{"id":240,"date":"2020-12-08T12:02:21","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T12:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crowdo.net\/blog\/?p=240"},"modified":"2026-05-22T15:55:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T15:55:44","slug":"outreach-guest-posting-101-from-zero-to-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crowdo.net\/blog\/outreach-guest-posting-101-from-zero-to-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Guest Posting in 2026? An Honest Guide to Guest Blogging, Link Building and SEO Best Practices for Webmasters, SEOs and Business Owners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We need to talk about something the SEO world won’t stop arguing about. January 2014 – Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team at the time, drops a blog post titled \u201cThe decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO\u201d<\/a>. His take? Blunt. \u201cStick a fork in it, guest blogging is done.\u201d That single line became probably the most-cited piece of SEO doom prophecy in the last decade, maybe longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then nothing really changed. Actually, that’s underselling it – the opposite happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast-forward to the Authority Hacker survey of 755 link builders and roughly 64.9% still list guest posting as their primary link-building tactic – making it the single most-used strategy on the board, edging out niche edits, HARO and digital PR. uSERP’s State of Backlinks 2025<\/a>, a smaller but more SEO-skewed sample, paints a messier picture: only about 12% of surveyed SEOs call guest posting their most effective approach these days, versus 20% who now lean on digital PR. Both things can be true at once – lots of people still do it, fewer claim it’s their best move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So before anyone tells us Matt Cutts killed guest posting – just hear us out. This guide covers what guest posting actually looks like in 2026, what Google’s 2024-2025 spam updates broke, how to vet a site properly, the pitching part, how guest posts sit next to digital PR, and whether outsourcing the whole thing makes sense for your situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lot of ground to cover. Let’s go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Link<\/a>
Video visual: Link Building for Beginners: Complete Guide to Get Backlinks \u2014 Ahrefs<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What Is Guest Posting, Really? (And Why the Definition Matters in 2026)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The term \u201cguest posting\u201d refers to creating and submitting content for a third-party website (usually a blog) as a contributor, and receiving credit as such. In most cases, you will receive a by-line and\/or author bio, and depending upon whether the host allows you to include them, may have a link to your own website\/business homepage. It is commonly referred to as guest blogging as well \u2013 same idea, just with a different name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the basic definition. What has changed is the why behind the activity. According to Semrush\u2019s updated Guide To Writing A Great Guest Post<\/a>, released in August 2025, there are some important changes in how we think about guest posting today: \u201cGuest posting used to be a viable method of acquiring backlinks; however, many publications now prohibit backlinks. Now, guest posting could be used to increase your brand credibility and gain access to new audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In essence, the reason we started doing this type of activity shifted. Before 2020, the point of creating guest articles was clear-cut – create a quality article, submit it to another website, receive a do-follow link from that website, and subsequently improve your search engine rankings. Today, the process is far less clear-cut. We publish an article for another website, put our brands in front of that website’s audience, and potentially leave with a link from that other website that carries value\/weight in regards to improving our search engine rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with all types of online marketing, both methods still work. Just know which game each individual site is playing prior to sending out your submissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A quick SEO example – what does this look like in practice?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Because “define it” is one thing and “show me” is another. Here’s a typical guest posting play we’d run at Crowdo for a client in, say, the project management software niche:<\/p>\n\n\n\n