The fastest way to boost your online search rankings and customer reach is through guest posting.
But the thought of guest posting sounds counter-intuitive to many marketers. They believe their time could be better spent tweaking the website or promoting their social networks. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot partake in the various benefits you can gain through guest posts.
All you need to do is find a guest posting service that caters to all your needs. In short, you want to be able to free up your time to concentrate on other things, while the service you choose gets the links, exposure, and brand promotion you need.
You can get a lot done with blogger outreach and guest posting. The fact that you can put your brand in front of hundreds of thousands of new visitors in a fairly short space of time makes this strategy something you cannot afford to ignore.
However, the only way you can attain all these benefits is if you choose the right guest post service. Here are 11 things to consider while looking for a service provider.
Quality In Their SEO Work
You need to be sure that the company you choose deals only in quality posts in terms of site, content, and link placement.
Quality comes before quantity and cost consideration. Make sure you do your due diligence to choose a credible guest post agency that offers the highest quality.
Beware of tall promises. There are many agencies out there acting like vultures making you feel that they can grab the world’s attention for your brand. Steer clear of these because reality is always very different.
You know you are dealing with a genuine company when they have ready, sensible, and believable answers to basic questions. You may also want to take a look at their previous client list and check online reviews for how good the agency is.
Any company that hesitates or is reluctant to show you vital behind-the-scenes information is setting you up for a severe disappointment.
Well-Written Content
The most important aspect of guest posting is the post or content. You need to make sure that the guest post service churns out relevant, valuable, and high-quality content. After the recent Google updates it has become very difficult for mediocre content to rank high or grab anyone’s attention.
Also, mediocre content tends to get posted on spammy blogs and (private blogging network) which really doesn’t help your brand and cause in the long run. It is important for the post to be well-written in order to achieve its purpose.
In addition, the content you put out in the online world is a direct reflection of your brand and site. You have a reputation to uphold which means the guest post service should deliver a copy that is free of typos, grammatical errors, and is successful in captivating your intended audience.
Price or Cost Of SEO Services
Despite popular notion, cost and budget doesn’t always mean that you are looking for the lowest or cheapest option. As explained earlier, in guest post services you need to look for quality that falls within your budget. But, you also need to make sure that the price tag aligns with the services offered.
Once you begin market research, you would find that most guest post services are not very expensive, even though they tend to charge a significant amount. These charges cover content creation, blogger and influencer outreach, and follow-up till the post goes live.
You need to make sure that these basic services are included in the cost break-up. Feel free to pay for anything additional that you need. Usually, there are additional charges for higher domain authority blogs.
You need to inquire about the various procedures included in the price tag so that you know what you are getting into and avoid feeling shortchanged in the future.
Reputation of Agency
You need to check out the reputation of the guest post service before hiring them. The reputation of the provider should be solid along with high levels of communication.
Don’t hesitate to check online reviews and ask on community forums before signing a contract. You need to make sure that the company provides excellent service and real results. You can also ask for testimonials of previous clients.
Track record is another thing you should take very seriously. Typically, a good track record would create a solid reputation for an agency. But, sometimes new service providers have not spent enough time in the industry to create a reputation.
Look for past successes in these instances.
However, you need to find an agency that can deliver the results they promise. It is recommended that you look at past campaigns and case studies to get an idea of how the company goes about their business and can help with competitive local seo.
Digital Marketing Range of Service
It is a good idea to ask about the various services offered by the provider. This is important if you are looking for a complete guest posting solution. Some agencies don’t get involved in content creation. With these agencies, you would have to provide the content, and they would only take care of finding relevant blogs and following up till the post goes live.
It is recommended that you find out whether a company matches your exact requirement before signing a contract with them. This will help you save a lot of money, time, and effort down the line. It is a good idea to take a look at their process as well.
You can get a fairly good idea by checking out the various steps undertaken by the company from start to the finish. This will also help you understand whether the agency is credible or not.
High-authority White Hat Blogs
You need to make sure that the guest posting agency you decide upon deals only in high-quality blogs and if they do manual blogger outreach. Backlinks from high page ranking sites can go a long way in boosting your site in SERPs. It is important that the site only works with the best blogs utilizing strictly white-hat methods.
