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
-
A number of times you should use your keyword in a guest blog
Is it true that if you want to rank for a chosen keyword, you have to mention that keyword 3%-5% of the whole content (in a guest blog)?
Link Building | | FilkaCer2 -
Does adding relevant keywords to social postings help with SEO?
I was doing some research on social postings and SEO and couldn't really find the answer to my question. Would adding in SEO keywords help with my site's relevancy or would it just help boost my site because of backlinking? For example if I were to add a new Facebook post "Check out these great new blue widgets " help more than "Check out these new products "? Thanks!
Link Building | | EmazingKatie0 -
Alternatives to Guest Blogging Please
Now that Matt Cutts seems to have sounded the death knoll for guest blogging for SEO, what are some good alternatives?
Link Building | | aj6131 -
Link Anchor Text post Penguin 2.0
I have heard a great variety of views concerning the anchor text used for link building post Penguin 2.0 but have yet to hear some consensus. Some say the anchor text for external links should be different than internal. Some say brand should be used on external and keywords on internal. Some say brand and a variety of keywords on external. Any thoughts on a strategy consistent with google expectations and guidelines?
Link Building | | casper4340 -
Blog posts with currently no links question
Hi, If a blog has 100's of quality blog posts all with PR 1-3 but has no internal linking going on, what kind of affect would it have if someone was to go through all the pages using mixed anchor text (where it fits) back to money pages. Would generating 100's of internal links from a blog in a matter of days cause problems / flag up to SE's. I'm guessing it would be best to stagger it over a long period of time. Cheers
Link Building | | Bondara0 -
How to link blog posts to web pages
In past I would write blog posts and link to a static web page. The link from the blog post to the static web page would be the same keyword(s) as the web page was optimized around. With the latest Google updates, it seems like the keywords linking to the web page need to be varied, but I'm not sure what the ideal system would be?
Link Building | | Doug_Hay0 -
Another guest blogging question (sorry people)
So I use myblogguest to find blogs to exchange content for links with. So a few things I need clearing up really, If you cant write relevant content to the website you want to push, does this mean writing content on something you know something about lets say football and putting anchor text links in the byline to a electronic shop would not work and is not worth doing? On the flip side lets say you get a copy writer to do it for you but the blogs wanting to use the content are not relevant to your website. So your articles about football and your website sells football equipment but the blogs wanting to use the content are general blogs with 20 categories covering everything. Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Does Anyone Have Evidence of the Effectiveness of Guest Posts?
I think the tactic of guest posts is a good way to earn links to a site. But I have a few concerns: -Links are usually at the very end of the page.
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital
-Guest posts are on blog posts which usually have much less link juice than top level pages.
-A lot of sites abuse guest posting for spammy anchor text, e.g. "cheap auto loans"
-Some SEOs have said that Google will devalue guest post links in the future (due to abuse) Does anyone have examples, tests, or case studies of guest posting helping a site improve their rankings? (or an opinion on the value of guest posting)0