I haven't used them yet, but I am also waiting to hear what you find out!

Jeff

Here's a Support phone number for them: 800-761-1072

Here's their Support page - scroll down and email them.
https://cjcommunity.force.com/s/contactsupport

Hope this helps! Debra

Would love to know the answer too.

James,

Most of the agencies are agents to MLM companies that looking for ways to de-rank your pages. All they need is a loophole to get into your website. Care should be taken to avoid them at all costs if you don't plan to erode all your hard work.

The only trusted ones should be those you are extremely sure of. The MLM and competitors are everywhere trying to throw junk links and de-rank your pages. Most especially if you are in the MMO niche.

They are in every forum and affiliate programs, the rule of thumb is never to accept except you are 100% certain of the motive and source of the link.

Regards

John

Hi Colton,
I accept guest posts on one of my websites. I've only gotten two so far. The articles were well written and appropriate for my site, and I charged $25 each to post them on my site. Here's a nice post by Lynne here at WA - she's got more experience with this...Debra 3 Perks Of Publishing Guest Posts On Your Websites

Most of the time when it's cold outreach, the article they turn in for the sponsored post is usually low quality.

I responded twice to two such requests, one was for a guest post (so they were just looking for a link back) and one was for a sponsored post (they asked about a rate).

Both posts submitted were below my quality standard. One sounded like they used an outsourced writer whose native language was not English and the other had content that was outdated.

9 times out of 10 they're just mass emailing website owners about sponsored/guest post opportunities. Their emails normally start something like

Hello,

I was reading your website and loved the content.... blah blah.

They somehow don't know your name enough to say, "Hello Jay" and often suggest content that is a mismatch for your site although its the same general market.

I would suggest that you accept a couple of these just for the experience. Maybe you'll get lucky and find one that works but for the most part, if it's cold outreach then it's probably not going to go well.

I have no experience because I ignore such offers that come daily. Here is how I see it.

You have probably heard about very recent Google's action against link exchange, so this is something to avoid. There is a conversation with Google's Mueller who speaks explicitly that this holds even for sites that are a good match.

This is what he says:

"So… a link exchange where both sides are kind of like you link to me and therefore I will link back to you, kind of thing, that is essentially against our webmaster guidelines.

So that’s something where our algorithms would look at that and try to understand what is happening here and try to ignore those links.

And if the web spam team were to look at it they would also say this is not okay.

And if this is the majority of the links to your website like this then they might apply manual action.

So that’s something I would avoid"

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"It doesn’t matter if it’s… like topically relevant or if it’s kind of like a useful link.

If you’re doing this systematically then we think that’s a bad idea because from our point of view those are not natural links to your website.

They’re only there because like you’re doing this deal with the other site"

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As for paid posts with links pointing to other sites, accepting money from a few of them will not change much in your life. On the other hand, doing this on a massive scale is not a good idea; those sites are most likely below your site's level and it is bad to link to them. Many of them will vanish and you will have dead links, but you know all this already.