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Guest blogging on non-related blogs but with related categories?

by Murkr
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey guys,

So guest blogging is still very powerful if your guest blogging on a niche related blog, i get that.

But, what about if its a big blog with lots of categories? you might go to this big blog and see it has categories in almost every niche, is that still a viable options to target for a guest post?

For example, say im trying to rank a roofing company so i look for "home improvement" blogs to guest post, but, i find a big blog like huffingtonpost which has tons of different categories, but one of those categories are "home", is this still i good area to try to get a guest post?

it's related to that category within the site, but it only makes up like 5% of the site.
#blogging #blogs #categories #guest #nonrelated #related
  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    Guest blogging? *barf*

    Your SEO should be called Murky.

    You do realize what year this is, right?

    I can't believe people pay you.

    Being clueless and accepting money just puts more nails in the coffin of what real SEO is.

    Paul
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    If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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    • Profile picture of the author Murkr
      Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

      Guest blogging? *barf*

      Your SEO should be called Murky.

      You do realize what year this is, right?

      I can't believe people pay you.

      Being clueless and accepting money just puts more nails in the coffin of what real SEO is.

      Paul
      ohh geez its you again. Here I am trying to get advice and you just have to flame me, again. Is that all you do here?

      How about instead of flaming me you offer some useful advice to me and other people trying to get into SEO.

      Why dont you share what works better then? or do you keep it a secret to keep people in the dark about how "real" SEO should be done?
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  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    Don't think in terms of guest blogging but building credibility and authority.

    Getting a blog post on the site of a mortgage broker, if you sell roofing or houses or are a real estate agent, etc., whose clients are in the same area as you, can be quite beneficial, if your post has value. Getting a post on some local directory that's got followers, is good too.

    From a purely SEO point of view it brings a little, (and I mean little benefit) since, usually, the guest post page has no incoming links. If you can convince the site owner to link to your post from their main page (the page that usually has the most links), then you benefit from an SEO point of view too.

    If you guest post, then create links to your post, you benefit too. Of course, if you're doing that, you might as well be creating your own blog network.

    Paul is right as he is assuming your blog posting will be the widely used one: (no links to the guest post, therefore, the guest post has no juice to pass on to whatever page you're linking to... And link diversity and velocity talk you hear about is crap.)

    The goal of links is to get you sales, not traffic, not ranking. I know, the goal of SEO is to rank, according to many people on this forum. But nobody ranks for the sake of ranking. So, think about getting backlinks from sites the people you're after might be visiting.

    The best would be from a plumbing site, if you're a plumber, assuming you can convince the site owner to write, just before your link: I'm a good plumber, but if you want a great one, check out Mukr.

    From the first time you've asked about links, you've taken SEO too narrowly. Can be done that way, it's true. But it's more beneficial to think of it as a marketing sub-area. To make establishing the site you're working on as the site people go to when they have a problem in that niche...

    Try to get links from the sites run by local celebrities (the HVAC guy/company everyone in your town knows, the top real estate agent in your town, the top real estate attorney, the top home inspector.

    Or build your own satellite sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Murkr
    Thank you DABK, I will be reaching out to local businesses in the home improvement niche very soon.

    The thing is there is no set path for 1st page ranking. It's nothing like anything else i've tried learning before. So paul please stop flaming people trying to learn, that's why we are here.

    There are so many strategies and when i think i found one that works i get told its useless and should be avoided, and even ridiculed. I spend at least 2-3 hours a day trying to learn about new strategies but the same things just keep getting regurgitated and its frustrating.

    Some things i read i feel like its the blind teaching the blind..

    I'm trying so hard to be successful with SEO, I want to do this for a living. I feel like i have come a long way but still have a lot to learn.
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    • Profile picture of the author DABK
      Stop thinking SEO, start thinking marketing, spreading the word.

      Many strategies work. Lots of people say forum posting, article markting, blog posting, etc... are the best. And I say, nay, nay, nay. But that doesn't mean they never work. Just that it takes a lot of work, and you have to pay attention to things people don't pay attention (like that pesky rel=nofollow).

      https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...LdriT461kyM%3A is a link to images that show PR rank worth.

      Seems 5 pr n/a links are required to give you PR 0; 5 pr 0 give you pr1, 5 pr 1 give you pr 2, 5 pr2 give you pr 3.

      Or, to get PR3, you need 5x5x5x5x5 links from a brand new page (like one you get when you blog post). That means, all other things being equal, a link from a page with a pr of 5 was over 3000 times more powerful than a link from a brand new page. So, all other things being equal, which would you rather work on getting: 1 link from a pr 5 page or hundreds of pr/na links?

