Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to succeed with guest blogging and guest posting one important question is its real value in generating traffic and its SEO value.
The actual process of guest blogging is quite simple. You are just posting on someone else’s blog as a guest post. In return for this, you get an external backlink that helps you in your link-building efforts.
So it seems pretty straightforward but what does the guest blogger get out of it?
The first thing is that you are starting to build a relationship with another site in your niche. You are starting to network with other bloggers which may lead to more guest posting opportunities later on.
Finding guest post opportunities can be hard, particularly if you are wanting to appear in high authority blogs – but with perseverance and the right approach, and consistency, you can get there.
There are many bloggers who fill up the social media chatter too so you could end up increasing your exposure on social media and expand your audience when having a guest post published somewhere.
Also, guest blogging can expose you to a brand new audience by being part of someone else blog. If your content is of good quality visitors are more than likely to head over to your blog or check out your bio.
The link opportunity is the big SEO positive and over time if you are successful in getting more guest posting opportunities and guest blogging opportunities it will help give a boost to your rankings. The impact is the links you can acquire will help in link building and build and diversify your link profile and site authority.
How Do You Get Them To Accept Guest Posts?
In order to answer this question – let us think about it from the perspective of why you as a blogger would accept guest posted content for your own site. Do you have blogs that accept guest posts? Let people know you are looking for guest posts and guest blogs.
One thing we know for sure is that guest blogging will bring in extra traffic so work out how you would use guest posting – is it to grow your email list, is it self promotional, is it part of your digital marketing strategy?
If you are going to accept guest posts you need to have some guidelines for your guest post. These might include the word count you require, what to expect if you write for us, the style, and the type of article you might accept.
Prepare statistics on your site performance, like site visitors, demographics, how many social media followers.
Let guest blogging participants know how you will share their guest posting efforts, this could be highlighted in your digital marketing strategy. You should aim to promote guest posts in exactly the same way as you do your own content marketing.
Give some guidance on where to include their author bio, where any links can be inserted either in the author bio or in the article itself.
Besides the natural SEO benefit of having guest posts on your site, they bring other benefits. It is free content for your blog, can increase domain authority and traffic to your website.
The Right Guest Posts
So how do you find guest posting opportunities and sites that accept guest posts and after creating your first guest post where do you post it too?
This is not so hard as it used to be as the benefits of guest blogging have become a well-known link-building strategy in mainstream marketing.
One of the first steps is to find a blog or website that would be willing to host your guest post. Finding guest opportunities have expanded. If you search online you will come across some sites that will provide you with a list of guest posts and guest blogging opportunities. This is might be ok but you need to check the quality of the potential host.
One of the more straightforward ways is a Google search in your niche and see what appears in the search results. Better still go to the advanced search and specify particular strings and phrases with queries such as “write for us” etc.
You can also use social media such as Twitter to pitch a blog post. Most bloggers operate in the social media space so once again for guest posting opportunities just input your niche keyword with ‘guest post’ on the end. You should get a bunch of contributors that accept guest posts.
PRO TIP:
A good website for identifying guest blogging opportunities is called Alltop.com. You just input your topic and you will be presented with all the top blogs in your niche. From that look for ones that offer or are likely to accept guest post opportunities.
So now you have found a few guest blogging opportunities to send off your guest post or submit your guest post outline to. How do you get your guest post ready to submit to their page or website?
One of the first jobs with your list of sites that might be accepting guest posts is to concentrate on the websites that are actually worth spending all that time and effort in writing a blog post for.
One rule is that if you are new to this, smaller blogs might be more ready to accept a guest post, this way as you get more experienced you can scale up to the bigger sites.
The guidelines to look for when making decisions on where to guest post are as follows:
- Are you in the same or similar niche?
- Do they have good domain authority?
- Is their link profile good?
- You will only post high-quality content with your guest blog.
- The link will bring you quality traffic to your website.
- Your link will not be buried in your author bio box on your guest post.
- The site has a significant social media following.
Warm Them Up First
Don’t just pitch out the blue also. When guest blogging it is good advice to warm up your prospect first. Start by sharing their content on social media. On their blog posts leave some comments about the articles they have published.
Another useful example is to email the site owner a week or so before you pitch your guest blog saying how much a piece of content helped you with a particular issue or problem.
The Guest Post Format
What about the guest post itself? What is the perfect format and topic that will get you that guest blogging spot? Start by looking at the site’s top posts, you can also use a tool such as Ahrefs to find a website’s top content.
From the list presented you will get the content on the site that is generating the most shares, traffic, and backlinks.
Make sure you check out the other guest posts on the site. Look at the topic titles, what have they accepted in the past for a guest post.
Something that is often forgotten is the guest post guidelines. When a website accepts guest posts there is usually a set of guidelines that go with that. Some sites have really specific guidelines in their guest blogging rules.
Your Guest Post Pitch
For this part put yourselves in the shoes of the guest post site owner. You are busy with your digital marketing activities generating traffic for your website, doing keyword research, basically running your business.
In pops a request for a guest post on your website to your inbox. Do you have time for this? No, so you delete it without a second thought.
The moral is to take your time to craft a great email that could be effective in securing that guest post. When you submit a guest post here are a few tips that will appeal to the site owner.
- Start your email with something about their site.
- Make the words reach out and keep it short -below 200 words.
- Give them a choice of content. This makes it easy not hard for them to choose.
- Don’t forget the aim is to get published so no hard sell.
