What are guest post services?
Guest post services are mostly offered by SEO agencies and they have the goal of increasing the total number of backlinks that point to your site. This method is very beneficial for site owners because the more links that point to their site the higher the ranks they get.
Of course, this affirmation is true only under the premise that the content used to build these links is high-quality. Meaning that it is original, not plagiarized from other places and the information that it offers has the role of helping the audience in a way or another.
On the other hand, if the content is garbage, meaning either it is plagiarized or it does not offer any type of help, or sometimes both, then negative results will appear. The site will be penalized and its ranks will drop.
The process of guest posting has some requirements that need to be met for the results to be positive. There are good methods and bad methods and if you want to be on the good side (of Google) you must know and understand them. As Neil tells in his guide: “ The first thing to remember about a great technology submit guest post is that it is not about your business, your products, or your services. Guest posts should be valuable sources of information – not advertisements! ”, you should understand that this is a bad practice it is very often used with long term consequences.
The process of guest posting needs two participant sites, the host, on which the content will be published and the guest, which will write it. Both of them will get their own benefits. This win-win situation is used by many site owners with success.
Requirements for good results
Of course, to be able to get good results from this strategy there are some rules that need to be followed.
- Content. As mentioned above the content must be of high-quality. For the host, this helps through the fact that the viewers of the post will come back and read other articles. For the guest, it means that the traffic they get from the post will be bigger and their ranks will increase.
- Relevance. Some consider that you must only post on other sites in your industry, otherwise, there will not be any results. The truth is a little different, although the effect will be indeed lower. But if you can link your industry with the host’s through your article then the results will appear as well. For example, you can imagine how an article can link the agriculture and technology industries.
- Authority difference. The higher the difference between the authority of the guest and the host the harder it is to implement this type of collaboration because both of them will want partners that have similar or higher authority than them. Most of the time, if you want on a site that has a much higher authority they will decline or ask monetary compensation. Sometimes a very good post could breach a high difference in authority.
These are the most important requirements. As you can imagine, their importance can vary and the methods of accomplishing them exist. It is your job to make sure that you get the most benefits possible through this method. Below are the main benefits you should expect.
Four Benefits of Guest Posting
The benefits of the participants differ and by knowing both parts of the equation you can decide which side will bring the best benefits to your site.
The benefits of the host are:
- Free content. The first benefit that the site that hosts the content is obviously the content itself. By using this method they get free content without the need for investing time and effort in creating it.
- Authority. If others are willing to create content for your site means that they acknowledge you as an authority and so, the search engines will do as well. The more guest posts you have the higher the authority of your site.
- Relations. It is a very good method to create relations with others in your fields. Some of them will transform into more collaboration opportunities. It is well known that the higher the network you have, the higher are your chances of success in the business world.
- Profit. This benefit depends on the authority that your site accumulated. Those who have very high authority can ask for money for the opportunity of posting on their site. Although this method will affect other benefits, it will also increase the revenue and profit of your business.
The benefits of the guest are:
- Authority. Not only the hosts gain authority. Together with the content written for the host site, a low number of links that point to your site can be placed as well. Those are the main advantage of this type of collaboration because they not only will raise the authority of your site but they bring other benefits as well. However, you need to make sure that your website is well optimized so it can benefit from the full power of the guest post promotion. For this, it is recommended to make a full SEO audit to identify and fix your main website issues.
- Traffic. A part of the audience that will read the post will visit your site through the links. This does not mean that you steal the traffic from the host, if the audience likes the content on your site then they can use both sources of information by following both you and the host.
- Relations. Another benefit shared by the hosts and guests is the possibility of forming relations that could bring other collaborations.
- Branding. This strategy can be used to increase the influence of a brand as well. A new audience will find about you and those that already know you will gain more trust in you.
What are the benefits you get from outsourcing the process?
Now that you understand what are be benefits of this type of collaboration you can start implementing these methods anytime. It is obvious that it is much easier to be the host in these types of collaborations but the benefits are lower as well. On the other hand, a guest posting strategy requires more than one site. You need to post on as many sites as possible, and the time and effort that needs to be invested in this could affect other operations of your business.
