We have established the importance of link building and even published an in depth case study on a golf school’s success through link building efforts. If you have worked through much of our previous content and initiated some research and discovery on your own, you have probably come across articles referencing sponsored content. With a lot of information out there regarding backlinking, we wanted to make sure our clients and prospects know our process as well as its effectiveness. A well run Denver link building campaign can have you competing for first page rankings with the biggest movers in your industry and sponsored content is an integral part of that success. We will discuss guest posts from a top level perspective, developing and implementing an outreach campaign, and the process which separates sponsored content from the rest, publication fees.
Guest Posts & Sponsored Content
Guest posts come in many forms. If your team includes writers you may be reaching out for the potential to write a piece to be published on their website. It may be a hungry blogger who likes your content and wants to write a similar piece supporting the content (and linking to) your article. These two options may require no type of fee at all. As the quality of the domain improves in the eyes of Google, so does the impact of the links from the domain. This is why major publications like Huffington Post and The New York Times require hefty publication fees. While these fees can reach into the thousands of dollars for these top tier domains, it is common to see costs ranging from $25 to $200 for mid level domains. These links can have a profound impact on a small business looking to generate backlinks in a smaller market. While you can set up accounts on various blog posting services, the link value from these types of blogs diminishes over time. New links from industry relevant domains are the types of links that are going to provide the most value and improve your rankings more quickly. Now the question arises, how do I get in touch with these folks to request publication and get them to bite on my offer?
Outreach Campaigns
Advanced outreach campaigns can drastically improve your potential to receive backlinks. Vetting the links you may be able to get and those link’s value before reaching out keeps you from wasting your time with links that will not provide value for your domain. Here at Firestarter we start with the links the competition is listed on and audit those links for opportunity. These are the lowest hanging fruit since we know a similar business has been listed on the site. We then pull lists of websites using creative Google search queries and tools. Once you have all of these ducks in a row, outreach can commence. The way you would like to reach out and offer content depends on your services and goals. Maybe you offer a product to the 3rd party for review, or implement a link on your website to theirs before reaching out so they see the direct value. As discussed, content is king and offering to produce a piece of content for a reputable source can at least get you in the door. Then the discussion involving publication costs comes into play. These will vary wildly depending on the value the domain has built up with Google as well as the process they have to go through for publication. The more hands that touch the piece, the more the piece will cost.
As you can see, sponsored content is not much different from other content including a backlink from another website to yours. The difference falls to publication fees associated with the link itself. Guests posts as a whole are the type of links to have the most direct impact on your trust with Google. Having an understanding of what you may run into as you look to build links and improve your rankings will help you navigate the murky waters of link building in today’s SEO landscape. If you would like a custom link building plan with sponsored content executed, give us a call today.
