Writing for links – Article Submissions, Press Releases & Guest Articles

Up ‘till now I haven’t written about a single way to build an actual link.  Mostly I’ve just been preaching about how to build or improve your own website’s content in order to be more attractive to the linkerati and passively build links.  How arrogant of me…

Well, remember link building step one: hire a writer?  If you took my advice, this should keep them busy for a while…

The Basics:

Writing content for other websites in exchange for a link back isn’t a new concept by any means.  It is, however a bit misunderstood, and like all link building tactics: there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it properly.

The three most common methods are: article submissions, press releases & writing guest articles or blog posts.

Article Submission Sites

The Bad: There are literally hundreds of websites that will publish uniquely written articles, and (usually) you’ll get a link back.  On the surface, this sounds like a great way to get hundreds of unique one way backlinks, and it is.  The problem is: because it’s a strategy that’s so over-done, many of these sites no longer pass page rank.  In other words: your link won’t be counted by Google in their ranking algorithm.

The other problem with this method is that many of these sites have become so large, even if your link does pass link juice, it’s not much.  Before long, your article gets buried in the site’s archives as newer articles take its place.  The article itself will get little power from internal links, and thus, it doesn’t pass much to you.

The Good: Are article submission sites worth it as an SEO link building method?  Most of them are not.  Does that mean you shouldn’t do it?  Not quite.  The nice thing about this strategy is: while a website like ezinearticles.com might not pass page rank, it’s still a powerful enough site that your article may actually rank well in search results, giving you potential traffic and exposure.

Doing it better: Some SEO’s use the same list of article submission sites to build links for their clients.  More than likely, these are the sites that have been identified by Google as such and no longer pass link juice.  If you want this method to be a source of links for your SEO campaign, you’ll need to do a little research first.

A big part of doing any kind of link building is list building.  Take the time to find niche authority websites that are relevant to your site or are in parallel industries and that publish articles.  If this is starting to sound more like “guest writing” you’re on the right track.  The difference, here, is you should be looking for websites that your writer can become a regular author of, not just a guest.

Many times, you won’t get links from the articles themselves.  Instead, the articles will link to an “author bio” page that contains your backlinks.  So the more you write the more juice your bio page passes.  Also, beyond the links, this method is a great way to expand your brand and authority as an industry leader.

Press Releases

The Bad: Much like article submission sites, large press release websites (like prweb.com) probably don’t pass page rank.  In fact, the only difference between this strategy and article submissions is that press release sites are restricted to newsworthy content and you probably won’t find many niche PR sites in your industry.

The Good: While this isn’t a great link building strategy in and of itself, online press releases can get you a lot of attention if the news is worth repeating.  It’s a great way to help promote a viral link bait campaign and just generally gain exposure on the web.  Both of which can help you attract links naturally.

Doing it better: Another benefit of this strategy is press release sites get picked up by google news (PR Newswire, Business Wire, Market Wire, and PR Web to name a few).  With google news results popping up in the SERPS, it’s another opportunity for your site to be listed in Google for relevant keywords.

Guest Articles & Guest Blog Posts

The Bad: This isn’t generally a strategy you can just do.  You really need to develop some industry clout or authority as a writer first.  Asking a website owner if you can write a guest post for their blog/site will prove difficult if you don’t have quality samples of your writing to show them.  If it isn’t difficult, the site you’re writing for probably isn’t a place you’d want to get a link from anyways.

The Good: Of the three methods, this can be the best use of your writers’ time in terms of the SEO value of the links.  If you get to plug your company site within the content of the article, sometimes you can even get juicy link text and deep links to target landing pages. (Link GOLD)

Doing it better: Don’t just save the best content for your own website.  Depending on the site you’re writing for, sometimes you can do things with your writing that you can’t do on your company site.  So don’t just take this as an opportunity to plug your services or products.  Write something link-baity…social media worthy…perhaps potentially viral (get permission first before going with the controversial hook).  Casually drop your link(s) in the article, then promote the hell out of it.

A large part of the power a link passes is the value of the page it’s on.  The more sites that link to your guest articles, the more power [the links they contain] will pass on to you.  So while writing link-bait for your own site can attract lots of untargeted backlinks, writing link worthy content for guest articles will draw power to a page on an external site that links to your targeted page(s) with targeted anchortext.  And because anchortext from internal links isn’t as algorithmically weighted as it is for external links, this can actually be a more effective way to do link bait in terms of its SEO value.

If SEO is important to you and you haven’t hired a writer yet, start looking for one.  If you have one and you haven’t utilized their writing skills to promote your website, start today.  Don’t leave opportunities for links or valuable internet exposure on the table.  Because if you do, your competitors might not.