I’ve been following Adam‘s advice for a few months in guest posting and I gotta say the result is kind of underwhelming. Sent to about 220 sites, gets a deal from 23 of them (about 10%) but 2 of them are still hanging in the air (the site owners disappear) and I eliminate 1 of them after waiting for 3 months.
Current Result
From these guest posting/link inserting endeavors, the result are (KD in Ahrefs):
- Keyword #1 (9 KD): 6 links – nonexistent
- Keyword #2 (22 KD): 4 links – nonexistent
- Keyword #3 (78 KD): 6 links – nonexistent. I didn’t plan to build link to this but it ranked on page one a few days after publishing. After it gets links, it disappear completely from SERP.
- Keyword #4 (KD 75): 1 link – nonexistent. Get slight variation in page 5
- Keyword #5 (KD 7): 1 link -page 4
I poured most of links on keyword #1 because I thought it’ll be easy with 9 KD. Ranked for various less volume variation on page 3-5 but the keyword itself only sometimes showed on page 4-5 then disappear. Seeing the result of 9 KD, I have doubt it will fare better on higher difficulties KD.
The process of outreaching itself is really time consuming. I went to sites that offer guest post so I couldn’t (or at least I thought I can’t) send email asking if I can do a guest post. Instead I had to read detailed guide on acceptable guest post, cross-checking it with what my writer have, check again if they already have it, then come up with a pitch. A site would consume 15-30 mins of reading and matching, 90% of them wasted. Wasted time means I always behind in placing new content, barely able to do once a week.
Thoughts about Content+ Link-
Found people who keep pumping contents with no link to gain traffic and I intrigued to try. Adam said that you can get traffic without link but it won’t be money keyword (because those will be competitive) and thus won’t make money, but Shawn said he does make money from that no-link traffic. For comparison he published 200 articles in 22 months (9 per months) meanwhile I published about 70 in 13 months (about 5 per months).
Edit: I ran through all my keywords and a lot of earlier keywords when I was just started were not researched thoroughly. I eliminated those articles, also articles that were posted because they were rejected guest posts and articles I made just to create first-hand-experience articles. Filter it again to KD under 30 and I get 25 articles only.
Nichesitelady also said something interesting: when your site gets 10 visitors it’s suspicious that 5 of them decide to link to you. It does sounds logical. Adam said he started building links after just 5 post so I’m not sure what to take of it.
New Plan
So for the following months I’ll try pumping 2 articles per week and see where it goes. Currently I do ranked in page 1-2 for a no money keyword, it barely give me any traffic.
Adam said about ‘blanketing’ the niche with more articles, I didn’t paid it too much mind back then, only accompany 1 ‘best X’ article with 1-2 around the topic. But Mike gave more insight about this: his method is firing 10+ related articles with goal to make google see the site as authority in this certain topic (topical authority). Once G does that, it will start placing related posts higher.
I crosscheck this with Adam’s site, he has a ‘best podcast hosting’ that rank well in G so I check how many podcast articles he made. I found 14 including the best X article, so apparently I did underestimate the ‘blanketing your niche’/’topical authority’ concept.
Mike said:
“If you just blindly write 40 posts to start that have nothing to do with one-another other than tennis, you’re unlikely to discover which topics to focus on. Google might not see you as an “authority” on any of them, and you’ll have trouble ranking.”
That does seem make sense. I’ve been firing articles within my niche but they rarely related to one another, mainly because the focus is low KD.
Future Guest Posting
I don’t think I can be completely off from link building, at one point I’ll have to do it again. When the time comes I’d like to try outreach first before wasting research time to pitch someone that may/may not even check my email.
So that means asking if I can do a guest post in your site despite you already announced in a specific page that you accept guest post and expect a pitch. The outreach process will be much faster but let’s see about the acceptance percentage.