EHow instead of guest blogging

[SkinLaboratory]

During a discussion about guest blogging for SEO, it was suggested that eHow be used instead, as it would be easier to get things rolling.  Guest blogging was seen as a somewhat difficult endeavor, where finding agreeable blogs could be difficult.  Any thoughts on this?

Also, what about rerolling failed press releases as guest blogging articles?  Sometimes there's a lot of effort put into making a quality press release, and it just doesn't fly.  Could these be used as sources for blogging material?

I appreciate any comments.

[danatanseo]

I think posting at eHow is entirely different, and probably not nearly as effective as quality guest blogging. Concerning the press releases, I have a question. You said "failed press releases." What constitutes a failed press release? Was it submitted and then rejected by a press release service? If so, did the service give you any editorial feedback as to why it was rejected? If it was considered "failed" because it didn't produce traffic, if it's still out there, then reposting somewhere else isn't going to accomplish anything because Google won't view it as original content.

I do have a suggestion regarding guest blogging. Have you thought of trying to work it the opposite way? So, instead of going out and pounding the pavement for guest blogging opportunities, have you considered asking a blogger who follows you or who you know to write a guest post for you? Sometimes the best way to start getting opportunities is to perhaps give someone else an opportunity. Just a thought. If you get someone with a fairly good following, think of all the attention your blog will get as their followers tune in?

The only way I would pursue eHow would be if you had something totally unique to offer there that no one else had already covered. That's hard.

Hope this is helpful. It's just my two cents and what I would do myself.

Dana

[SkinLaboratory]

By failed press release I mean this...  Sometimes you put in all the effort, write for people, not SEO, do your best to make it interesting, relevant, and newsworthy, and it just doesn't get picked up.  If the release isn't picked up, there's not really any link building and the SEO benefits are severely limited.

Thus the idea to re-roll such content into guest blogging material.  Naturally you wouldn't try to copy/paste into a blog.  In my experience there's a decent amount of time that went into the content creation for that press release, which hasn't left much of a footprint in Google ("failed PR").  Since you did the work on the content creation, why not try to keep leveraging it in other mediums until you get some return on the time you spent creating the content.

I like your idea about reversing the guest blogging order, but how do you do that if you don't have a blog?