Reading a few articles on SEO will tell you, that there are two main ways of promoting your blog and getting readers – Guest Posting, or Social Media. However, each work out only for a specific group of people. This article will discuss the pros and cons of each, and will conclude with which is better for you, the blogger. What are they?
Guest Posting – Posting an article on another blog, as a “guest”. Thus called Guest Posting. A guest post usually gives you 1 – 2 dofollow links at the end of the article.
Social Media – Using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus to promote your blog. Using social media may have different results based on the person.
Pros and Cons of Guest Posting/Blogging
Pros
- Have around 2 dofollow links – These links are placed at the end of the article, and thus are sure guaranteed to be seen by the readers.
- Have author description – The description tells people about you, and your work, that other types may not offer.
- The links are valued more than others – You may think, that a link in the comments will give you same credibility of the link in the article, so guest posting would be useless. Actually, that is wrong, and links in the article are valued more by Google. Moreover, links in the comments are usually nofollow, which gives no actual SEO benefit. Then, links in the comment have less chance of being clicked, whereas links in the end have more chance of being clicked, thus having more authority.
- Target Audience – posting guarantees that your links are shown to the target audience. This means, that if you have an SEO blog, and write a post about SEO, the only visitors will be the people searching about SEO, not something entirely different.
Cons
- The most obvious disadvantage is that you have to write a big, long, suitable article everytime, for the actual owner of the blog. This is not necessary in other methods.
- You have to contact the admin, which could take time, and thus results aren’t instant.
Conclusion
The links in the author description are high valued by Google and Readers alike. On a blog with good ranks, this could be a potential boost to your SEO. The only problem is that you have to write an article everytime, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Pros and Cons of using Social Media
Pros
- Very easy to do – All you have to do is copy the link from the article, and paste it on your profile. No need of doing something tough.
- Mass exposure – If you have 200 friends, you got your link to 200 people, with no actual work.
- Easy to spread the word – Your post has chances of going viral, and thus getting loads and loads of readers with this method.
Cons
- The post is not shown to target audience. If you have 200 friends, it’s not necessary that all 200 of them are interested in the topic. Most probably, 5 – 10% of them would be interested.
- Amount of clicks. Even if you have 20 – 30 people familiar with the topic, there will be only a few that click the link. Maybe because the info presented in that article is known to them, or they just miss the link.
Conclusion
Upon reading this article, it would be obvious that only a certain type of people get benefits from the methods.
Guest Posting is always appreciated, and if you are a good writer, then you can establish trust. It is a bit difficult, I agree, but it gives you an SEO boost if not readers.
Using Social Media is very easy, you can get views, but they are not guaranteed. Thus, we can say that Guest Posting is great for people of all types, but they do need to have a bit of writing flair. Social media may not prove beneficial to those who do not have friends interested in the topic, but if they have a page, with good number of likes, and they post the link there, it is sure to attract some attention, and get readers.
Nice comparison ..
Personally I prefer guest blogging to increase traffic as it makes you focus and you get real valuable readers those share more about your topics …
While if we wish to increase traffic with social media it has lots of distractions ..
guest blogging is really a beneficial thing for everybody. It’s good for guest blogger as well as for site owner and most important for readers as guest blogging adds variety of writing by different bloggers on a single blog. I would also like to try this in near future.
Guest posting is great for both the website owner and the blogger. It can honestly say that I can not point out any negatives of guest posting. The website owner gets new content and the blogger gets more exposure. A Win- Win for everyone.
Guest posting is a great way to expand your reach, generate traffic, and build inbound links. So it’s no surprise that the spammers are getting in on the action. Blog owners need to be careful about who they allow to post on their blog. If a post isn’t good, it reflects poorly on the blog owner.
social networks are good way to promote your website, your success rate depends on the followers you have and article you submit
if you can submit good articles to genuine followers your are will go viral in social media
The “genuine followers” part is the catch here 😉
It’s tough to get good followers, instead, a person may opt to focus on Guest posting, instead of working to get followers.
according to me both are important you cant afford to miss even a single thing
Both are important, but they may not be efficient for all kinds of people.
I think guest posting done in an efficient and effective manner will yield greater results…thanks for sharing
Hi Namanyay, I will say we should not compare guest blogging and social media posting, two are very different. Guest blogging is an act of participating or contributing to a community just like the post, you have contributed to HBB community which is great. The most important aspect of guest blogging is getting exposure in a like minded community and not for links. The moment we think of getting back links as the purpose behind guest blogging then I will say we are not on the right track, its a very old SEO tactic, soon link building is gonna be redundant, Google is doing its best for it.
Social media on the other hand is a publishing/sharing activity wherein you share whatever you have written to a set of people who may or may not be interested in the topic. Overall it was a nice post, comparing apples with apples will add more value than to oranges 🙂
Namanyay
I’m sorry, but I will have to disagree with your point of view here.
