My most awesome SEO copywriters came across an interesting resource the other day and, although I’m sure the concept isn’t new, so far I’ve been rather impressed with the opportunities My Blog Guest has provided for link building.

Most people know I’m a fan of guest posts as a high-quality way of acquiring links; it provides quality, fresh links and equally importantly, it forces the client’s link profile to stay relevant*

Essentially you provide an on-topic website with free, high quality content for their readership in return for an optimised link from within the article. Everyone is happy, and here’s the bonus: you’ll probably get some old-school on-topic visitors via the link too.

Anyway, back to My Blog Guest: It’s run by the ridiculously talented Ann Smarty and some helpful moderators, and it’s essentially a forum for blog owners and content writers to find mutually beneficial partnerships.

My experience so far
I’ve partnered up with a few websites in the travel industry recently and the results have been spot on: no tampering with my links, no no-follows, no dodgy iframe redirects or other BS. It’s early days yet, but I’m sure anyone taking content for nothing will soon get reported and banned.

Finding the right writer or website
I don’t have much time to check forums, but My Blog Guest makes scanning for suitable site owners very easy by allowing everyone to essentially tag their profiles; mine for example revolves around the travel industry whilst my copywriters have a much broader scope of clients they write and distribute for.

Isn’t it full of spammers?
Not yet: Ann and the mods do a great job of sorting the wheat from the chaff which for me is probably the reason I continue to use the service. I have no wish to spend hours researching and writing an awesome article for it to only end up on an Adsense farm.

Why build relationships with website owners in your topic?
Having working relationships with those influential bloggers who write about your niche comes in real handy when you’ve got a press release and want to get it picked up (bypassing those expensive online wires).

It can also give you better rates on advertising on their site or newsletter (*cough* sponsorship), or even just staying front-of-mind for when they feel like linking out – you do remember naturally obtained links don’t you ;)

* Now I know some people don’t feel link source relevance is an important factor in Google’s algorithm and chase any old high PR source, but I don’t. I feel the the logic is just too compelling to completely disregard relevance in link building.