Should you guest post on a site with no quality links?
-
Suppose a site is related to your industry and has a relatively good domain authority of 49. However when you look at their link profile it is mostly directories and they don't seem to have any natural links from quality sites. Would you still take the link if they offered to publish your guest post?
-
It's not just about getting links to boost your rankings. Think about the potential referral traffic too. A great blog post on a site relevant to your niche can send you well qualified traffic that converts well. At the end of the day, it's not traffic the site needs - it's business. Also think about your positioning - If you visit a bunch of sites about fly fishing and see guest posts from the same person on just about every site you visit, you're going to think that they are more likely to be an authority on the subject. Just make sure the articles are good! Don't just cobble together a low value blog post just to get the link. Think about your positioning, think about the particular audience of the site and create something worth reading. If you've been offered a guest post then it's not unreasonable to ask a couple of questions about the site's visitors. What kind of thing are they looking for and how many readers of the blog are there? Even if you just get your name/brand in front of your customers, that can be a good thing. If you were given the opportunity to talk to a group of potential customers - how big would the group need to be to make it worth your while?
-
Three good answers.
As you know, it is hard to get quality links, so they have experienced the same problem as everyone else. If the directory links are relevant, and there are no egregious ones, it isn't likely to do you harm.
In addition, you can't see all of the links the site has, so you don't know if there are better links or worse links also.
With a DA of 49, it can't be too bad, so if it is in your industry and you already checked out the other content and you didn't find any bad outgoing links, then it looks like a good opportunity.
-
Sure would.
1. Nothing lives or dies by a single link (spam or not).
2. If you have a link profile that doesn't elicit the red flag, those few links from spam-ish sites with descent authority seem to help out in my experience.
3. It's in your industry, so even a cookie-cutter 'directory' has it's place when it is highly relevant. It's still an effective way to build links no matter what the fear-mongering SEOs say
-
If they have good content, unique and not spammy looking content, I will take the link. I would also look at the kind of sites they are linking to and as long as it's all good, closely related and there's no junk in there, it's a good link in my eyes.
I would also make sure that majority of my links are not coming from guest blog posts, that's what I would worry about more. Just making sure the link profile is as natural as possible. And don't always do anchor text links only.
I hope that helps.
-
Directories are not that bad if they are related to the site, I would look deeper into the link profile, to me it sounds like a decent site if their is numerous quality content and they also have a decent amount of traffic and keywords driving traffic to the site I say go for it.
-
Absolutely I would. If your entire link profile was made up of these sites that would be a different situation. But if it has a high DA/PA, and it's in a related niche, then I definitely would.
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
-
What qualities to look for when trying to find sites to get backlinks from?
When trying to build backlinks, of course some sites are much harder to get links on than others. I am trying to figure out which sites my time and effort is best spent trying to get a link on. I may view a site as important and high quality but Google may not. Which tools and metrics within MOZ should I look at to determine if a site is worth the effort to get a backlink from? I'm sure "Domain Authority" is a factor. Which number makes it definitely worth pursuing?
Link Building | | Bperry129
Does inbound links and spam score count for anything? Which metric is best to look at to figure out the most powerful backlink I can get?0 -
What you think is thje best way to build links for my site?
I heard different opinions all over the web, some people said don't do 100% just anchor texts with the keywords you want to rank with, and they suggest 60% brand anchor text and the rest for the keywords i want to rank for. what do you guys suggest?
Link Building | | arango200 -
Can a feeder site link directly to the main site?
I have a client that has several coupons sites. They have about 15 different URLS all of which are [city]deals.com all of the domains have coupons lists that are relevant to that area. Other than the coupons there is not any other content on the sites. There is a Main site however, that has coupons, content, store locations, blogs, news etc... The coupons on the feeder sites are displayed differently than what is displayed on the main site. They are also categorized differently. So the question is on the feeder sites can they have the coupon link directly to the store page on the main site?
Link Building | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
Getting links to a blog post
Hi, What is the best way to get a "good quality" link to my blog posts? Thanks
Link Building | | Studio330 -
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).
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Numerous (20K+) inbound links from ONE site in short time period
I'm somewhat new to SEO, but from what I understand, slow link growth can provide better results than highly aggressive link building campaigns. A site of mine was recently featured on a 90+ DA (55 PA) blog directory, and was featured for the entire state, therefore I received almost 20,000 inbound links from the site (from every company/listing in the state). The links have been mostly recorded (17,000) in Google webmaster tools (Yahoo Site Explorer claims around 23,000). However the site dropped 2 pages in rankings for numerous SEO related keywords since webmaster tools listed the links. Many of them are PA 50+, though a majority of the linking pages are PA 1. A few other inbound links were created from other root domains, roughly 8-10 or so in the past month. The question is, would a large amount of links like this all of a sudden trigger some kind of "penalty" from search engines (Google, especially)? And, do the PA 1 pages take away from the quality of the 55 PA links?
Link Building | | Smith-Digital0 -
Links per Site vs. Domain Authority
Here's a quaint one: 1. Posting follow links on another site helps increase one's domain authority. 2. If I post to the same site/forum with followed links each week, would my domain authority reap a domain authority increase benefit? In short, is there any domain authority benefit to continually post links to a site to which I've already posted a follow link?
Link Building | | GreenCupboards0