Inurl: “Guest Post” Is A Crazy Way To Build Links For SEO
We were recently asked by one of our customers why our links were on sites that, despite the domain metrics being similar, were almost always ranking for more keywords and had more organic traffic than competing linkbuilding agencies.
The main reason is almost certainly down to how we prospect for links. Read a handful of guides about guest posting and you’ll see most of them start out by telling the reader to crack on with searching for opportunities by…
Searching for people who are straight up begging to have guest posters.
That’s right — site owners who:
- Don’t have time to write enough of their own content;
- Will publish virtually anything as long as it’s on topic;
- Have taken the time to make it so obvious that you can get a link and article up for a few bucks everyone will be knocking down their door;
- Publish so little of their own original and on-topic content they basically only rank for ‘inurl: “guest post”’ and not much else…
Those aren’t the sites you want to be getting your brand covered on.
And honestly, straight up ‘guest posting’ might not even be what you want to do in the first place.
Ok… ok… you’re sure you want to do some guest posts. So here’s how you do it a lot better.
How To Do A Better Job Of Finding The Right Sites
Instead of finding sites that just show up on Google for ‘niche’ + ‘guest post’ and not much else, you want to be finding actual sites that have content related to what you’re promoting/going to talk about and actually rank for that type of content.
Being featured on a site that regularly shows up for the kind of content you’re promoting is going to be way more powerful than showing up on a vaguely related site that just happens to take a lot of guest post.
It will be tougher.
You will get rejected slightly more often.
But you’re getting your content up on a real site, with a real audience, that you know search engines already trust…
… because it already ranks and gets traffic from search engines for that type of content.
So instead of the type of search query you’re seeing pushed on all those guest post tips articles, go for something you’d do if you were looking for great information on the topic.
Collate all the sites into a spreadsheet and analyse them for traffic, relevance, whether they want to be contacted at all (check their contact page for the digital equivalent of ‘no cold callers’ signs on the door), and whether they’re a viable target.
Remove all the non-viable ones (pro tip: It’s super useful to spend a little budget on a PR professional to target the really huge ones. No you aren’t going to get on TechCrunch or the NYT very often if you’re an inexperienced pitcher!).
Start pitching the sites with why the content you’re going to be writing will entertain, excite and interest their readers. Show them the great content on your site that aligns with their mission and that you’d be sharing.
Sometimes magic even happens and they write up a mention all by themselves.
Take a second to let that sink in — instead of getting a post on a site with 1000 search visits a month, in the ‘health’ space with ok metrics (sometimes) linking to you, you’ll get a completely natural mention from a high traffic site, that covers the exact topics you’re looking to get exposure for. It doesn’t happen all the time — but when it does it’s…
Way. More. Powerful.
Why It Might Even Be Dangerous/Pointless
With search engines toning down the aggressive nature of penalties over the last year, the lower ‘danger’ levels have led to a lot of people becoming more relaxed.
However it’s not just the danger of a penalty you need to be concerned about. It’s the danger of being straight up ignored when you’ve done a ton of work.
What if you grind out those 100 guest posts on those super desperate sites that just love to publish guest posts… and only 5 of them are even counted.
Suddenly that 20% lower acceptance rate from doing things the right way, and getting much more powerful sites doesn’t seem so bad, right? If most of those count you’re WAY ahead of the game.
Everyone who’s read one of those ‘tips’ articles and is using that search query to find guest posting opportunities in your niche has links from those easy sites. They’re super obvious to the algorithm and to manual reviewers as low-quality sites.
Easy targets that can be ignored, or worse contribute to a penalty.
I’m Not Saying Avoid Sites That Welcome Contributors, Of Course
The key difference between what I’m recommending and what the ‘inurl’ guys and gals are recommending is the end result.
The end result of one is sites that show up for ‘guest post’, the end result of the other is sites that show up for, and are trusted by search engines already, for topics within your niche, and specific to the campaign your working on.
The latter camp are much more powerful. Some of those will accept guest posts, or contributors. Heck major news outlets have contributed content, so of course some quality blogs an sites in your niche will allow or even mention that they allow submissions.
The key here isn’t that you’re avoiding everyone who allows submissions. No. It’s that you’re finding the best sites, with the most authority related to the topics and content you’re sharing not JUST ones that take guest posts. I hope that makes sense but would love to answer any questions in the comments or on Twitter — @sdbrownlie
