Showerthought: I was sure guest posting was dead but tried it anyway

I spent 6 months avoiding guest posting because every blog I read said it was a waste of time after Google's updates. Last month I pitched to a mid-sized site in my niche and got a dofollow link that actually sent 200 referral visitors in two weeks. Anyone else find a tactic they wrote off that ended up working?

3 comments

3 Comments

william_carter1mo ago

Respectfully, I think you got lucky with that site. Most guest posting these days is just people churning out thin content for link juice, and Google's getting better at flagging it. The referral traffic might not last once the algorithm catches up to that particular placement.

lisak261mo ago

Good guest posts still pull real visitors if you pick the right sites and write for people first, not just search bots.

julia_lee1mo agoTop Commenter

William is missing the point though. Lisa is totally right if you actually put in the work. I did a guest post on a small hobbyist site last year and that thing still sends me a trickle of people every single week. Not thousands or anything crazy but real actual humans who read the whole article and clicked through because they cared about the topic. The key is finding those niche communities where people actually trust the site owner and read every word. Most people just blast out generic posts to big authority domains and wonder why nobody clicks. If you take the time to write something that answers a real question or solves a problem people search for, the traffic sticks around way longer than any algorithm update. The low effort spam posts are the ones getting flagged, not the ones that actually help somebody out.