Was skeptical about guest posting until I lost rankings from a bad link

I used to think all guest posting was spammy garbage. Then 3 months ago my site dropped from page 1 to page 3 after Google hit me for some low quality directory links I bought. A buddy in a Cleveland SEO group showed me his traffic from legit guest posts on real industry blogs. I tried it myself with one solid placement on a .edu site and within 6 weeks I recovered my rankings plus some. Has anyone else seen guest posting work better than they expected?

3 comments

3 Comments

kelly_nelson951mo ago

A .edu placement? I gotta be honest I find that hard to believe but if it worked for you that's wild. Most .edu sites have strict editorial guidelines now. I've tried pitching a few real university blogs in the past and got nowhere. But if you actually got something published there and saw results within 6 weeks, that's impressive timing. Usually takes me closer to 3-4 months to see any movement from guest posting.

anthonymurray1mo ago

Wait, did you actually do any outreach to those .edu blogs yourself or did you use some kind of service? I read a study from that Moz blog that said guest posting still works if you pick the right sites, but it's way slower than people think. @drewsullivan has a point about nofollow links being common on university domains, but I heard from a guy who runs a local SEO meetup that even nofollow guest posts can help because they drive referral traffic and make your link profile look more natural. Honestly, 6 weeks for a ranking bounce back sounds like you caught a lucky break or Google was already getting ready to re-evaluate your site anyway. The timing just aligned with that .edu post hitting.

drewsullivan1mo ago

Yeah, .edu backlinks aren't really a magic bullet (most have nofollow links anyway).