A few months ago I sat in on a Twitter chat that was hosted by Ann Smarty, the owner of MyBlogGuest.com. (I believe they do these chats weekly, if anyone is interested.)
Anyway, Ann is well-known and respected in the
SEO blogosphere, so I was really curious to see if she would mention anything about the backlinking factor associated with guest posts. She didn't.
The biggest - and most interesting - point she made is that guest blogging should be viewed as a branding technique. I was a little shocked by this. I mean I've heard people say they guest blog for traffic. I've heard others say they guest blog for the backlink benefit. But I've never hear anyone say they do it for branding purposes.
Pretty soon after that chat I started guest blogging using the same pen name that I also use for a couple of Amazon Kindle books I've written. I don't consider myself to be a Pulitzer prize winning writer, but I'm no slouch either. So I targeted some pretty high-traffic blogs to see what would happen.
Sure enough some of the blogs delivered pretty good traffic to my site. But more often than not, the traffic was just okay. 'Okay' meaning 10-20 visitors per guest post. It definitely wasn't the windfall that I expected. But... those guest blog posts did lead to additional blogging opportunities, so I suppose Ann was spot on about the branding part.
At the end of the day, I do think guest blogging can add to your backlink profile. I also think it can be good for traffic, but that it's not always a sure thing. But like Ann said, it's probably best used for branding. If you want a great way to spread your name fast, guest blogging is an excellent way to do it.