risky tactic.
For example if your blog is about a technology product and you get a guest post published on an Elvis blog, will this appear manipulative or similar to a purchased link?
Suppose your guest post is about Elvis, but at the end of the article is a link to a technology product with the anchor text "customized PC adapters". Won't that look manipulative to a search engine algorithm?
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I would agree with Alan on this one - user experience and relevance are paramount. I get approached by guest bloggers regularly that are outside my niche and have to turn them down, and would also be expect to be turned down if I did the same.
In a simplistic form, imagine going to a local bicycle shop that only sells bicycles, to find they had started to sell deep sea diving helmets - a cyclist would be confused, and a deep sea diver would be highly unlikely to even consider coming into the shop anyway. Regular customers would likely think the reason for the new products would simply be down to some kind of deal, rather than expanding on a related/natural niche.
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Always think of user experience when deciding whether something would be a negative for SEO.
A blog post on an unrelated site wouldn't be of much value in the link aspect because it's linking totally unrelated content.
But the biggest key is why a link would exist pointing to the unrelated site at all. If the link is valid in how it describes something related to the focus of the article, it's a valid link. If it's as you describe in the second scenario, that would definitely be considered a low quality link. Especially if you use the keyword anchor text that way. That's the one that could cause the biggest red flag.
On the other hand, if the author had a box at the end of the article, or as part of the opening of the guest post, describing how that person is connected with the tech product, there's nothing wrong with linking the author's name to that tech site. Or using the name of the tech site as the anchor text.
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