Writing Your Guest post
So you have been accepted to write your guest post from the website owner, now what do you send them?
Here are some tips.
- Ensure your guest post is suited to the intended reader. Make sure the writing style fits the intended blog.
- Use questions in your guest post and guest blogging.
- Use credible sources – any claims you make ensure they are real and not imagined.
- Be original – try to think outside the box and write something from an unusual standpoint.
- Provide benefit – list benefits for people.
- Proofread – make sure you proofread your own work and weed out poor content.
The Mechanics
When guest blogging there are a few “must do’s” to make your guest blogging successful and consistent.
- Author bio – construct a concise author biography. This is probably the only place where you will get the opportunity to include a permanent link back to your website. Links in the main body of your article might get changed over time.
- Internal link – include at least one internal link to other blog posts on the site.
- Include a call-to-action – at the end of your guest post ask visitors to leave a comment.
- Use your own social media channels to promote – with any guest post use your own networks to promote it. This is a good way to generate goodwill with the blog owner.
- Track your guest post-use tools like google analytics to track the level of traffic your guest post has generated.
Some of the most effective guest posts offer some form of a system that has a particular outcome. Giving people a step-by-step system is a more effective value proposition for the reader. The other thing to consider is the number of words to write. If you are writing for a high authority blog you will need at least 2500 words.
Don’t be afraid to incorporate screenshots and images these add value and meat to the post.
Another tip is to use internal links in the post to other content on the guest site. This might be going the extra mile but it shows you went above and beyond to make the post relevant for the site.
Follow Up
Once your post is live don’t just guest post and forget. Make sure you respond to any comments that are posted against your guest post. Also, use social media to promote your guest post, social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook will offer good outlets to promote your guest posting.
Don’t forget also to thank the website owner for the guest blogging opportunity.
SEO of Guest Posting
Guest posting has become an accepted part of many online digital agency content marketing strategies. Many blogs are now accepting guest posts and it is getting easier to find guest blogging opportunities.
It is well known that links and link building are a primary component of the Google algorithm and play a large part in search metrics for all search engine players. Using guest blogging as an SEO tactic is a great way to obtain a link from another site.
From a blog that accepts guest posts, having well-written content can draw in new visitors and engagement. This makes guest blogging a win situation all around and helps with ranking on search engine players such as google, bing, etc.
One easy way to find guest posting opportunities is “write for us” pages.
What is the real SEO value though? Do guest blogging and writing guest posts really have an SEO impact and including a link from that site really helps with traffic generation.
Let us consider the link-building value when you submit a guest post that gets published on someone’s blog. We know that search engines and search place significant emphasis on inbound links and they advise not to dabble with link exchange systems.
Having an organic link is the only way to go.
In terms of using guest posting for driving traffic to your website when you include a link that looks natural within the text itself it looks organic.
The art of guest posting is to make sure any material you publish is high-quality captivating copy that will capture subscribers who would gladly click your link to find out more, they can also go on to purchase something from you, which is of course good for business.
So guest blogging can provide high-quality links back to your website, increase traffic give you more leads.
In order to bear in mind SEO and your own business objectives determine what sort of conditions you will accept guest posts. If you are planning to accept guest posts determine a set of conditions that meet your SEO goals.
On your blog, you can define these.
The sort of things to consider in any pitch:
- Relevance – make sure any article submitted is relevant for your google search objectives and your niche.
- Word count – what are you looking for from your writers in terms of word count. Do they need to include any keyword when they write?
- Uniqueness – gone are the days of spun content being acceptable – quality, unique content is the order of the day.
- Usefulness – how useful will your audience find the content? Your guest blogger needs to make sure it adds value for you.
Make sure any guidelines are adhered to fully on both sides the guest blogger and the website owner.
The Impact Of Guest Blogging on Search
As a guest blogger, writing a guest post that is of great quality can improve your SERP result in google search.
If your guest post or guest posts are published on authority sites there is a great chance that visitors will be drawn to your business. Guest posting can help you increase your audience and open out more business opportunities.
Any reference made to your website from other websites is voted on the value of your page link.
A guest blog can contain a plethora of backlinks that point back to your homepage. The search engines such as Google can track these giving increased value to your website.
Having a large amount of these can only increase your search opportunities and can help and make a difference between a page one and page ten position.
The more sites accepting guest posts from you the more backlinks you will get, thus an increase in search traffic.
Impact On Brand
The brand is a big deal in 2021. Each brand seeks to enhance its reputation which in turn increases business and google search opportunities. Having guest posts from experts in your niche will only enhance your brand and its reputation.
A final word on Guest Blogging
There is no doubt as a content marketing technique blogs that accept guest posts have grown as more websites realize the double value of hosting guest posted work. The link building value is now also a well-known technique. Like anything worthwhile, it takes time and patience to make a worthwhile digital marketing strategy.
Guest Post FAQs
How Does A Guest Blog Work
The act of guest blogging is also called “guest posting”. It takes the form of writing content for another company’s website. Normally, guest bloggers will write blogs within their own niche.
What Is The Benefit Of A Guest Blog?
They are used to attract traffic back to a website. Boost domain authority and create external links to high authority domains.
Where Do I Find Guest Blogger?
They are normally found on competitor websites. Simply go to your competitor sites that accept guest blogs and see who is writing for them.
Should I Accept Guest Blogs?
Yes they are a great way of growing your blog without having to do loads of work.
