"So why not “steal” great content ideas from the top blogs and offer them to lesser-known blogs?"

"Take inspiration from an excellent piece of content and build on top of it until it becomes “unique.”"

"We can break this “hero” article into “splinters” and create standalone articles from it. We can then submit these “splintered” articles as guest posts."

"Does that mean that we cannot use this same topic again for writing another guest article?"

"Of course not! We can use the same topic many times just by changing the perspective slightly, like so:"

"Paying for guest posts is a direct violation of Google’s quality guidelines."

"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank can dilute the quality of search results. Participating in link schemes violates the Googles Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results."

"Some blog owners may be willing to publish a lousy article if you pay them, but they will never post a lousy article for free."

"Building a portfolio of awesome articles published on well-known industry blogs will also help you going forward. If you’ve already done this, use them as “social proof” in your outreach emails."

"publishing bad or mediocre articles will arise suspicions and potentially lead to punishment."

"Hack 1. Pitch more blogs than you can handle"

"Hack 2. Link to your other published guest posts"

"So if you have a bunch of live guest articles that link to your website, build so-called “tier 2” links to them. How? By linking to them from your other guest posts. This increases the power of tier 1 links:"

"Giving value up front is an excellent catalyst for long-term relationships, especially if you don’t expect anything in return immediately."

"Hack 3. Write for blogs that have never linked to you before"

"Well, according to conventional SEO wisdom, a second link from the same website has less weight than a link from a new referring domain."

"Hack 4. Rewrite your “author bio” once in a while"

"Google’s PageRank looks at backlinks between pages, not websites. So if you have the opportunity to become a regular contributor to a top-notch blog, go for it! Just make sure that you’re not linking to the same pages on your website from each new guest article."