The process of guest blogging (guest posting) involves creating content for another person’s website or blog within your same niche (or similar) in order to gain exposure, build authority, and develop links back to your own site.
Guest Blogging has been a very big part of Digital Marketing since it has moved from being just a way to trade links, into something much more effective at building brands, as well as providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefits.
When properly utilized, Guest Blogging can allow businesses to establish credibility, increase their ranking within Search Engines and create long term relationships with Other publishers and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) within their industry. Many Online Marketers have turned to tools like Guest Perfect to track their marketing outreach, monitor where their placements are located, and effectively manage all aspects of Online Guest Blogging Campaigns from day one.
Understanding the Core Concept of Guest Posting
Essentially, guest posting is a collaborative process; in this case the website owner receives quality content for their audience and the contributor can receive exposure and back links. Backlinks from reputable websites are valuable to search engines as they are a signal to the search engine that your website is credible and relevant.
A website that has numerous reputable backlinks will be rated higher in search engines than an equal quality website with fewer links. In addition, gaining backlinks through guest posting builds your brand, expands your audience, and manages your reputation. A quality guest post can establish you as an expert in your field and lead readers to subsequently look for further content from you.
How Guest Posting Works Step by Step
You can begin the process of guest posting by looking for websites that accept guest posts (and are also relevant to your niche). Once you have found some potential sites, you will want to pitch topic ideas to the site owner/editor. In the pitch, you’ll want to explain how your content will benefit their target audience.
If the pitch is approved, you will then want to write the high-quality (and original) article according to the site’s guidelines. After the article has been published at that site, the published article should usually have a contextual backlink (or author bio link) to your site.
It is precisely that backlink which provides so much value for SEO through the guest posting process because they increase your site’s authority and help improve your site’s organic visibility gradually over time.
Why Guest Posting Is Still Important for SEO
Even though search engine algorithms may change, ethical guest posting is still an excellent strategy for SEO and other aspects of your online presence. Google and other search engines place great importance on content that clearly shows you have experience, knowledge and trust in a given industry.
By publishing content on established web sites, you help satisfy these requirements naturally. High quality backlinks from relevant sites will also help build up your site’s domain authority, which can lead to improved keyword rankings. In addition to driving referral traffic to your site, articles created for other sites will help raise brand awareness and help your pages get indexed by search engine bots more quickly.
The Relationship Between Guest Posting and Backlinks
High-quality backlinks are the most reliable type of link you can create on a search engine. Using guest post blogs can allow you to get a natural backlink and establish a credible relationship with search engines.
Guest posting provides an ethical method for obtaining editorially placed links that are trusted by search engines, since they are legitimately obtained through value-added content, rather than using black hat methods, which usually produce a high number of untrustworthy backlinks.
Creating a diverse backlink portfolio over time through guest posts will establish trust with search engines and create stability to your current ranking with the help of algorithm changes. The quality of the referring site should be much more valuable than the overall number of links created; therefore, a guest posting opportunity should be selected based on the site’s relevance and authority.
Brand Awareness and Authority Through Guest Posting
Guest posting also helps create brand recognition and trust through SEO and placement of recent industry blogs that use your name as a reference for their information. As a way for people to connect to your brand, they will begin to share and refer to your brand in various ways, including social shares, direct referrals (or traffic), and potential business inquiries.
For example, the Professional Logo Design Made Simple uses a combination of effectiveness and ease of use as a means to build a brand’s identity while guests post their message in a clear and concise way to help establish a brand’s visibility without excessive promotion.
Guest Posting and Targeted Traffic
One of the most frequently missed perks of guest posting is getting relevant referral traffic from those who see your guest post, who have shown interest in your niche from your guest post. This helps to increase the likelihood of their engagement, subscribing to your site and/or converting.
Also, if the guest post doesn’t improve the ranking immediately, the referral traffic is still considered valuable in terms of generating traffic for a longer period of time and results in these visitors being more likely to stay on your site, read more of your content, and retain you as top of mind for their future needs.
Common Types of Guest Posting Opportunities
There are numerous guest post opportunities available online and they differ greatly depending on the industry and types of websites. Some sites might accept educational how-to articles while other sites might desire postings that consist of opinion pieces, case studies or insights about industries.
The type of content you create will be important for acceptance of your content, as well as for performance on the site. In general, educational based content performs better than opinion based content because it typically provides long-term value.
Meanwhile, opinion based content can provide an avenue for igniting conversation or dialogue between readers on a given topic or opinion. Therefore, it will be important that you align your content with your intended audience/reader for the accepted content.
Best Practices for Effective Guest Posting
Quality should outweigh quantity when utilizing guest posting as an effective means of reaching out to other sites. Low-quality or irrelevant sites can harm your brand through guest posts. Before pitching to a website, you need to understand the site’s audience and how they produce content (including any specific editorial guidelines).
Therefore, the content that you will provide must be original, informative, and not overly self-promotional. If you embed a natural link back to your site (for the SEO benefits) within the content of your post or your author bio, this is generally enough to avoid raising any flags for search engines.
Guest Posting vs Other SEO Strategies
By utilizing guest blog posts, you’re not only enhancing your off-page search engine optimization but also working alongside other online marketing techniques such as On-page(optimization of your own website) and Technical (improving your site’s overall functionality) SEO’s.
These strategies when combined create a more well-rounded overall approach to search engine optimization (SEO). Additionally, guest blogging can help support your content marketing efforts through providing additional exposure of your message outside of your website.
Challenges in Guest Posting and How to Overcome Them
One of the most common challenges with guest blog posting is facing a large amount of rejections. High authority sites edit between 20-50 pitches each day and if you wish to stand out you must be original in what you send. Another challenge is maintaining your consistent posting schedule since guest blog posting can take a lot of time.
Structured outreach and content planning will help to overcome this challenge. Also, it is important that you keep track of all published guest posts and backlinks in order to calculate your return on investment (ROI) to improve your strategy as time goes on.
Measuring the SEO Impact of Guest Posting
There are a few ways you can evaluate the effectiveness of guest posts. Some metrics include keywords that rank well, increases in referral traffic, increases in every day, and the amount of time visitors spend on a site. Guest posting doesn’t always provide instant results; many times it provides compounding results over time. One good guest post can continue to bring traffic and value to your site for years after it was created.
The Future of Guest Posting in SEO
Search engines keep placing a bigger emphasis on producing high quality and relevant content, which makes ethical guest posting a valuable practice.
Collaboration is becoming more important instead of accumulating high volume of links. Brands that create thoughtful, user-friendly products will reap the benefits of producing quality content. The importance of guest posting as an SEO tool has diminished over time; however, it’s evolving into a more comprehensive form of digital marketing that fosters sustainable growth over time.
Conclusion
Guest posts can be an effective tool to boost SEO, boost credibility and connect with more people (when done properly). By generating good content, finding other appropriate websites to post on, and giving your audience real value, you will develop lasting results that benefit both yourself and those who visit your site.
Whether you are a new or seasoned marketer, incorporating guest posting into an existing SEO plan will offer ongoing advantages to marketers. Many marketers leverage some kind of intelligent solution or method when managing outreach, tracking placements, and increasing the efficiency with which they insert links.