This is where the option to outsource the process comes in. You can literally let someone else do everything for you. There are SEO agencies that specialize in this strategy and you can choose to outsource guest post services entirely to them.
To do this you must first find this type of SEO agency. SEO is a complex and vast industry. There are many SEO strategies through which you can increase your site’s ranks. Your job is to find those that focus on building high-quality links through guest posting content.
After you found some of them you should research them a bit. Find the results they produced in the past, look at the reviews they got, and if possible speak with some of their clients. You can also make the first contact and have a meaningful conversation with them. Your focus should be to find out how compatible are they to your needs.
After you find a good candidate then you should start a short term collaboration through which you can find out the quality of their work. Guest posting takes a lot of work before it starts to show measurable results and the best thing you can do before that is to predict them through the quality of the service offered by the agency. By starting this collaboration you may find some unexpected benefits as well.
Benefits of outsourcing the Guest Posting Strategy
10 Reasons why you need to consider outsourcing and white label SEO services are presented on Inkhive.com. They start the article by saying that you need to outsource “ To stay on top of your game and ensure that your digital agency is always one step ahead of competitors ”. There are 3 main benefits you should expect from outsourcing the guests posting process to an SEO agency:
- Investment . The time and effort you would have invested by using the strategy yourself can be used on other parts of your business. By doing this you can not only increase your revenue to cover the cost of outsourcing but also extend your business and increase the quality of your products or services.
- Speed . Your partner has a lot of experience and expertise in this field and he will be able to find hosts much faster than you can. The results will appear much faster because of this, and over time this will accumulate and increase your profits much more than you could have done.
- Quality . Your expertise in your industry may be first class, but what expertise and experience do you have in creating content? An SEO agency will have experienced writers that will create content with high quality. Together with the benefits above it will multiply the efficiency of this strategy. This will lead to bigger results in the form of higher ranks, higher traffic, and higher profits.
What are your alternatives?
Of course, outsourcing is not your only option. You have more alternatives that you can use instead. The obvious one is to do the job yourself. But until now you should have understood that this is the most inefficient method. On Moz.com you can find the methods through which you can find sites for guest posts. This should make you understand the difficulties you will have if you do not have a blog and/or connections with one.
Although, if you have a start-up, indeed it may be better to implement this strategy yourself because the results that you could get are limited. Of course, the more your business grows the more task you will be able to outsource. You will reach a point where you will benefit more from outsourcing and the experience of doing it yourself will help you find a good SEO agency much easier.
Another method you can use to do this is either by outsourcing only the writing part, or the task of finding partners. This can be a good alternative in certain circumstances and you could even get better results in this way.
If your network is very vast in your field and you could easily find relevant sites where you could post your articles then you could hire an SEO writer or outsource to one. Sometimes this method could be more efficient than fully outsourcing the process.
On the other hand, if you are a good SEO writer, or you have one in your company, then you could outsource the process of finding relevant hosts. You should understand that the quality of your partners, matters, and SEO agency have the methods and tools needed to find only the best ones for you.
As you can see there are certain circumstances where these alternatives are better choices, but in any other situation, you should outsource all the processes. You may see that the “in house” method is not recommended at all. That is because it is the most inefficient method in any circumstances, other than being an SEO agency yourself.
The investments of time and effort needed for high-quality content and the money invested in tools that will help you find the best hosts fast are much bigger in comparison with all the other alternatives. Even if you hire someone to do the job for you, the salary asked by a professional will be very high.
The final decision!
You are the only one that can make the final decision. Consider all the factors presented in this article and in this way you will be able to take the decision which will bring the most benefits to your business. Most of the time, outsourcing is the best method for bigger companies, while the DIY method for startups or professionals that already have the skills and tools needed.
Another important factor you should look for are the testimonials, you must verify their veracity and make sure that the results are true and their clients are happy with these results. If you do not accord enough importance to this step you may have some nasty surprises later on.