      It's not entirely straightforward, all other things are not equal in real life, but, still guest posting on a page that's not going to be linked to from the homepage (or some other powerful page) on a site, gets you little bang for the effort.

      Now, PR is gone, but still a link from a brand new page has so little power to pass on to your page as to be not worth pursuing, unless you know of no other way. And how can you know of no other way when this very forum has members that have suggested many other ways?

      But, what if you thought outreach, spreading the word? You get a link from a brand new page on a site visited by people who're possible clients for you? The SEO power of the link is close to 0, but if you get a sale or two, does it matter?

      Obviously, it's better to get the link from a page on such a site that has SEO power too, but if you don't, you still get the 1 or 2 sales. You win even if you lose!

      Roofers around here, gross 7k on a roof on a 1200 sq ft ranch. And they don't care if they get the sale because the buyer found them because the last 3 links had lots of SEO power or because the visitor came via a 0 SEO power link from a real estate agent's website.

      Make your guy seem to know roofing stuff, a roofint expert, and place links/their name/offer in places their prospects are visiting and you will be seen as an SEO master.

      Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

      Thank you DABK, I will be reaching out to local businesses in the home improvement niche very soon.

      The thing is there is no set path for 1st page ranking. It's nothing like anything else i've tried learning before. So paul please stop flaming people trying to learn, that's why we are here.

      There are so many strategies and when i think i found one that works i get told its useless and should be avoided, and even ridiculed. I spend at least 2-3 hours a day trying to learn about new strategies but the same things just keep getting regurgitated and its frustrating.

      Some things i read i feel like its the blind teaching the blind..

      I'm trying so hard to be successful with SEO, I want to do this for a living. I feel like i have come a long way but still have a lot to learn.
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      • Profile picture of the author danparks
        Originally Posted by DABK View Post

        It's not entirely straightforward, all other things are not equal in real life, but, still guest posting on a page that's not going to be linked to from the homepage (or some other powerful page) on a site, gets you little bang for the effort.
        Everything DABK said in that post is accurate and worth studying. But I'd say the above is the money shot quote from it all. Your link needs to be *on* a powerful page, or on a page that's *linked-to* by at least one powerful page, to have much worth.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex July
    Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

    Hey guys,

    So guest blogging is still very powerful if your guest blogging on a niche related blog, i get that.

    But, what about if its a big blog with lots of categories? you might go to this big blog and see it has categories in almost every niche, is that still a viable options to target for a guest post?

    For example, say im trying to rank a roofing company so i look for "home improvement" blogs to guest post, but, i find a big blog like huffingtonpost which has tons of different categories, but one of those categories are "home", is this still i good area to try to get a guest post?

    it's related to that category within the site, but it only makes up like 5% of the site.
    There is nothing wrong with that.
    Huge websites are good traffic sources, they are good for SEO as well.
    Why don't you try? Just try and share with us the results.
    Think of big blogs like a Facebook. Would you post your blog post on Facebook? Of course, you would.
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  • Profile picture of the author Murkr
    Okay so im trying to change my mentality to SEO, you've opened my eyes to a few different strategies and ive been sitting here thinking of ways to market our company without SEO in mind, with a link as just an added benefit. I actually have a BA in Marketing but since starting SEO I've gone ape sh*t trying to get high quality backlinks. But I'm noticing successful SEO's don't have this backlink mentality so im trying to change.

    I think I was so adamant on guest posting because of the high DA. I thought since it was a high DA it would pass rank to my site. But after our discussions im realizing its mostly about page rank.

    "URL rating is the closest metric to PR" - I have an ahrefs account.

    So in theory, it sounds like it would be better to get a link from a website with high URL rating no matter the DA?

    EG: getting a backlink from a local business page with a DA of 35 but a URL rating of 16 is better than a big blog 60DA with 10 URL rating. << im not going to avoid a local business because it has a low DA anymore.

    Question, I do remember reading an article that said a DA below 40 could be considered a spam/low quality backlink. Do you agree with that statement? Or you don't even take that into consideration when trying to connect with local businesses?

    PS: Alex July, I did do one guest post on blogher.com, I actually got a good amount of referral traffic from here, but the thing is we are not selling stuff nationwide, we are a local roofing company so that traffic is basically useless. But the metrics to my post were URL rating: 14 domain rating: 66 So I did notice a small bump in rankings. I'm thinking about creating some tumblr or weebly backlinks to the post to hopefully increase its URL rating, which in turn would pass a little more juice to our link.
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  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    Domain authority is a metric developed by somebody that's not Google... It's a guess.

