It’s funny that this topic comes in the form of a guest post, but there are many alternatives when it comes to link building that have to do with other things besides guest posting. Some SEOs (or link marketers if you like that term better) start saying that the rage of guest posting is coming to an end. This method is just sometimes being overused. And if an overuse gets obvious, it’s time to suspect a Google update that will change something about that, though I’m not sure how they will do it with guest blogging. In fact, sometimes guest posting is just not a viable option at all. This is because of a few main reasons.
Time consuming
Whatever cool thing it is, guest posting can be and if you strive for quality for your guest posts really is not something that you can do within half an hour. Well, if you’re really lucky that day, that is totally possible, but that would be an exception that just proves the rule. The regular scenario would be to spend (or sometimes waste) some time to find the right post, which means of proper quality and the required amount of words. Guest posting takes a lot of time because:
- Outreach takes a lot of time
- Coming up with content ideas take a lot of time
- Actually writing the content takes a lot of time
- And following through and making sure you do everything you need to do to get the guest post to go live take a lot of time
- In fact, all in all, guest posting takes an awful lot of time
Plus not all guest posts and backlinks you put as compensation are good. Check the following video from Matt Cutts.
That’s why you should look to some alternatives to guest posting when you are building links for clients or just your own blog if you’re doing SEO for your own.
And just as a side note, link building and, and SEO for that matter, is not dead and is still very much alive. Penguin and Panda did not kill it, just made legitimate link building stronger.
Have you ever spent $200.00 on a guest post?
Of course, you haven’t. Guest posting doesn’t make sense to splurge on. Because the way SEO is taught is that you should go as cheap as possible and buy as many links as possible with hopes that a few of them will go through. This opens the doorways for many “$45 for ~700 link directory submissions” type service companies. I am here to tell you: Those are the types of SEO tactics that are a complete waste of time.
You have to build a completely natural looking backlink profile if you want your search engine rankings to start improving.
A Couple of Theories
Theory One is that the percentage of times you should use exact match anchor text should be anywhere between 5-11%. What does that mean? That means that if you aim to build 100 links for your site, 5-11 of them should be exact matches (in theory). Realistically you should probably just aim to make sure you hit that exact match every time as your anchor texts are going to be oversaturated by “natural” links.
However if you have more complete control over your incoming links and you really are the only on responsible for getting links to point to your site, then you really want to make sure that you don’t go over that 11% number, whether you are aiming for the term link building service or the term IT asset recovery.
Theory Two is that (now more than ever) you should really think about spreading your link building efforts out over time. If you are linking building yourself using high-quality tactics then this really shouldn’t be a problem because the time it takes you to build these links is going to take a while in the first place.
Why should you do this? Because link building over time looks natural, and when something looks natural, then the search engines are going to scoop it up with love and you will see a spike in your rankings because you are doing so.
So, now that we got those two theories out of the way, let’s look at three alternatives to guest posting.
Business Profile Building
Business profile building means signing up for sites like Yelp, Manta, CitySearch, and all those sorts of websites. Of course, you could get this out of the way by signing up with Yext (they will do it for $500 a year – but that takes all the fun out of doing it manually and putting your nose to the grindstone!
Premium Directories
Premium directories are sometimes things that you are going to have to pay for. One large example is the Yahoo link directory which costs around ~$300.00/year to maintain. But besides the well-known ones like the Yahoo directory and the BOTW directory, there are all sorts of other directories out there that are related to all sorts of different niches that you can get listed in.
Be sure to pick out directories that are out there not just for SEO reasons but for the purpose of actually bringing you traffic as well. At first thought, these might seem to be few and far to come by. But they are not, they do exist, and all they require is a little research. Trying using the OpenSiteExplorer.org tool.
Asking for a link
Sometimes the most overlooked (and easiest outreach method) is by simply just asking if they would like to link to your site. There are all sorts of “authority” (at least in the eyes of Google and Page Rank) websites out there that are related to your niche that have old and outdated pages that could use some help with content.
Perhaps they are referring companies? Perhaps they are writing on green initiatives and things of that nature, whatever the link building opportunity is, be sure to ask if they would be willing to link to your site when you get the chance to. It’s easy and all the work is in the research – and good things always come out of doing a lot of research.
Update:
36 Authoritative Outreach Tips for Digital PR Specialists
9 Powerful Techniques To Rank in Google from Brian Dean
Useful Links
Why We Only Accept 1 Out of Every 10 Guest Blog Pitches
36 Authoritative Outreach Tips for Digital PR Specialists
Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days
What Links Can You Get That Comply with Google’s Guidelines? – Whiteboard Friday
5 Tactics to Earn Links Without Having to Directly Ask – Whiteboard Friday
The 3 Easiest Link Building Tactics Any Website Can Use to Acquire Their First 50 Links – Whiteboard Friday
Nofollow vs. Follow Links: Everything You Need to Know
Resource Page Link Building: The Only Guide You Need
60+ link building techniques checklist [2019 update]
How to Get Backlinks with Negotiation and Persuasion
9 EASY Link Building Strategies (That ANYONE Can Use)
Internal Links for SEO: Best Practices 2020
How to Get Backlinks in 2020 – Whiteboard Friday
10 Google Ranking Factors You Shouldn’t Ignore
Image Link Building
In Conclusion
So, you can still do guest blogging, but it really makes sense to diversify your link building methods with business profile and paid directory links. Other than that, it does not hurt to actually do some research and just ask for a link back. Especially if you can find a good reason for that person to link back to you (mutual ideas, etc). Don’t put all your eggs in one basket folks.