Guest posting is essentially for backlinks, and improving SEO. There are many other, EASIER ways to converse with a link minded community, like posting on special Facebook Groups, or forums. (Note that they do not involve writing an article)
You said that Google is trying to remove the importance of backlinks, and it is going to happen soon. I find that incorrect.
Currently, only way to judge a webpage is by the amount of links it receives. It’s a long way before google can detect the quality of a webpage, and make it rank better. This technology isn’t practical, considering technology, and costs of this. The best way to judge a webpage thus is backlinks, and it will be the same for a long, long time.
About you saying that Social Media and Guest Posts cannot be compared, they both, in their essence, are ways to get visitors to your blog. Thus, they can easily be compared, and should be compared.
Also, this post mainly focused on the advantage of one method for a specific group of people.
Guest blogging is any day better because we can show our quality of content. The links we get are editorial links. In short guest posts represent one of the most natural and high profile ways of building yourself the very best quality links. If you are serious about your site’s success and if you don’t want to have your site penalized in Google’s future updates; then guest posts are your very best option.
Correct, but Social media gives you (usually) more traffic than blog posts. If you think of it, Guest Posts can be termed as indirect traffic, because you get traffic from them because of higher rankings to your blog.
Thanks for the comment!
it will be difficult choices. -_-a
That was what the article had, how to make the better choice.. Reread it.
I will go with Guest Blogging. Its has its own advantage.
Good choice! Once you get a good PR, and many Facebook likes, you can move to Social Media!
In my opinion Guest blogging is much better. But as you said that we have to write an article evrytime for other blogs..
Correct, and that usually is very tiring! Thanks for your comment!
The cons of Guest posting you have defined very clearly and this is the main reason i am not able to write guest post for someone else. IN the Guest Posting it is always said “Give your best Article” to someone else who is already more famous and more popular than you and maybe your hardwork may increase his/her blog value.
I had that same attitude a while back, and I didn’t guest post much.
But, guest post is really necessary if your daily visit is less than 100. I write 6 guest post a week, once a week for my own blog.
It has really been working out for me.
Guest blogging has its benefits as well though, and I can’ think of any article marketers who won’t openly admit that.
Yes, correct, I also thought not long ago that Guest Posts were worthless, but soon got to know their importance.
Thanks for your comment!
I think both guest blogging and social media are good in promoting a blog or website. Both have their pros and cons, just like what you have discussed. So, use both wisely to promote your blog.
Yes, both are essential! Thank you for your comment!
Interesting question and post, I personally think that social media is more powerful then guest blogging when it comes to building traffic for a short period of time. But guest blogging will build you a trust and traffic for a longer period of time.
thanks for sharing
Yes correct! But still, you get bursts only when you have a large fan following. Thanks for dropping by!
Its always better to mix and match social media and guest posting to get the best results. Guest posting definitely gives you a more loyal audience.
And that’s what you need in the start, right?
Thanks for commenting!
guest posting is no more reliable has it negatively affects our blog due to new penguin update
Eh? You’re confused.. Check out this post. http://hellboundbloggers.com/2011/12/16/seo-techniques-for-google-panda/ see the last point.
It never hurts to get links from other sites to you, it can be a problem when you link OUT.
Nice article, Both guest blogging and social media are useful for any blog and you certainly won’t like to miss any of them.
Yes, you are right, both are important, but depending on the blogger, one way may have more advantages than the other.
Thanks for your comment!
I think a mixture of both Guest blogging and proper social media marketing is important. Nice post.
Yes, totally correct. Thanks for commenting!
I totally agree to Jaydrath Singh. Maintenance of the mixture of both the factors is really important to succeed.
Man such an article showing the pros and cons is good but let me say one thing- Both the sources ‘Social Sites’ & ‘Guest blogs’ can’t be avoided. Of course it depends on the niche but both are equally important for targeting & spreading our works…
Yes, but depending on the factors above, one will be a lot better than the other. This article shows which method would be better for which person.
Thanks for dropping by!
From my opinion these are two parts of a coin which can be prove in good ways only then when we will do work on both because without usage of social media sites we can’t think to convert too much traffic on our site/blog.
That is true only for some niches, which are common. Examples could be food, photography. These are those topics in which almost everyone is interested.
Whereas, for the tech niche, only a few people be interested, thus, posting on your profile won’t get much advantages. What you are left with is your facebook page.
If your facebook page has many likes (6000 in case of HBB), then you can expect many people to visit the link posted (around 1000 people must be coming from facebook only)
However, low likes results in fewer people coming to your site. If you guest post though, you might get readers, PLUS, you get SEO advantage.
Thanks for your comment!