Google’s John Mueller answered a question about paying for guest posts and offers solid advice on the right way to approach paid guest posts that Google is okay with.
Recent History Of Guest Posts
Guest posts, whether paid or unpaid, is an old tactic, a lemon from which any “link juice” had long been squeezed out, down to the rind.
In 2014, Google’s Matt Cutts wrote a blog post telling SEOs to “put a fork in it,” that guest blogging was done.
A few months later Google issued a series of penalties on guest blogging platforms as well as penalizing individuals, including a penalty on the website of an SEO who only published five guest posts.
Nowadays, Google doesn’t hand out penalties like it used to.
It simply stops the links from passing PageRank.
That makes it hard to know if a link is working or not.
So people keep guest posting because the penalty feedback isn’t there.
Google’s John Mueller On Paid Guest Posts
In a Google SEO Office Hours recording, a person related that every site they approach for guest posts requires payment.