Guest blogging
Guest blogging is writing an article for someone else's website, to reach their readers and, often, to earn a link back to your own site.
Guest blogging is writing an article that's published on someone else's website. A coffee roaster writes a piece on choosing beans for a home barista blog, say, with a short bio and a link to its shop at the end. The host gets free content, and you get in front of their readers.
Done well, it's one of the oldest ways to build a reputation in your field. Done as a link scheme, it can count against you.
Good guest posts and bad ones
A good guest post is something the host's readers would want even if it had no link. It's written by someone who knows the subject, for a site your customers really read.
The bad kind is written for the link. Google's spam policies list links with keyword-rich anchor text in guest posts as link spam, alongside paid posts. Google also gives sites ways to mark a link they don't vouch for, such as rel="nofollow", and some hosts add one to every guest post link, so it passes little or no ranking value.
Guest posts and AI answers
For AI search, the link was never the main prize. When an AI platform searches the web, it reads the pages that rank for the question, and it names the brands those pages recommend. A guest post on a site that ranks for your customers' questions puts your name, and your expertise, on a page the platform may read.
For example, if answers to "how do I choose espresso beans?" keep citing one home barista site, a guide on that site by Fernhill Coffee's head roaster, which mentions Fernhill's blends where they fit, can get Fernhill named in those answers, link or no link.
In AnswerOrbit
Sources shows the sites the answers to your prompts read, so you can pitch the ones that matter. The Gaps tab lists sites whose answers name your competitors and not you, each with a suggested way in. See Sources.