The guest post industry is a rather shady industry so you want to be in control of your backlinks.

However, many vendors don’t allow you to be in control and choose the sites for you.

That’s all great in the beginning but once you’ve had links on their most relevant sites who knows where they get your next post published.

If you see a sevice offered such as the one in the screenshot below just run away as fast as you can.

It isn’t cost effective either as in this case you pay $247 for a post on a site with a domain rating ranging from 35-49, which could end up on a lifestyle magazine that charges no more than $10-50.

The only reason why is to maximize their profits

Their only argument not to pick from a database, is that anyone can register, including a Google employee, to download the entire list of sites and devalue them all (such an old-fashioned way of thinking).

Matthew Woodward, who owns LinksThatRank and Search Logistics even went as far by saying that he blacklisted our entire database.

However, when I ran our database through their blacklist there were only a dozen matches found.

I challenged him to keep his blacklist up-to-date by offering him our sites list but he chose not to respond.

In context

At SERPTrust we worked hard to build a high-quality database of 850 sites only.

They’d be crazy not to include those as these are the best, one can find.

Why so few?

Because we couldn’t find more quality sites willing to accept guest posts.

We reached out to more than a million sites with 500+ organic traffic, and reversed engineered all our large competitors to grow this database of 850+ sites while ten thousands of other sites that would accept a fee made it to our blacklist.

At SERPTrust we do hide our deals from competitors so they can’t grab our carefully crafted database and run with it.

Not because we are paranoid that a Google employee would register and devalue all those site like Woodward is suggesting.

That’s such an outdated way of thinking that goes back to the days when Google went after large blog networks such as BuildMyRank (BMR), and a dozen others in 2012.

You read that right, more than a decade ago!

Yet, some popular SEO’s still use that to drive fear into potential clients, so they can maximize their profits.

It’s quite laughable when you think of a Google employee logging in to link vendor sites to grab databases when everything is out in the open already, and even more so with the rise of AI and spambrain.

If he focuses on stuff that happened 10+ years ago, in such fast evolving world as SEO, it’s perhaps time to start following other SEO’s.

Even more ridiculous to suggest this when you realize that we broker guest posts on high traffic sites owned by individuals opposed to private blog networks (PBN’s).

Makes me think Matthew is smoking a bit too much of that green stuff in Costa Rica.

Here is another such provider, which charges $260 for DR45+ links, the same what I wrote above applies here.

It’s quite ironic that both of these services come out highly recommended in Search Logistic’s post, while they recommend Loganix, and Adsy in the very same post.

The irony outs itself in the fact that anyone can view Loganix’s entire database by sending a simple request to the support team (great partner if you don’t mind paying up to 300% more).

While Adsy only requires you to create an account to view their database of 50,000+ sites (anyone can add their site so you can imagine what a cesspool that is).

It can always get worse though, look how high these prices are for once again buying blind:

Do you really trust services that so heavily over-charge to have your best interest in mind?

You should seriously think again because we all fish in the same pool of sites, there is no magic door that opens up for larger vendors.

Once a website starts offering guest posts for cash they let anyone in.

LinksThatRank and GetMeLinks aren’t the only ones

Many others sell you links based on DR and you’ll never know what you get.

Authority Hacker devoted an entire post to it and spent quite a bit of money on such services and the outcome was absolutely horrible:

https://www.authorityhacker.com/link-building-services/

Fiverr, LoveToLink, SerpLogic, The Hoth, and FatJoe

Would their link vendor test have been so negative if they had chosen a partner such as SERPTrust where they can pick the sites themselves?

The short answer is no!

If the post would still be negative it would simply be the fault of the author for choosing low-quality sites.

Obviously, they wanted to test services that keep everything hidden!

Here is a video by someone who wasted a thousand dollars on a very similar service from TheHoth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgGgph2GFBg

Similar as what was described in Authority Hacker’s post they ended up with links on repurposed expired domains.

Simply because he had nothing to say when it came to choosing sites.

Even after he rejected one site he got another dud in return.

Ps: We just published a guest post vendor price and quality comparison, check it out now:

https://www.serptrust.io/blog/the-ultimate-guest-post-vendor-comparison/