Some questions about guest posting

[MarieHaynes]

After reading this on the SEOMoz blog, I've decided to try some guest posting to gain some backlinks for our real estate site.  I have a few questions for those of you who do this regularly:

1. If the site you are posting on allows up to 3 links in the signature box, do you generally use them all?  My gut instinct is that one anchor texted link would give me the most bang for my buck.

3.  How much attention do you pay to PR or DA?  If a site is PR1 but relevant to your niche would you spend the time to write the article?

4. What negatives have you found when writing guest posts?

Thanks!

[esztanyo]

We are just getting into guest blogging for our real estate clients and have found it to be very helpful.  I had an additional question that I was wondering if you guys could help answer.  We were kicking around the idea of adding a guest post page on our clients' sites to attract potential partners with which to work with on content creation and guest blogging.  Have any of you ever used this tactic?

We would obviously have to have strict guidelines of content quality to allow guest posts on our sites, but it seems like a potential link building opportunity if the arrangement is that we get to guest post on their site.  Seems that Rand has stated that you would not get penalized for reciprocal link building as long as the two sites linking to each other are topical and the links are in related content and not on an external links page.  As opposed to manually building a list of guest post opportunities alone, this seems like a good way to attract potential linking partners.  Thoughts?

[AnnSmarty]

Thanks for the mention!

[AnnSmarty]

Hey Marie, good plan on starting guest blogging! Good luck. Here's my way to handle this:

1. No more than 2 links in the byline. More looks somewhat greedy and doesn't make sense anyway.

2. I wouldn't guest blog on a PR N/A site but in all other cases PR doesn't matter. There are very new but very active sites: lots of tweets, likes and comments, lots of activity. Even if they are PR0 or PR1 they might be worth a show for two reasons: (1) They are likely to attract traffic (2) They are likely to have accumulated some considerable link power but it's not that visible yet using the tools. If there's activity on the blog, it's most likely to grow very fast! Besides, these new blogs are usually much easier to communicate with!

3. None that I have faced, but here's one recent comment from one of our users: it looks like his guest post has outranked content on his own domain, so I'd pay attention to what you are guest blogging it to avoid your own guest posts competing with your own pages in Google search.

[AmieMarse]

Right, it does cost something... and, if you are active on SEOmoz you are probably more advanced than the SEO training they provide. On the other hand, they pretty much spoon feed great link juice to your content.

It's one of those "digital sharecropping" issues but if you plan accordingly you can leverage their sites high authority to get your posts ranked well on Google (your posts that are hosted on their site) that have links back to your main url.

The good -

If you are doing the writing, you obviously can choose the best anchor texts

Since you are doing the writing, you still get the reputation bonus of your content

It's much easier to rank with them as opposed to yourself when you are starting out because they have so much authority

The bad -

Your building their empire, not yours (unless you leverage it correctly)

And... I'm off on a tangent. Sorry

[MarieHaynes]

Thanks.  I did look into Active Rain...should check it out again.  To be honest, we are cheap  I believe it was $30 a month or something like that.  It might be worthwhile if we are getting good links from it but I felt that I could build better links for less money.

[webfeatseo]

By the way, I wanted to share this link with you.

I get a lot of my blog contacts from this site

http://myblogguest.com

[AmieMarse]

1. Agree wholeheartedly with Stevej24 about the one link. Unless there is an option for a social link or something. The best answer to this is to see what other posts are doing. Remember that each website is its own community so to get the best traction comment wise or with guest posting is to see what's already there and mold yourself

3. Again, this depends on the community of the site. For example, a small site with a strong following might be a PR1 but you'll find tons of quality traffic. Whereas a PR 5 or a huge DA site might just send you spammers. In general, a thoughtful mix is always wise.

4. The only negative I've had is a lack of response, which is pretty common if you submit to huge sites. Be sure to read everything you can about guest posting on a site. For example, hbr.org tells you flat out not to expect a response before 4 weeks. If you have a time sensitive post (which you should) you are better off going to a site that is going to welcome you with open arms

BTW, as a real estate person are you interacting on ActiveRain? We write for real estate and have only heard great things about that community. I keep trying to get us on there for interaction but it is too far down my to do list

[webfeatseo]

I do a ton of guest blogging. Most of my experiences with it is positive. I is a slow process to write unique content and to find a high quality site to post it on but the links are great and help a lot.

Some negatives - some blog owners will be extremely picky and send back for tons of revisions, but that does not happen often. Also have some sites that shut down after you write for them.

I normally have 1 or 2 links per article. Maybe one in context (if applicable) and one in a bio line. I will generally do 2 links if I can get it to work for 2 different sites of a similar niche.

I do not check PR but I do check domain authority and backlinks to make sure its a high quality site.

[Stevej24]

1)  We usually do just one link in our resource box.

3. We prefer sites that have a variety of PR and we look to see if they have been around a while.  Not only via domain age, but we will drop the url into the internet wayback machine to see a snapshot of their history.

4. We have only seen negatives from a site owner's perspective. We own several sites in a similar niche and we will get the same cookie-cutter letter, with the same errors, signed by a different person in a day for the different sites.   We use that negative and turn it into a positive when contacting websites and offering our content!

[Stevej24]

1)  We usually do just one link in our resource box.

3. We prefer sites that have a variety of PR and we look to see if they have been around a while.  Not only via domain age, but we will drop the url into the internet wayback machine to see a snapshot of their history.

4. We have only seen negatives from a site owner's perspective. We own several sites in a similar niche and we will get the same cookie-cutter letter, with the same errors, signed by a different person in a day for the different sites.   We use that negative and turn it into a positive when contacting websites and offering our content!