Blogger outreach or guest posting is known as the most effective SEO technique to drive traffic to your site and improve rankings. Some marketers try to go it alone however many find value in using a specialized blogger outreach firm. This articles explores why a blogger outreach service can help save you time and generate the SEO results your site needs.
A typical SEO agency may be great at keyword research, on-page optimization, conversion optimization, technical aspects, site architecture analysis, content analysis, and competitor analysis.
However, most of them are at a loss when it comes to reaching out to and crafting quality content for publishers to obtain a high quality backlink. The key to having quality links is to have high DA sites and quality content. That’s where most blogger outreach services fall short – our studies show clearly that it is the quality of the content (how it is structured for SEO) that matters just as much as the site you get the link from.
In addition, may clients may be highly proficient in on page SEO, however be completely lacking in blogging outreach expertise. If you’re just starting out in SEO see our SEO guide for beginners.
To create a successful blogger outreach campaign you require so much more than just sending out emails in order to solicit a backlink.
It is important that you don’t just sign up to any blogger outreach program, but research and find one that has a track record of results,
This is only possible when a team is dedicated solely to networking and building relationships with high-traffic bloggers and top sites from multiple niches.
Here are some things you should look out for when researching a blogger outreach agency.
SEO Agencies Past Positive Experiences
Case studies go a long way and are integral to choosing the right agency which will know what you need and how to go about accomplishing it.
Past experience speaks volumes about how an outreach agency will handle complications in the campaign and show results.
It is vitally important to understand what you should expect from a campaign with blogger outreach companies. The best or an ideal scenario is when the agency has already worked with other businesses in your industry or category.
Even if they haven’t, they could still be the agency for you, if they have splendid experience in other industries. You will require detailed information after thorough research and investigation.
It is important that you conduct at least a cursory background check with a simple online search to check if there are any bad reviews.
You can discern true professionals from run-of-the-mill-agencies by asking for a proposal that explains how they would run the influencer campaign if you were to choose them. Make sure you get a detailed outlook of all plans before signing the contract.
Guest Post Agencies with Clear and Transparent Pricing
Blogger outreach is something that involves a bit of know how, plus also industry contacts. Like all forms of marketing it is possible to ‘do it yourself’ – however the time taken to learn a new skill is time you could be investing in other areas.
While most quality backlink providers have some technology to make it easier to self order – beware of companies with limited support. These are likely the companies that are not doing any of the work themselves but are farming out the work to other firms and simply taking a clip of the ticket.
While most clients are happy to self order – legitimate guest post agencies that have a team actively working for clients each day would need a minimum of 15 team members to deliver work at scale and quantity. The roles that make up a link building team are;
- Site finders
- Email / contact info finders
- SEO analysts
- Content writers (with SEO experience)
- Editors
- Customer service
- Quality control
A good agency will be completely transparent with you and be able to answer any questions in an honest way – what kind of sites will you post on, who writes the articles, etc
Now, you need to understand that every marketing agency will have trade secrets, as well as confidentiality agreements with some key clients. They may not share names with you, but you should expect complete disclosure regarding:
- the number of back links they can get you
- whether any will be contextual
- are the links do-follow or no-follow (hint: do-follow are what you need for SEO)
- domain authority of the website
- number of guest posts or reviews (with word count)
- content quality and whether written by native US writers
- do they go the extra mile and provide authority links (to help build relevancy for your site)
- do they only work on one client per post (you would be surprised how often providers bundle clients together – this makes it impossible to tailor the content to be optimized for your specific goals)
The only reason a company outsources a part of their work is to make it easier to deal with other operations.
OutreachFrog does all clients blogger outreach work in house – that’s how we are able to generate industry leading turnaround times and what we consider the best results in the field.
Agency Access to Exclusive High Quality Placements
This is one of the most important factors you should consider while hiring a blogger outreach company. Influencers are the people you want talking about your brand, products or services.
These people are considered an authority in their respective fields and it is important to hire an agency that has fostered relationships with influencers in your industry.
For instance, if your product is protein bars aimed at fitness buffs, then you don’t want an outreach company that only has ‘generalists’ in their network.
You want your protein bars to be seen and identified by target audience (gym-goers in this case). You would want to outsource your work to a company that has good relations with top fitness blogs, healthy eating blogs, and fitness food experts.
