Better to place linked-back article or post article and seek multiple links?

[Lysarden]

Which option is better for SEO purposes:

1. Author article for trade journal in return for link back to my home page.

2. Post article on my site and solicit links from multiple sites.

Assume links all have moderate authority.

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

This has always been a bit of a point of contention for me too.  When you pitch an article then you can usually be pretty sure that it's going to attract one link - from the target.  You can get in touch with someone and basically make a little agreement that you are going to write for them personally and that the piece is going to be specifically angled and targeted to make their brand or product look good.  So the chances of getting it published in this way is high but you usually need a good relationship or at least an existing relationship with the site owner.

Then there's 'link-worthy' content that you put on your site and market it and hope it attracts links.  This is much more speculative in my opinion because it might not be good enough to attract links and attracting links will inevitably take time as it rises to a prominent position in the SERP.

However, you forget that using the first way has the added benefit that the person you write for will want to market the content you wrote just for them to their own partners, suppliers customers and friends etc. So they will 'treat it as link-worthy content' and so long as the link is a 'naked link' so https://nakedlink.com then wherever that article gets sent you'll get a backlink from that source also.

Thew first way is the best IMO because you do all the work of writing, are guaranteed at least one good link and are guaranteed one good relationship that can be leveraged in the future.  Then the difficult job of publicising the article is effectively outsourced to whomever you wrote it for because it's then in their interests to get it published on other websites to get more backlinks for them and you.  Sometimes they will do a poor job but sometimes a flurry of links will come your way as they market the piece to other sites.

This has worked for us to great effect in the past with success stories and case studies and great pieces of content about other brands we like. Almost like ego-bait.  I prefer to also build better relationships with the publishers so I can write again for them in the future if the content does well using different topics and attracting links to different pages on my site with anchor text (but don't overdo this, you'll end up with a penalty)

Sure there is a place for creating link-worthy content on your site and certainly if you're a Moz or a big brand this is the best strategy but for a smaller brand I'd advise creating the relationship, writing something with the target in mind that's personalised and makes them look good and something they will then want to 'trade up the chain' to quote Ryan Holiday - the master media manipulator.

So for smaller blogs it's number one and then when you're confident of a stellar article that's going to rank in 1-3 position then you can go for a skyscraper piece or a piece of 'linkworthy content' but it's much MUCH harder for smaller brands to do this and have it work.  You may see no results at all.

[Lysarden]

Thanks, Ed.

I see your point, but I haven't seen a lot of viral activity when I've guest authored on good sites in the past.

So maybe I'll self-publish and try to promote links.  If I don't get any links I can always take the article down and submit it.

Any additional thoughts?