Even though there’s been a lot of negative press lately with guest posting, it doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Aside from building and buying backlinks, a great guest post is a fantastic way to develop your brand and network with other website owners. Unfortunately, though, guest posting can take up a lot of your time. You will have to write effective blog outreach emails, make high-quality content, and coordinate with website owners. These can prevent you from working on what’s important – your main website.
If you have thought about outsourcing or white labeling your link building and guest posting to an outside company, you have to understand what you should look out for before handing over your credit card number. Since there are a lot of low-quality companies out there, the last thing you want to do is have them build you a lot of guest posts that get you penalized.
With all of that being said, here are four tips on how you can find the best guest posting services.
1. Examine the quality
Some companies claim they are able to get you some guest posts; however, when you look at the websites they are using, it’s actually a low-quality network of websites that’s filled with nothing but garbage. PBN’s come to mind.
It’s so important that you ask the company how they develop its guest posts and where they plan on distributing them. A good company will provide solid examples and won’t be afraid to show you what goes on behind the scenes.
2. Look at the price
The last thing that you’re going to want to do is focus on the price. If your goal is to find the cheapest guest posting service out there, you’re going to get what you pay for. Keep in mind that a good guest posting service is going to charge a good amount of money per post, so if you’re not willing to spend close to $100 per post, you’re better off doing it on your own.
If you’re wondering why it can cost so much, you have to think about the process for a second. It’s going to take hours to email potential blogs, another few hours to develop the content, and write follow-up emails to make sure that the guest post goes live. As you can see, a good guest post could take many hours combined before it even goes live.
3. Test the service
If you think you have found a great company, don’t jump the gun and buy 20 guest posts just yet. The biggest mistake that many people make is that they scale their guest posts right away, only to find out that most of them are junk.
To play it safe, buy one guest post and see how the company works. How long did it take it to go live? How is the customer support? What kind of guest post did you get? Were you satisfied? Once you get a taste of their work, then it’s okay to proceed and buy more than one. If you really want to play it safe, consider pointing the guest post to a web 2.0 property or something you can track. That way, if something were to happen, your main money website wouldn’t be penalized.
4. Actually do the guest posting
Lastly, the most important part of guest posting is, well, guest posting. If your guest post seems as if it were written by a two-year-old, what kind of credibility do you plan on developing? It’s okay to pay for guest post content, but make sure it’s worth the payment.
A good guest post is going to be free of spelling errors, have minor grammatical mistakes, and should be interesting. Remember that these guest posts are going to be a reflection upon your website, and if it’s something that’s embarrassing, this isn’t something you’re going to want to affiliate yourself with.
Again, the web is filled with thousands of guest posting services. While some are great, there are going to be a lot of them that are bad. It’s your duty to weed through the junk to find the gold. As long as you use these four tips mentioned above, you should be able to find a service that works for you.
