For those who are reading this, you probably already know of SEMrush since it’s one of the most popular SEO/SEM tools in the industry along with Ahrefs.
SEMrush just started sending out newsletters to subscribers to notify them of their new guest posting service. It appears that they want to expand out from their existing SaaS platform.
While it’s not a bad idea to expand business offerings, the SEO industry remains skeptical of the spin-off service:
SEMrush Guest Post Service Price
The SEMRush guest post service starts at $275 per placement.
What do you get for $275?
2,000 words and a link on a site with ~1,000+ monthly traffic.
Users? Pageviews? Unique? Who knows.
The most expensive offer stands at $575 for 2,000 words and a link on a site with ~25,000+ monthly traffic.
Is It Worth It?
For those with a budget may wonder if this is all worth it. To answer that question we have to look at more than word count and traffic estimates.
They offer 100% unique content. Judging by their words, their team conducts research to find out what link placements are relevant to your site, but I personally see a big question mark here. More on this in a bit.
Another benefit is a fast turnaround time. Results in less than 16 days fast.
To put this timeline into perspective, most link acquisition services with pre-arranged relationships offer a 14 to 30-day turnaround time.
If they do this at scale without pre-arranged relationships, and real outreach with results in less than 16 days then that’s quite impressive.
Something Different?
Though SEOs tend to use software-based metrics such as DR (Domain Rating – Ahrefs) or DA (Domain Authority – Moz) or even TF (Trust Flow – Majestic), SEMrush decided to use monthly traffic as a metric instead.
It’s a different offer from the standard link building model, for sure.
One key thing to note is how the prices scale.
The most expensive plan scales to $575 for 2,000 words on a site that receives ~25,000+ “traffic.”
To remind you, it costs $500 for 500 words on the same site.
Meaning, you end up paying $75 for 1500 additional words, or $0.05 per word.
To be honest, I’m not sure if you can get quality content when you’re paying only $25 for every 500 words.
And obviously this is not the price SEMrush pays for the content to be created. So imagine how little they’re paying for these guest post articles.
If you can pitch a $25 content and the sites accept this, it means one of the following:
- You’re producing such a great piece of content at $25 that the site you’re pitching to sees the benefit of your guest post.
- The moderation levels of the sites you’re pitching to are extremely low.
All in all, I think the prices probably reflect more on the SEMrush brand rather than the actual work being done or value received. I haven’t personally checked what are the actual links but one SEO on Twitter did:
Most experienced SEOs knew there was certain trouble brewing up.
But SEO Twitter seemed to really blow up when John Mu replied to SEMrush’s tweet on how they perform this service:
John directly went out guns blazing and calls SEMrush out.
That’s an official notice from one Google employee. It’s now official: you’re executing an extra risky move if you want to order SEMrush’s guest post service.
Update: SEMrush has now taken down the service page altogether and is probably reworking the strategy released a public statement.
My Thoughts on Guest Post Services
In terms of using guest posts in general: I personally see the benefits of doing guest post campaigns. I much prefer finding pages that are already ranking on page 1 of Google and get my clients linked on those pages, OR, pitching to journalists directly for the majority of the link building campaigns.
Obviously I can’t do this at scale, so I only offer these services to brands that really make sense. Feel free to ask me about my services if you think there’s a fit.
Great write up. Crazy. I feel like this is something that is going to go away 🙂