At the same time, the blogs should also be relevant to your niche. If you have a food-related product, there is no point pushing your content on a site that deals solely with fashion. You need to connect with well-known and respected sites that are considered influential in your micro-niche.
This is the only way you can gain exposure with the right audience segment. Established sites can help with brand promotion and reputation building as well. By working with a good guest post service that gets your content published in high-authority blogs, you can attain all these benefits and more.
Relevant and Permanent Backlinks
One of the best benefits of guest posting is acquiring backlinks. These links can go a long way in providing link juice that helps attain higher SERP rankings, increased traffic to your site, and brand exposure among numerous other benefits.
You can build a solid backlink profile by having your links placed in high-quality blogs. However, these links need to be relevant and should be within valuable content. Hence, make sure that the guest post service you deal with promises relevant backlinks in several niche-specific high-authority blogs.
There are some links called permanent links which take readers back to your site, way deeper than the homepage. These links tend to provide link juice for a significantly longer period. Find out from the agency if the link juice will disappear when you stop working with them. See how long it takes to rank a site from backlinks.
Avoid Low Quality
Guest post service providers should be knowledgeable enough to avoid spam which can truly hurt your site after Penguin and Panda updates. Look for an agency that helps build your SEO and is genuinely interested in increasing the worth of your brand and business.
Google and other search engines constantly update their algorithm to pry through your site and keep tabs on the kind of content published. Black hat practices, like keyword stuffing in anchor texts or irrelevant and non-contextual links can award you a serious penalty.
Keep in mind that most webmasters recommend ditching a site that has attracted a penalty and starting a new one because it gets very difficult to bounce back.
PBNs or private blog networks are a sure-fire way of attracting Google penalties. Many sub-standard guest post services are involved with PBNs which they either control or have access to. You should at all costs steer clear of these providers.
Instead, look for an agency that has gained a solid reputation in the industry and has built relationships with genuine, authentic, and real bloggers and influencers. You need to understand that PBNs are very different from the online contacts that service providers attain by working in the industry for a long time.
Guest Post With Manual Approvals
You need to make sure that you are constantly in the loop. Most guest post services assume they know your brand and the kind of content that will work best for you. While it is great to work with industry experts, the final call should always be yours, because frankly no one knows your business better than you.
Work with an agency where you call the shots in terms of which content gets posted, where it gets posted, the kind of links, and anchor text.
You also need to make sure that each piece is built to match the topics and tone of the host blog. This will help your content be received better by the blog’s audience.
- Guarantees
If you are new to the field of guest posting, you may want to work with a provider that offers money back guarantees. If not, at least the provider should promise guaranteed placements.
You are paying to have your content published on guest blogs and not empty promises. So, if your posts do not go live in the scheduled time frame, make sure the agency has a plan B to find you an equal or a better link opportunity.
- Deadlines
The final thing to consider while choosing a guest post service is deadlines. Guest posting can take days and weeks to months, depending upon the kind of agency you choose. There are some companies that have strong ties with their blogger network and have in-house native language content writers.
These agencies would be capable of creating valuable and high-quality content within days and have it published within the same week as your approval. It is best to work with these fast-moving agencies, especially if you are looking to capitalize on trending topics and keywords.
You need to make sure that the guest posting company you pick is serious about deadlines. It is common for agencies to take up more work than they can handle, eventually compromising on the quality and deadlines.
Have it set in the contract that if the agency misses a deadline, you can request for 100% money back. This will help you maintain control over your guest posting campaign and not leave you chasing the provider.
See Examples Of Guest Post Results
Once you feel like you have identified the perfect guest post service, stop and take some time to make sure that they are indeed the right choice. It is best to place a test order and sample the merchandise. See whether the agency is everything they promise to be.
While making your test run, focus on how good and prompt the customer service is. Don’t hesitate to ask random questions and call them or mail them a few times.
You also need to see how long it takes for your post to go live and whether it is placed in a relevant site or not. Overall, you should see whether the service was satisfactory and up to your brand standards. Ask your provider for guest post actual results.
The time (and money) you spend here can help you save hundreds or thousands of dollars down the line. There is no point in entering a contract with a company that fails to deliver what they promise.
You are allowed to play it as safe as you want this one time just to make sure that you are dealing with an authentic, safe, and result-oriented guest post service.