Guest Posting VS Niche Edits: Which Strategy Should You Choose?

While these two link building strategies, guest posting and niche edits (guest posting VS niche edits), are truly effective in acquiring contextual links that can push their target site’s rankings, they have their own distinct capabilities. They would demand each unique resource and timing for execution.

Let’s first go through the basics – a quick definition for each link building term.

Understanding the Basics

Guest posting is when you write a new article for another website. That article includes an editorial link back to your site. You control the topic, language, brand tone, and placement of the link, aligning well with the guest posting guidelines of the hosting publication or blog. 

Conversely, niche edits is when you add a link to an existing article on another website. The article already exists and has a history of being indexed by search engines (must-be). You do not need to write new content; in some cases, you can use a few parts of the article or add new paragraphs where you’ll insert your link to a relevant page. 

Detailed Breakdown of Backlink Strategies

Let’s get a deeper look at the core differences between guest posting and niche edits ─ and how you can use both these powerful link building strategies to develop a more holistic link building campaign for your brand. 

1. Content Type

With guest posting, you create a brand new article which allows you to introduce new concepts, data, or stories that are relevant to the site’s target audience (think of bringing out new information that hasn’t been brought to the table – information gain). The link here sits within a fresh context. 

With niche edits, you use an existing article; you simply look for a relevant spot in the text to place your backlink. 

2. Implementation Speed

Guest posting is much harder to scale than niche edits. The process of finding the prospect guest post website, researching a topic, writing a draft, and waiting for the editor to review and publish it often takes weeks, even months, for some A-list publications.

Niche edits are faster to acquire a link through, given that the article is already live ─ the editor or blogger spends only a few minutes to a few days to edit a portion of the article. 

3. Creative Control

With guest posting, you have more control over your creative link building – the overall brand tone, headline, paragraphs, and overall content structure ─  as long as it matches the approved guest posting guidelines. 

With niche edits, you have low control ─ so you cannot simply change the entire narrative of the content or any insight from the author. Your link must fit naturally into the existing article to be contextual. 

4. Authority Building

The beauty of guest posting is that you can build topical authority in the subject areas where you want to be known. And as you’re consistently contributing fresh content to the industry, you increase your thought leadership. 

Niche edits, on the other hand, simply borrow the existing page authority, and you get associated with the brand you’re getting a link from (similar to guest posting) ─ but you can’t build an influencer brand with your own brand narrative, as you don’t have full creative control.

5. Investment and Cost

Guest posting costs are usually higher, as you have to pay for the content, whether doing it in-house or outsourcing to a freelance writer, plus any placement fee if the publication charges you for the guest post. 

Niche edits are usually lower in cost as you only pay for the actual link placement ─ no new content creation costs ─  making it a more budget-friendly approach to getting backlinks from high-authority sites. 

Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Website

Your choice between guest posting and niche edits depends entirely on your link volume and current team capacity. You can use the following indicators to determine which method best aligns with your current strategy. 

When to Select Niche Edits

If you’re just getting started with your link building strategy, need to scale quickly as an enterprise link building team, or want to prioritize commercial links, niche edits is the better option.

Most publications want to see your existing creative work before they let you write for them. If they see your blog section is empty, editors cannot assess the quality of your content. Niche edits allow you to build contextual, high-quality links without a large content portfolio.

Niche edits are also well-suited to high-volume link building campaigns, where you can secure 50 or more contextual links per month, as the process is faster.

And if you’re aiming for more product pages and commercial backlinks, you can simply insert links into aged content where users are already looking for solutions. For enterprise SEO teams looking to justify buy-ins for link building, niche edit can help you guarantee both the volume and quality of links. 

When to Select Guest Posting

If you want to build more influencer brand authority in your space, consider guest posting as your best option.

When pursuing guest posting, you need a content library on your website to demonstrate the quality of your work, as editors typically first review your site to verify your expertise before approving your guest posting pitch. 

Truth to be told, guest posting is difficult to scale. Most link building teams can only manage only 10 to 15 guest posts per month, given the quality of creative work they must produce. This is also assuming there are pre-approved topics, not going through back and effort between content writers and publishers to secure approval for writing. And also having a solid in-house writers are industry expers to meet the standards of these top publications. 

With guest posting, you are only limited to blog posts or informational content for links ─  as many editors are wary about linking to product pages ─ they mostly reject guest posts if any of the links are commercial pages. 

Final Thoughts

If you still can’t decide which link building strategy fits you, Link Building Services IO by SharpRocket has years of experience customizing the link building services that works for your brand. Contact us to learn how we can support your projects today.