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
-
So, blog directories post-Penguin. Thoughts?
How risky is it to submit blogs to directories like the ones found in this list? http://www.searchenginejournal.com/20-essential-blog-directories-to-submit-your-blog-to/
Link Building | | danieldavid18030 -
Site Published Our Guest Post but Removed the Link Back
I recently developed a nice article for a career site and they agreed to publish it as a guest post. Once they published the article I noticed they had removed the link back to my site in the byline. What is a best way to approach this situation? Would you ask them to take down the article if they are unwilling to link back to your site?
Link Building | | Charlessipe0 -
How to promote my guest blog posts?
I have been using mybloguest.com and the articles were published by its blogs/websites. So far the traffics/share/likes from those blog posts they published are very few/small. I believe the blog post are very useful and unique. How can I promote them so that I get more social likes/share? Any idea? Thanks Stephen
Link Building | | LauraHT0 -
Link Building - Post Penguin
Hi, We have an eCommerce site that has recently been hit for some unnatural linking, resulting in a warning in our Google Webmaster Tools account. We weren't doing anything particularly underhand (and indeed before Penguin there wasn't a cause for concern) but nevertheless Google has picked up and penalised us. We've instantly removed the worst offending links and requested a resubmission. If this doesn't result in positive action from Google we're planning on employing the services of an Oracle member on SEOmoz who was kind enough to give us some fantastic free advice in order to go through and remove any further links that may be seen as questionable. Moving forward however I'm a little bit overwhelmed as to exactly what we should be doing in order to create a positive, natural link portfolio. I understand the emphasis is on ‘natural’ linking but we’ve been online for 8 years and I think it’s fairly safe to say that the number of links we have now is probably representative of about our ‘lot’ when it comes to 100% natural links. It would be nice to give our portfolio a nice gentle push in the right direction. I’ve checked through SEOmoz and the most up to date link building article they have appears to be http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links - This guide however does seem to suggest some things that are potentially frowned upon now (for example, highly optimised anchor text I understand is now a no-no). Obviously, in days gone by I could look at Open Site Explorer to try to emulate my competitors but, to be honest, most of them have what I would describe as a fairly poor link profile and if I'm going to invest real time in to this I want to make sure I'm heading off in the right direction. Does anybody on here know of a really high quality post penguin link building guide, either on SEOmoz or elsewhere that I can use as some bedtime reading? Our website is eCommerce in nature so an article tailored towards online selling would be ideal. Thanks for reading! Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Where Do I Post to Hire SEO Experts
I am looking to hire an expert link builder who specializes in building very high-quality links and creating content that attracts links. There used to be a board on the site to post this to, but I cant find it anymore. What is the best way to find qualified SEO experts who are mozzers?
Link Building | | gametv0 -
How do I get the most links out of one QUALITY article/post??
Basically we are a small business (2 employees) we don't have the time or resources to be writing hundreds of original quality articles each week (nor do we have the time to write endless guest blogs each week) how do we gain links from one article? (not including poor quality article submission sites) And how do SEO's write so many guest blogs? for the returns on time invested!!! Confused Newbie, thanks in advance!!!
Link Building | | Buzzwords0 -
Too many links in my blog post created by comments. Should I worry?
Every year, we do a popular "Favourite pictures of the year" contest where people vote on the best picture (i.e: their mate's) in order to win something. But I just found that I'm going way over the "Too many links" limit and I think it's because of all the comments. 1. Is it a problem 2. Is there a way to de-activate the links? Thank you! 🙂 Ioan
Link Building | | IoanSaid0 -
Guest Post Label Devalue Links?
My link builders are doing an excellent job of creating well written articles with my links in the body of the text. However, most of them state it is a guest post at the top or bottom of the post. I also notice that the sites the articles are on frequently accept guest posts. 1. Does having the label "guest post" devalue the links at all? 2. Does the fact that the sites often allow for guest posts devalue the links?
Link Building | | TheDude0