Some questions about guest posting
-
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!
-
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?
-
Thanks for the mention!
-
Hey Marie, good plan on starting guest blogging! Good luck. Here's my way to handle this:
-
No more than 2 links in the byline. More looks somewhat greedy and doesn't make sense anyway.
-
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!
-
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.
-
-
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
-
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.
-
By the way, I wanted to share this link with you.
I get a lot of my blog contacts from this site
-
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
-
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.
-
1) We usually do just one link in our resource box.
-
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.
-
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!
-
-
1) We usually do just one link in our resource box.
-
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.
-
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!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Question about placing links
My company have a website about car related business. I have found around 8-10 sites that is car related which can place links to me. I am wondering whats the best way to make this most effective. I have been writing 8 different texts with maybe 200-250 words each which i plan to use on the sites that is going to link to my site. Should i use exact anchors links or should i use different anchors on every site so it looks more natural? My site today does not have much quality links to it which i believe can make problem when you get 8-10 new sites linking that is very related and have a nice content? How long time should i wait when i put a link to each site to make it less unnatural? Happy for any answer! 🙂
Link Building | | Rob-0 -
Migrating blog posts to new site
I'm in the process of setting up a new site for a client, moving them over to WordPress from Joomla. They've got 50ish blog posts on their old site, but none of them have accumulated any external links. Is it worth it to copy them over to the new site for the sake of retaining all that content, or better just to start from scratch?
Link Building | | mtwelves0 -
Matt Cutts - Guest posts are dead comment
It seems like it was a while ago now that Matt Cutts made his announcement "that guest posts are dead", however, does anyone know if Google has acted on this? Most particularly, for those that are targeting guest posts on high-quality sites, what has so far been the effect since the announcement on rankings? Anyone seen a dip in rankings from their high-quality blog post strategy?
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Good alternative to guest blogging
Hi, After many years of on-page I've just started in the world of link building and I'm currently working on an e-commerce website. I've noticed that most blogs devoted to this sector that are worth their salt will only accept guest blog requests for payment. So here's the question, is there any way to circumvent this? Is there any other way to achieve the same results I would with guest blogging without having to pay for it? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | AaronGro0 -
Recommended Guest Blogging Platforms
Hello all, Other than My Blog Guest, what are the currently recommended platforms for submitting quality content for guest blogging opportunities? Thanks! Guy
Link Building | | ciznerguy0 -
Footer Back Links Question "Site by built by"
Hi all I design and develop websites for clients within the UK. With each website I build, I always add a link to the footer of the website which links back to my website. I have always used the link anchor text "Site By Jump" but then decided to try to use the link anchor text to our benefit by changing the links across all of our portfolio of sites to be: "Graphic Design by Jump"
Link Building | | yousayjump
or
"Web Design by Jump" In the hope that this helped us rank better for those keyword phrases. Now something occurred to me the day. Most of the websites I build have no relevance to the content on our website. For example, I could build a website for Baby Food and add a backlink to our homepage which doesn't even mention the words "baby food". In some cases, the websites can have thousands of pages, each with this footer link appearing at the bottom of each page. My question is, could these backlinks potentially be seen as black hat or spam to a search engine? I.e. thousands of backlinks from websites that have no relevance in terms of content all linking back to my homepage? Thank you for reading and any advice would be greatly appreciated.0 -
Guest blogging on a "network" of sites. Good or BAD?
Hi guys! We have the opportunity to guest blog on a network of sites. Basically, this is a syndicated network of sports blogs (around 200) that all link to each other. They own and operate a blog for each major sports franchise. They each average a DA around 60, but almost all of their link equity comes from blogs they own and operate.... My question is this, should we take the opportunity to create editorial content with links back to our site. This would not be paid side or footer links, but real content relevant to their blog and our industry. On a side note; All of these site have a very decent DA and show up well in Google... Thanks for any advice!!!
Link Building | | brettcohen0 -
How to Outsource Guest Blog Posts?
We have operated a small ecommerce company for over 10 years in the home and garden industry. Our product niche is small and there is not a lot of "community" around it as it is just not a social product, yet the product is interesting. Our internal time is very limited and therefore we have hired external help over the years to do our SEO. As you all know, this is very challenging to do affordably and not get spammers. As part of our SEO strategy we would like to do some guest blog posts but do not have the internal time to research and build the relationships needed. We basically have no internal writing skills and have always hired writers to do our blog postings.My question is if you had to hire someone to do guest blog posts how would you go about finding the right person to use? Of course an excellent writer would be required. What would you expect to pay for this type of service? Would you do it hourly or "pay per live post". Any ideas on where to find this type of person? Thanks.
Link Building | | SLINC0