    But what does domain authority have to do with the page you're getting your link from? If your page has no links, it's got no power to pass on. If it's got some links, it's got power to pass on, regardless of DA.

    If you're going to bother with guesses, you should bother with PA, though it's a metric developed by someone that's not Google too.

    And, of course, make sure no rel="nofollow" is involved.

    In another post you said you wanted to do SEO full time. Don't. Get prospects to call your clients full time. I mean, don't rely just on SEO. Business owners don't care how you get their phones to ring, they just care the phones ring.
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  • Profile picture of the author vovanfree
    Hello, normally this days guest blooging is a NO GO area. But if you must do it then its important that you do it manually. Know about that you are talking about, try to contribute to the discussion, not spam it. If your post adds value to the conversation, it will not get deleted and you will get some response. If I´m you - I would take all this time and write better post for my own blog or website, that is a better way in the long run
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  • Profile picture of the author KevinJohnson1
    Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

    Hey guys,

    So guest blogging is still very powerful if your guest blogging on a niche related blog, i get that.

    But, what about if its a big blog with lots of categories? you might go to this big blog and see it has categories in almost every niche, is that still a viable options to target for a guest post?

    For example, say im trying to rank a roofing company so i look for "home improvement" blogs to guest post, but, i find a big blog like huffingtonpost which has tons of different categories, but one of those categories are "home", is this still i good area to try to get a guest post?

    it's related to that category within the site, but it only makes up like 5% of the site.
    @Murkr, Guest Blogging is very powerful SEO activity for getting back quality traffic to your website or blog.

    It's helpful to positioning yourself as an authority and well known name in the industry and building backlinks to your website.
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    • Profile picture of the author Murkr
      Originally Posted by KevinJohnson1 View Post

      @Murkr, Guest Blogging is very powerful SEO activity for getting back quality traffic to your website or blog.

      It's helpful to positioning yourself as an authority and well known name in the industry and building backlinks to your website.
      Let me guess, you wrote that article?
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      • Profile picture of the author DABK
        Yes, he did.

        And he misses the point.

        You want to be a great guest blogger, write good content is #1. Good content is content that is not full of rehashed generalities but specific to one of the problems/issues the site you're going to post it on is about.

        So, if you were to guest blog on a mortgage guy's site, for instance, don't go into: 5 ways to get a great mortgage, then talk about shop around, check your credit, etc.

        Go into how to shop around, what to do once you checked your credit (what's the difference between 579 and 580, 619 and 620 scores, for instance).

        619, these days, gets you specialty programs, 620 gets you the regular FHA and Conventional loans. That means, you qualify for a lot less if you have 619 not 620 and your interest rate is going to be significantly higher.

        If you're talking window replacement, same thing: I got an offer where the writer spent half the article about what a replacement window is (ready for it? It's a window you use to replace an existing window.)

        Could have talked about how some installers don't install according to manufacturer's guidelines, thereby, invalidating the warranty. Or worse, putting nails in such a way as to release the Argon gas between the panes, thereby invalidating the warranty and breaking your replacement window so that your heating/cooling bills go up a lot. But, no, he had to spend 270 some words defining the term 'replacement window.'

        Then they wondered why I didn't like the article!


        Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

        Let me guess, you wrote that article?
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    Hi Murkr,

    From my wee bit o' guest blogging experience - OK 8 year's worth - the strategy rocks if you build relationships with influential bloggers from your niche.

    So for your example, if you wished to guest post on home improvement I'd focus on blogs specifically focused on home improvement. This ensures 100% of the audience is home improvement hungry and more than that, the home improvement blogger is well known in their niche.

    Once you make friends with these folks it'll open doors for you in that niche as you'll gain cred with an audience, and more importantly, you'll build a lasting relationship with a power blogger.

    Guest blogging is more about building relationships and has little to do with links. If you want to rock out your own blog over the long haul. It's just that many bloggers are short-sighted, focusing only on themselves, or their clicks, or their profits, and forget about the most successful and prospering folks online do things.

    You can give the Huffington Post a shot but in truth, you'd be better served guest posting on a blog with an engaged community. This is where the potential is at and where the prospering partnerships are at.

    Ryan
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    Ryan Biddulph helps you to be a successful blogger with his courses, manuals and blog at Blogging From Paradise
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