What percentage of linking root domains is safe for guest posting

[BobGW]

Hello,

From what I've been experiencing and learning lately, link building seems to be good only in moderation and content marketing - stellar targeted authoritative content - attracting links and pushing it on social channels seems to be much safer.

My question is, high quality guest posting - quality sites with good anchor text profile 3+ PR (hopefully more) and one link back from the body of the content to the home page or an article you're pushing - seems good but only in moderation.

For high quality guest posting, what would you recommend our percentage of linking root domains to allocating to guest posting.

I'm looking for a safe percentage that will hopefully not get devalued any time soon, and any additional advice on making this a good long term balanced strategy.

Thanks.

[Chris.Menke]

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule on that Bob.  So many things are involved--value of the page, value of the domain, follow/nofollow, velocity, the value of the non-guest post links, domain diversity, the future quality of those guest blog sites.  I'd hazard a guess that you're safe with 3/10 but I have nothing to go on for that number.  The thing is, as with all link building, if you put too much emphasis on any one kind of link, you risk of getting burned in some fashion down the road goes up substantially.

[BobGW]

Makes sense, thanks Chris.

We have been focusing on sites that don't say they do guest posting, and let us guest post because we are an authority. That sounds like something we should continue.

Still, how much of this high quality guest posting should we do? (1 out of 10 links acquired? 1 out of 5? 1 out of 20?) In our eCommerce niche, nobody reads the articles so content marketing without outreach is tough

[Chris.Menke]

The value of a guest post depends on the quality of the content, the amount of social interaction that happens because of it, and the site it's been posted on. PageRank shouldn't be part of your decision-making, as good links are hard to come by and PR isn't a factor in what makes a good link--for most sites. Let me emphasize-- PR isn't a factor in what makes a good link--for most sites. As a matter of fact, sites with high PR and that do a lot of guest posting might be sites to stay away from, I can see a time when a bunch (or even a few) of those links could bite you in the a*s.

If the site allows guest post for topics of a wide variety of niches, it's really no better than an old style directory--Google's not going to give it any weight.  If there are lots of blog posts but nobody's commenting on the posts (or it's mostly comment spam), your guest post and the link it carries isn't going to be worth very much to the linked-to site.