Guest posting is the ‘in’ thing right now. Business owners, digital agencies, and even website owners are all looking to gain high-quality guest posts on authority websites. The problem with this, however, is that many high authority websites tend to charge a lot of money to publish content on their site.
While it’s not wrong to charge people to publish on a website, I mean it does take time to upload and modify the content for SEO purposes, it’s more about the question many people are asking:
“How much should I pay for a guest post?”
This is where the lines start to get fuzzy. But worry not this guide will give you a rundown of what you should be paying, well around that, based on our own internal study and years of operation in this industry. So where should we start?
Metrics.
The number one reason people have a high publishing fee is because of the metrics their websites have and how important those metrics are to them. So let’s break it down into the top metrics most people look at when paying for a guest post. They’re broken down into four different types:
DA or Domain Authority
Domain authority is the authority or power a website has in it’s ranking. This metric was developed by MOZ and rises and falls based on different SEO factors. The overall number can help a person determine how well the website will rank in Google or other search pages.
Domain Authority is calculated out of a score of 100. Obviously the closer to 100 the score is the better a site will perform in search engines. This score is affected by 40 different signals which can include but isn’t limited to, trust scores, spam scores, age of the site, link data, traffic numbers and size of the site.
So how does domain authority relate when you’re using this metric when guest posting? When guest posting using the DA metric, it’s important to find sites which have a higher DA rating than 20. If you’re looking to gradually build your ranking slowly through a number of guest posts you can start within the DA 20-30+ range.
If you’re looking to really help push your ranking efforts in a short amount of time, then work on DA 40-50+. However, this normally comes with a decent price tag attached. So how much should you pay for a DA range?
Let’s break it down below based on DA against the amount of Traffic.
This is based on what publishers have been charging and what clients have been paying across the years.
DA | Traffic | Publishing Fee |
20+ | 1,000 – 3999 | $30 – $60 |
20+ | 4,000 – 9,999 | $40-1000 |
30+ | 10,000-99,999 | $80-$150 |
40+ | 100,000 – 499,999 | $130-$300 |
40+ | 500,000 | $800 – $15,000 |
DR or Domain Rating
Domain Rating is a website metric which was developed by Ahrefs. This metric is designed to show the strength of a website’s total backlink profile. This is determined by quality and size. The Domain Rating is measured on a scale-out of 100. The higher the number the better.
So how is domain rating calculated? While complex, it’s easy to understand in simple terms. Here’s how it’s done:
So what does this mean?
With this in mind, it’s also important to understand you also need to watch out for spammy sites with average DR rating, but you can’t use DR rating alone. Instead, you need to also look at the referring domains.
For example, if you have a site that’s DR 8 and it has a lot of referring domains, it’s most likely spammed and should be avoided. On the contrary, though if you have a site that’s DR 8 and it has a low number of referring domains it’s most likely a newer site which hasn’t required enough backlinks to become popular enough for a higher DR ranking.
So how does this affect how much you pay?
Let’s take a look in regards to DR and Traffic combined.
DR | Traffic | Publishing Fee |
20+ | 1,000 – 3999 | $30 – $60 |
20+ | 4,000 – 9,999 | $40-1000 |
30+ | 10,000-99,999 | $80-$150 |
40+ | 100,000 – 499,999 | $130-$300 |
40+ | 500,000 | $800 – $15,000 |
So what about Trust Flow?
TF or Trust Flow
Trust Flow is a metric which was developed by Majestic to measure how trustworthy a website or page is based on those that link to it. It works by measuring the quality of backlinks pointing to a website. Trust flow is measured out of a scale of 100. The higher the Trust Flow score the better.
Generally, Trust Flow works in combination with Citation Flow. Citation Flow is almost always higher than Trust Flow. If Trust Flow is high, this means the site has good quality backlinks pointing to it. When Citation Flow and Trust Flow are even or close, it means the site has a good range of high-quality content on it with clean backlinks.
When working off Trust Flow metrics for your guest posts, you can start with TF 10+ and work upwards. If you can gain websites with TF 25+ it can really help with your rankings in regards to the trust of a website. So how much should you pay for Trust Flow?
Here’s a guide based on Trust Flow and traffic numbers
TF | Traffic | Publishing Fee |
0-10+ | Under 500 | $0-20 |
10+ | Under 1000 | $10-50 |
15+ | 1,000 – 3999 | $30 – $60 |
15+ | 4,000 – 9,999 | $40-1000 |
20+ | 10,000-99,999 | $80-$150 |
20+ | 100,000 – 499,999 | $130-$300 |
25+ | 500,000 | $800 – $15,000 |
Traffic
Traffic, the ultimate metric that many people work on. When combined with other metrics, a website’s organic traffic number is one that shouldn’t be ignored. Why? Because it shows how popular a website is and how many people visit it.
Website traffic is a good metric to work on when looking to find sites to guest post on because of the following reasons:
When looking to guest post on high traffic websites, it’s important to remember that real people are viewing that site so you need to make sure content is perfect. So how much should you pay for high traffic websites?
Traffic | Publishing Fee |
Under 500 | $0-20 |
Under 1000 | $10-50 |
1,000 – 3999 | $30 – $60 |
4,000 – 9,999 | $40-1000 |
10,000-99,999 | $80-$150 |
100,000 – 499,999 | $130-$300 |
500,000 | $800 – $15,000 |
Conclusion
So how much should you pay for a guest post? Overall guest posts can be affordable if you find and negotiate with the right site on the price. As you can see above, this is a range we work with here at NO BS when clients use us for guest posting service. Sometimes you’ll find some website owners won’t budge on price, in cases like this, you’ll then need to work out whether it’s worth the money your spending based on the metrics you’re after.
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