Pros and Cons for Paying for Guest Posts?
-
While searching for outreach targets I came across a site that charges $100 to post your infographic with a review. I think this is similar to someone that says "Sure, I'll publish your guest post. First, please send me $100."
I'm curious what others think about the practice of paying for guest posts? (It seems like it could easily be lumped in with paid links from Google's point of view).
-
I think that such a practice can be quite good if you do it well and if you have a good product or site to be reviewed. You don't even need such platforms to do that. We call it Blogger outreach campaign:
-
Simply shortlist a few hundreds (or even less) of good blogs in the industry and market you want to focus on.
-
Think of a what offer you can give to them. Money most probably won't work. You can incentivise them with an affiliate offer or something really touchy and personal. Put that in your email to them or on their contact us forms or call them.
You will see that most of the guys will reply and will be happy to cooperate. This works much better than any platform if you are going for the quality links not for the quantity.
-
-
Are you guest blogging for the audience or for SEO purposes (backlinks)?
If it's for the audience (lets say they got 10,000 plus one buddies, 20,000 fb friends and 40,000 twitter followers) your link in the guest post goes to your website where a massive resource on the subject is available, signup boxes and all that stuff.
If it is to this level then a 'few' paid guest posts are fine, especially if the blogs main income is not the money coming in for charging for guest posts.
For example if smashing magazine charged for guest posts (maybe the cost of admin, half hour reading it formatting it, reading it again putting it up etc) there is a cost there for the time on smashing magazines part.
I think the paid stuff is when you do it in bulk, $5 for a link and you buy 100 of them.
-
if its cnn then its worth it if you get my drift.
-
I could see paying to guest blog on the right site as being more effective than starting your own under certain circumstances.
If you have a "message to get out" then this is the fastest way to gain an audience. You picked the correct words.... "on the right site".
And, the workers at that site will have to handle your content, place it on a page, link it into their internal navigation and then pay the bandwidth and storage fees. There is no guarantee that they will get any return so they charge you up front.
-
Would you pay to post good content on a site relevant to your audience that has good domain authority to boot? Depends on the site and depends on the content.
We don't charge our guest bloggers (yochicago.com), but we vet them pretty heavily - they need to contribute something to our audience. But we do blog on behalf of sponsors - and since we're doing the writing - it's always relevant (to some degree at least). Our readers comment on our (clearly identified) sponsored content's relevance occasionally, but generally understand that someone has to pay the bills. It's a pretty effective means of advertising / editorial / authority-building in one.
I could see paying to guest blog on the right site as being more effective than starting your own under certain circumstances.
-
Sounds like a paid link to me also. If you can somehow ascertain that this is not some spammy site I suppose you may want to do the math and figure on cost / benefit. If you're doing your own writing etc. I would just as well post to other sites that are free - but that's me. I'm sure you'll get many opinions and I'd be interested in hearing from those that would pay to post.
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
-
What to write in Guest Post Email Subject
How to and what to write in Guest Blogging email Subject to get noticed? Please provide an example?
Link Building | | Dan_Brown10 -
Can you duplicate on site Blog Posts to Google Plus
I have read from an authorative source that you can duplicate your blog posts on your google plus account without issues as google knows that this is your 'property'. is this correct and what would be the value in doing so? until we have need sign posting new blog posts with a link. Ash
Link Building | | AshShep10 -
Is it time to pay for link building?
I've been using the Moz tools for a while now and love them. Our SEO efforts are certainly paying off as we're ranking well for a lot of our desired keywords. That being said, I'm finding link building to be a very frustrating process. As much as I like to be hands on and try to do everything, I'm wondering when it's time to "throw in the towel" and hire someone? Is there anyone else who might have gone through a similar evolution? I'd love to hear some other stories about how or why you decided to hire out your link building. I'd like to think that whatever we spend on link building could likely reduce our reliance on AdWords, although I'm not sure how this would really play out over time.
Link Building | | koalatm0 -
Guest Posts on Established Blogger/Wordpress.com sites
How much value do you put on guest post opportunities on blogspot.com or wordpress.com sites (or similar). If the blog is established, gets good readership and traffic, do you consider it to be as useful as a privately hosted blog? I'm not really looking for a definitive answer here, just people's thoughts. Cheers, Bede
Link Building | | BedeFahey0 -
Google and low quality guest posts
In the aftermath of the Penguin and Panda monsters a lot of blog networks seem to have been devalued by Google. It seems logical that spammers will flock to low quality guest posting next. How do you think Google will determine which guest post links to devalue? Thanks!
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
White Paper - Should I post to mysite before I put it on PRWEB?
I have a White Paper on Asset Based Lending. Should I post to mysite before I put it on PRWEB as a press release? Does it really matter who get's the credit first? How can I get forum and blogs to carry it?
Link Building | | AppleCapitalGroup0 -
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!
Link Building | | MarieHaynes0 -
We have one particular blog post that is very popular. How can we direct that traffic to other parts of our website?
We have one post in our blog that receives a large amount of traffic. Does anyone have suggestions on how to get people to click through to other posts and sections of the website? I'd like to learn how to harness that power. Thanks, Hill
Link Building | | DigitalHills0