Guest posting for backlinks

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, or if it's OK to talk about, so mods - please move or delete if necessary!

We all want backlinks to our web pages, whether they are on Wizzley, Squidoo, our own sites, or elsewhere. People sometimes use blog commenting or guestbook commenting to get links, but it's hard to do without it seeming - and often being - spammy.

Writing a guest post at the invitation of the site owner is a totally different kettle of fish. You provide value by writing a good, relevant article, and in return you get high quality links to your own pages. 

The difficult part  is often making a connection with the site owner. And yet, here we all are, a group of trusted writers, many of us with our own self hosted sites. How about we give each other the opportunity to guest post?

I'd be happy to take guest posts in the topic areas of remodeling, kitchen and bath design, organic gardening, decluttering and organizing, and home business ideas. If you're interested, contact me with your area/topic of interest and I'll show you the sites I have available. Except for the home business area, they are mostly PR1 - PR3 with traffic between 20 and 500 visitors/day. You'd get several do-follow links with your choice of anchor text.

This. Is. A. Brilliant. Idea. Kevin.

It's a win/win situation, if there ever was one.

I could write something in the "home business" category. Not right now, because I'm really busy. But I will keep it in mind.

I do have a fairly new real estate website: http://shadyhollowaustin.net (PR1, not a lot of traffic) Maybe we could do a trade.

We'll stay in touch, ok?

I am looking for writers over 60 to do one guest post on my blog

Life After 60

Brilliant idea Kevin

I am looking for Guest Posters for my "Going Green Ideas" Blog - it has a PR of 2 and I really would like to get it going properly, as with all the other stuff I am invollved in, it is sadly neglected at the moment.

Maybe you could do one on Organic Gardening for me?

I would be interested in taking Guest Posts from anyone who writes on Green Themes

Glad to see people are interested :)  I think I may post this on the Squidoo forum as well, to catch a few more people.

I am mostly interested in getting articles at the moment rather than writing them, but AJ, I'll see what I can do. How long do you want it?

I love this idea. I have a travel website on independent travel in Europe. At the moment it is heavily focussed on western Europe, but I'd be interested in someone writing a guest post on a travel destination in eastern Europe. My idea is to build a page and feature a new eastern european destination either every month or two months.

I am also looking for an opportunity, or opportunities, to write guest posts possibly on western european destinations or Canadian destinations.

Heidi

I'm happy to write anything to do with gaming and also the majority of technology, but I'm afraid I don't have any blogs or such that would be able to accommodate guest posts :(

Guest posting sounds like such a great idea, but it can be tricky to get it to actually work well.

I've done guest posts.  I've also received a lot of requests for guest posts on various sites, and never accepted one.

I will say, it's very easy to find blogs where you can write a guest post, but you get zero or next-to-zero traffic.  My experience with link building suggests that links that send no traffic are probably not worth very much, especially if they're on a self-published blog.  A low-traffic link from NyTimes.com, maybe that's valuable.  But most people won't write a guest post there.

My advice, if you want to offer guest posts, is to have a relevant writing sample on hand.  Most of the requests I ignore outright, and the ones that I consider, I ask for a writing sample.  Usually people don't reply, and then that's a missed opportunity.  I am selective of what I publish on my sites because I realize that it affects my reputation.

I think it is also helpful if you have published policies about guest posts--saying that you accept them and outlining rights and responsibilities.  For example, if you say that authors retain the copyright to their content, this can make it more attractive.  I also think it is important to specify that you reserve the right to take a post down for any reason, without notice, but that if you take it down, the author is free to republish.  This respects everyone's rights and avoids the problem of people getting mad if you take their work and then remove it.