It is best to go for an outreach agency that hand-selects their publishers for a mixture of relevancy as well other site metrics. While there is no ‘number’ for relevancy – its more does that site resonate with your particular client base. Authority links – that is other links in the article not just to your site (don’t worry your link juice is still safe!) go a long way towards relevancy. Outreach Frog is the only provider we know of that goes the extra mile to hand pick the right relevant authority sites based on competitor activity and the link activity of sites currently linking to you or competitors.
Ask potential guest post agencies about how they communicate with their site owners. Do they send thank you notes and gifts to their publishers, do publishers get excited by the content they provide – because ultimately publishers care about how the post is going to help their site with additional visitors.
Self Order Blogger Outreach
Some agencies provide the ability to self serve – with limited input required from clients. Involvement should be on your terms and not the agency’s. If you are a brand that likes to be hands on, then the blogger outreach agency should be willing to cater to you. They should be ready to keep you in the loop about their strategies and course of actions.
The company you choose should be as transparent as possible and be available to answer any questions you have or help understand your overall SEO strategy and goals.
Look for clues that will help you understand that an agency is the right pick. They should be asking you questions (whether you want to be involved or not) about your high level goals, the kind of target audience you have in mind, whether you have run blogger outreach campaigns in the past, and results from those campaigns.
This information is vital to a blogger outreach company to help understand your business and to get the right results.
What Price Should You Pay Your OutReach Agency?
Like they say – you get what you pay for. If you believe all posts or all providers are the same – then that simple belief is likely the reason your site is not ranking where you would like it to be.
While there are many unscrupulous SEO providers – most don’t last very long – especially those that operate without contracts – if they are unable to provide value.
A high quality guest post has a number of costs involved – this is mainly labor costs, with some parts of the process being able to be completed at a very low cost where other aspects such as the writing, editing, and SEO optimizing requiring an highly skilled and highly paid team member to participate in.
Guest posts are less like ‘toothpaste’ (a commodity) and more like ‘pasta’ – you have a 40cent packet of instant noodles or the $35 Wolfgang puck Penne Alfredo. Both made of wheat – but entirely different.
Another important value add of high quality guest posts is the length that they remain online for. A link loses 100% of its value the moment it is removed. In fact – it can have negative value as sites with a history of short lived links are viewed with suspicion by the search engines. Considering that it takes 12 months for a link to achieve its full effect – and most providers having average link lifespans of less than 6 months – a link that lasts 2, 3, 4 years or more can be 10x the value.
What makes a link last longer?
When you think about the incentives in the relationship – publishers like keeping up quality content. It benefits their site as much as yours. Site owners who work with guest posts know a thing or two about SEO. Non-performing pages are dead weight that must be culled – a regular exercise is to find the lowest 20% of pages each month and remove them.
High quality content is a different story. These posts benefit the publisher. They don’t wanna touch them. Sure they could just remove the links but out of either good faith or fear of editing a page that is performing for them – webmasters simply leave those posts and links intact.
Also, many providers are not doing outreach at all – they are simply posting on sites they own – they need to keep their own traffic metrics up. And as they are well aware of the quality (non-existent) of the content they post they want it off ASAP. Oh, and then perhaps a friendly call to get you to spend more with them now that all your links are gone.
OutReachFrog’s has been in business for 3 years and out of the 10,000 or so posts we have done – we have single digit links that have been removed. That’s right, less than 10. We built links for our own sites before we started working with customers customers – so our processes are designed about results for our clients.
How To Track Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing
As a business owner, you may already understand the importance of measuring campaign performance.
The results from outreach campaigns should explain your return on investment, and guide your decisions in future campaigns.
Social media was valued above engagement just a few years ago. However, now the opposite is true. Campaign results can now get even more granular when assigning values to social media engagement with the advancement of social analytics tools.
Other Factors
You need to make sure that you are not paying those extra dollars for PBNs or Black Hat Links – use white hat only!. Look for genuine blogger outreach companies that have real sites in their influencer network.
Your brand is at major risk where search engines are concerned if you get a link that is automated by a bot or placed on a PBN network.
You should also aim for content that is written by native English speaker. We cannot stress this enough.. using US writers or native writers for your blog posts or guest posts makes a huge difference! This way you can confidently publish the content or links in your website and social media channels. There is nothing more hurtful to a business than poorly written content.
Lastly, make sure there are other high quality outbound links within the article which helps give your backlink more credibility.
A good blogger outreach service, being one that provides high quality articles that link out to at least 2-3 relevant sources. Contextual links surrounded by relevant content gives you brownie points with Google AI.
