Stop Guest Posting for Links, Start Getting Cited Instead

Google's spam policies name the thing most guest posting is for. Under link spam, the list includes "advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit, or links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites."

That is Google's current wording on Google's own site. So an agency selling you ten guest posts a month on sites with a domain authority above 40, with your keyword as the anchor text, is selling you the pattern Google wrote down.

Guest posting still works. Doing it for the link is what stopped working.

The test that sorts one from the other

The same page names excessive link exchanges, the "link to me and I'll link to you" arrangement, and partner pages that exist only to cross-link. Together they give you a test you can apply in four seconds. Take the link out of the post. Would the post still have been worth writing?

Run that over your last six placements. How many survive?

Domain authority is Moz's number, not Google's

The advice that used to sit on this page was to score prospects in Moz and aim for a domain authority between 21 and 70, on the logic that more backlinks means more authority means better rankings.

Half of that holds. Domain authority is Moz's own estimate of how a site gets referenced across the web, and it is a fair rough read on whether a publication is real and read. Google does not have that score and does not use it, so it has one job: checking a site is worth a fortnight of pitching. If the only figure in your agency's monthly report is an average domain authority, ask what happened to the enquiries.

What replaced the link: being the source

When an AI Overview, ChatGPT or Perplexity answers a question, nothing passes down a link. The answer names a few sources and paraphrases them, and anchor text does not buy the spot.

What gets a business named is having said something specific and checkable that the answer needs. A number. A method someone can follow. A price. A rule that applies in Australia and nowhere else. That is a different job from 900 words of opinion on someone else's blog.

Three things decide whether an answer engine can use you at all. The AI crawlers have to be allowed onto your site, which a surprising number of sites block without knowing (here is how to check yours). The page has to state the fact plainly, near the top, in words a buyer would type. And other sites have to repeat it, which is the one place a well placed guest post still earns its keep. You can measure whether any of it is working by tracking the questions your buyers ask and who gets named in the answers.

The first two are work on your own site. Only the third depends on other publications.

On a client's own site, the first two are build work: how the pages are structured, what the crawlers can reach, and how the site and the CRM record where each enquiry came from. That is what our websites team does, and the CRM side sits with our RevOps and HubSpot team.

This video from our YouTube channel looks at why a website can be invisible to AI agents and how to fix it.

Check who owns the post before you pay for it

IP Australia's position is short: "IP created by a contractor is the property of the contractor unless otherwise stated in the contract." Employees are the other way around, where the business owns what they make in relation to the business. Both defaults sit on IP Australia's site.

Guest posts are almost always commissioned through a freelance writer or an agency, which puts them on the contractor side of that line. With no written assignment in the contract, the writer owns the copyright. The business in the byline does not, and neither does the business that paid the invoice.

It matters the day you want to republish the piece on your own blog, fold three of them into a guide, or take the library with you when you change agency. It is one clause. Ask for it before the first invoice.

What we would still spend the time on

The mechanics below are the ones this article always carried, pointed at a different outcome.

1. Pick publications the way a PR would

You want sites in your market that are not direct competitors, publish outside contributors, and have readers who buy what you sell. Start with the publications your customers already quote to you in meetings, then the industry associations, state bodies and trade press in your sector. They beat a general business blog with a bigger score, because their readers are the people who buy from you.

Read a few months of what each one publishes before you write to it. If you cannot see where your idea would sit among their last ten pieces, it is the wrong publication.

And if you found this page looking for somewhere to pitch: nbh.co does not take guest posts.

2. Bring something only you have

The old advice was to rework your own published posts into something new and slip in a few links on the way through. That is the part to drop.

Pitch what you can prove and nobody else can. Pull a number out of your own systems: how long an average deal takes from first call to signature, what share of support tickets close without a person touching them, what a job costs you to run. Publish it on your own site first with the method attached, then pitch the finding. Now the link is a citation, because there is something to cite.

That only pays if your own site can rank, which is partly a platform question: why the CMS you're on affects how easily this kind of content ranks, and picking the right platform for a company blog in the first place.

3. Make contact, then pitch

Get known before an idea arrives in their inbox. Share an article of theirs you rated, tag the publication and the author, and do it more than once over at least a fortnight. Editors can tell that from a mail merge.

When you do write, open with the finding. One short email that names the number or method you can share, why their readers would want it, and a link to where you have already published it on your own site. If the finding is good, the editor will ask for the piece.

4. Turn up after it publishes

Answer the comments, on the host site and on social. Comment volume does nothing for your rankings, but the editor is watching whether you turned up for the piece, and that decides whether you are asked back.

Then keep in touch. The prize is being the person they call for a comment when they are already writing something, which beats any post you pitch cold.

What to stop paying for

• Anything priced per link or per placement.
• Any brief that specifies your anchor text.
• Placements on sites where you cannot name a single reader.
• Reports measured in average domain authority instead of enquiries, or in who cited you.

Guest posting is one line in a bigger plan and rarely the line doing the work. Read it next to how SEO fits inside a broader HubSpot paid and organic strategy, where you can see what it competes with for the same hours.

The long game part of the old article was right. Editor relationships take months, and they pay out in being quoted.

For your next marketing meeting: in the last quarter, what did your business say that somebody else had a reason to repeat?