Guest Post Marketplace and Guest Post Agency

An Intensive Comparison to Guide You in Making the Right Choice.

You need not be informed that the process of gaining backlinks to your site is very time consuming and frustrating especially when you have attempted to do it by yourself. You also send dozens of outreach mail, wait weeks to get a reply and tend to have nothing to show. This is the reason why numerous web publishers and marketers are currently resorting to specialized link-building services, namely, the guest post marketplaces and the guest post agencies.

However, this is where the difference lies, these two options do not operate in a very similar way, they are not very expensive and they bring very different results. Selecting the incorrect one might result in the loss of money, low quality connections, or lack of chances to develop the domain authority.

Here we will deconstruct the major distinctions between a guest post marketplace and a guest post agency, compare and contrast advantages and disadvantages of both and assist you in choosing the strategy that actually will make sense to your SEO needs and budget.

What Is a Guest Post Marketplace?

A guest post marketplace is an online service that brings buyers (website owners, SEO services and agencies) in direct contact with publishers (owners and administrators of blogs that take on guest posts). Imagine it is an online backlink store.

You search a list of websites, narrow it down by niche, domain authority, traffic or price and place your order and the market works out the transaction. Other sites also provide services of content writing, whereas some just provide the buyer and publisher with the connection.

The way a Guest Post Marketplace is usually operated.

• You are creating an account and browsing through the websites of publishers.

• Use such metrics as Domain Rating (DR), organic traffic, niche, and price to filter sites.

• Give your target URL, anchor text and brief content (or order writing services).

• The post is reviewed and published by the publisher and you are provided with a live backlink.

Examples of former examples of popular Guest Post Marketplaces.

Examples of these popular sites are Adsy, WhitePress, Getfluence, and LinksThatRank. Individual marketplaces will have their vetting process, pricing model and publisher inventory and therefore the quality of one site can be significantly different than another.

What Is a Guest Post Agency?

A guest posting agency is an outsourced service company that takes the whole responsibility of guest posting on your behalf. You do not sit down and log in to some self-serve platform, choose websites manually and give them your requirements and budget because you have a team of outreach specialists who do the heavy lifting on your behalf.

The agencies will normally do manual outreach to identify the relevant, good quality websites within your niche. They sell the concepts, make the placements, create the content, and get the live connection all in one roof.

The normal working of a Guest Post Agency.

• The agency is provided with your niche, goals, budget and target URLs.

• The agency studies and contacts websites within the industry in question manually.

• Their authors create customized content that addresses the editorial and the SEO best practices.

• The agency does the follow-ups, edits and schedules of publication.

• A report is provided to you with live link information when the posts become live.

What should a good guest post agency be?

A good guest post firm must be open regarding the process of outreach, not use Private Blog Networks (PBNs), be an actual editorial placement, and report effectively. Some of the red flags are suspiciously low prices, assured placements without verifying and links to obviously spammy websites.

The Major Dissimilarities that Do Count in Your SEO.

1. The editorial standards and quality control are regulated by the code of ethics in this regard.

The other practical distinction between a marketplace and a guest post agency, one of the largest ones, is the way quality is handled. When adding a new site to marketplaces, they usually do some form of vetting of their publisher inventory, although the level of this differs. One type of platforms pay much attention to the traffic and DR metrics, whereas other platforms can also contain sites with overstated or falsified statistics.

An official guest posting company, on the contrary, uses outreach based on relationships. Their experts establish relationships with editors and Web owners in particular niche and this usually equals a placement on to a real authority Web site that has actual SEO credibility. It is also more personalized and the content is not always written using templates as the agencies write to a particular publication.

2. Cost and Return on Investment.

Marketplaces tend to be cheaper per link and will therefore be appealing when you have a small budget or when you are trying to gain volume within a short time. Nevertheless, the links that seem to be the cheapest do not necessarily have the highest value. A cheap positioning in low-traffic or thin sites can have a low SEO effect.

The reason behind the higher charges of guest post agencies is due to the knowledge, outreach network, and editorial connections. The price per link can be two to five times more than a market place placement, yet the anticipated rise to the SEO per placement can be even greater when quality placements are obtained on the true, niche pertinent sites.

3. Turnaround Time and Speed.

Marketplaces are the leaders in the area of speed. Most of these platforms will be able to deliver a published post within one to two weeks, other times less. This is why they are the best when one has to create links fast around a new page or respond to a change of the competitive environment.

The agencies need increased lead time. The turnarounds of three to six weeks are the norm with manual outreach, editorial negotiations, content changes, and publication schedules. In case speed is an important consideration, then a marketplace would probably be more appropriate in the short term.

4. Transparency and Reporting

When you utilize a market place, you have full knowledge of your destination links as you select the sites. Such degree of transparency is priceless both to your own compliance with your link-building standards and in reporting to the clients.

Agencies are very diverse in regards to transparency. The most useful ones have reports that are well detailed, containing site metrics, live URLs, as well as performance data. Other ones do not provide much transparency. Sample reports and references should always be requested before he/she hires a guest post agency.

When Should a Guest post marketplace be used?

The most suitable situation when it comes to a guest post marketplace is in the following scenarios:

• You are an SEO expert or company and you are dealing with several clients who require regular link-building quantities.

• You already have writers on the inside and just require access and placement by the publishers.

• Your budget is very slim and you require an inexpensive means of linking diversification.

• You desire to have complete control of the websites where your brand would be displayed.

• You are experimenting with link-building campaigns and need to have fast information on the effectiveness of such campaigns.

The marketplaces are especially effective with agencies already having a system, but only require the scalable access to publisher inventory without the expense of conducting outreach campaigns internally.

Under what situations should you contract an agency to do your guest post?

A guest post agency service that is managed is the wiser option when:

• You lack the time and the skills to handle outreach and content creation in-house.

• You are in a niche that is competitive or highly regulated with editorial standards being high.

• You would like to establish authentic editorial relationships instead of buying and selling placements.

• You are concentrating on the expansion of the domain authority in the long term instead of the quick wins.

• You are bigger budgeted and quality is more important than volume to you.

Most companies discover that they can have an agency initially to get a strong base of high-authority links and then add marketplace placements to achieve a lot of volume has the most beneficial total effect.

Potential Risk in either Alternative.

Threats of Guest Post Marketplaces.

• Other platforms consist of sites that have been bought or overvalued traffic statistics.

• The quality of the publishers can deteriorate in the long term without the process of vetting.

• Some links of the over-saturated link farms that are disguised as genuine blogs can activate algorithmic fines.

• Otherwise it is easy to get links that belong to the wrong niches.
  

Threats of Guest Post Agencies.

• Increased initial investment with no fixed returns.

• There are those agencies that employ PBNs or low quality sites at premium prices.

• Lack of control in placing of your links.

• There are marked differences in the rules and procedures of communication and reporting across the providers.

The best thing to do in either of the two situations is to conduct your due diligence. Placing check samples, measuring review sites individually with the help of such tools as Ahrefs or Semrush, and not investing in those who guarantee the effect or unrealistic turnaround time.