Why a Guest Post with Do-Follow Links is Better than PR?

🔍Insights

Ansh Mehrey

Feb 15, 2021 — 7 min read

One of the more popular methods of reputation marketing these days is guest posting. While guest posts are technically just regular posts on a different blog than yours, they can have a lot of benefits. Be it getting your brand mentioned on a different platform, or having quality backlinks to your website, Guest Posts make a lot of SEO contributions for your blogs or website. Most guest authors write such posts to embed backlinks, however, it also helps in connecting with your peers in the industry. This article will give you a better idea on how Guest Posts differ from PR significantly and how does guest posting help your business along with get an understanding on what are D0-follw links.

Know Why Guest Posting can help your business better than PR (Public Relations)

Know about Guest Posts
Do-Follow Links Vs No-Follow Links
Benefits of Guest Posting
What is Public Relations and how does it help your business?
Why is Guest Posting better than PR?
PR and Guest Posting - Same yet Different

Know about Guest Posts

While guest posts are not much different from regular posts, there are certain guidelines and principles one must follow while writing a guest post, and here is a brief summary of the same.

While guest posts are written with a special attention to backlinks, the outbound links should be equally accentuated, and specially the anchor text.
When writing a guest post, give the viewers the best value for their time, and offer valuable insights and cover the topic extensively without looking vague.
Avoid guest articles or blogs on sites with a lot of guest content, since the backlinks don't contribute much to the SEO to your own website or blog.
Write the blog or the article in a way that the readers would want to share them, hence increasing your viewership, as well as that of the guest platform.
Last and the most important one, proper research must be done while guest posting, as it is one of the ways you can establish your brand as one of the leading one's in the industry.

Do-Follow Links Vs No-Follow Links

Technically, all the links that you share in a blog and attach anchor text to are Do-follow links, unless modified to be no-follow links. All do-follow links act as votes of confidence telling the search engine of the quality of the article or blog.

No-follow links have a piece of code that restricts this action, and they do not count as votes for better SEO rankings. When it comes to code, the only attribute that differentiates do-follow and no-follow links is the 'rel' attribute, which does not exist with regular/do-follow links while it refers to a keyword 'nofollow' for the no-follow links.

Benefits of Guest Posting

Apart from your content reaching a wider audience, Guest Posting has a lot more to offer. Some of the important benefits of Guest Posting and Blogging are discussed below.

Guest Posting is a step beyond your personal network, and makes connecting with influencers relatively easy.
By writing for others' blogs, you establish your own credibility, and viewers will recognize your brand and be more receptive.
Guest blogs and articles may contain one or more backlinks directing to your website, making a valuable contribution to the SEO of your own website.
Picking a relevant website for guest posting will help you connect with more people interested in your niche, and generate more leads.
You also receive insightful and valuable feedback from your peers and competitors in your community to enhance your strategy.
With guest posting, you also sharpen your marketing skills including content research, writing voice, and influencer outreach.

What is Public Relations and how does it help your business?

Public Relations (PR) is a professional assistance to a company, brand or an individual to help create a positive image and reputation of the concerned brand in the general public. This is achieved through paid or even unpaid communications, social media handles, and sometimes even personal engagement and campaigns. Public Relations is an important aspect in portraying a business or a brand in good light, and to expand its reach and audience.

Why is Guest Posting better than PR?

Assuming that Guest Posting is just an extension of PR, owing to their strategic similarities is a common misconception. Contrastingly, Guest posting is very different, and a lot more convenient than PR, with a lot more benefits. Here are few reasons why Guest Posting should be your go to route for reputation marketing, and not the usual PR.

Interacting with industry professionals, prospective customers, and an audience interested in your niche is what guest posting is all about, and that is what you need for brand recognition. PR isn't of much help for getting the word out.
PR is more inclined to journalists, and places most of the control in the hands of journalism in contrast to guest posting, where you own the quill, and have the ability to methodically post interactive content.
With PR, there is no gist of competition and the campaign is mostly product/company centric. While it isn't wrong, the objective of building a trusted brand that stands tall among its peers is not something PR is good at.
PR backlinks redirect viewers directly to the homepage of the concerned brand or company, exponentially depreciating its value. This deceases click through rates while increasing bounce rates. A better approach would be to add context to the content that you create, which is something you would often find in guest posts.
PR doesn't display the part where your product excels, rather it tells a story. As much as the reader is interested in a good story, this doesn't add value or credibility to the product. On the other hand, Guest Posting does exactly that, and even gets you an audience that is interested to read about your product.

PR and Guest Posting - Same yet Different

PR and Guest Posting, while sometimes thought of as extensions of the same thing, are surprisingly quite different. Moreover, even the press releases, an integral part of PR, rolls out stories way different than what the readers actually need. But as much as they are different, in a way, good PR and Guest Posting complement one another, and when used efficiently, they can be quite an effective duo. However, the bottom line is, regular PR does not add the technical value to your product as much as a good guest post would, and neither it can encompass all the benefits that guest posting has to offer. And hence, decisively speaking, PR is not as effective and influential as a robust guest post, and does not possess the capabilities that a good guest post with do-follow links does.