---
title: "Guest posting"
url: https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/guest-posting
type: Page
---

# Guest posting

Guest posting explained: what Google has said about guest blogging since 2014, the signs of a link scheme and what makes a guest article worth publishing.

Link building glossary

## Guest posting

Guest posting is writing an article for another website, published under the author's name and usually including a link back to the author's own site. Google accepts guest articles written to inform the host site's readers, but treats guest posts produced mainly to build links at scale as link spam.

## What has Google said about guest posting?

On 20 January 2014 Matt Cutts, then head of Google's webspam team, wrote that guest blogging for links had become too spammy and advised against relying on it as a link building strategy. On 25 May 2017 Google's webspam team warned about spammy links in contributor, guest, partner and syndicated posts. It said it does not discourage articles that inform users, educate another site's audience or bring awareness to a cause or company. What breaks its rules is when the main intent is to build links in a large-scale way.

Google named four warning signs, when taken to an extreme.

- Stuffing keyword-rich links to your site in the articles
- Publishing articles across many different sites, or many articles on a few large sites
- Using writers who don't know the topics they write about
- Using the same or similar content across articles, or duplicating your own site's content

## What does a good guest post look like?

It is written by someone who knows the subject, for the host site's audience, and would be worth publishing with no link at all. Any link points to a page that helps the reader go further and uses plain descriptive anchor text. If the host is paid to publish the article, the link is a paid link and needs rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" under Google's spam policies.

## Example

The founder of an HR software company writes a piece for a people management trade site on calculating holiday entitlement for part-time staff. The article stands on its own, and a single link in the author bio points to the company's free holiday calculator.

## Related terms

- [Link building](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/link-building)
- [Link spam](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/link-spam)
- [Anchor text](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/anchor-text)
- [Link attributes](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/link-attributes)
- [Content syndication](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/content-syndication)

## Further reading

- [Link Building for SaaS: 20 Strategies That Work](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/saas-link-building-guide)

Our [SaaS Link-Building Agency](https://marketingsignals.com/service/saas-link-building) service puts this into practice for brands in the UK and US.

## Sources

- [The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO, Matt Cutts (20 January 2014)](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/)
- [A reminder about links in large-scale article campaigns, Google (25 May 2017)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2017/05/a-reminder-about-links-in-large-scale)
- [Spam policies for Google web search, Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies)

## Ready To Build Links That Actually Rank?