Guest blogging is a digital marketing strategy that is used widely to make a brand visible, credible and bring targeted traffic to the website. It is an efficient way to grow your online presence, it does not matter if you’re a business owner or a blogger, guest blogging can be your ultimate key to enhance your SEO and drive traffic to your website.
In this blog, we’ll provide you a comprehensive guide to guest blogging, its benefits and how you can make the best use of it.
Understanding Guest Blogging And Its Impact On Your Online Presence
Guest blogging is a practice of writing blogs on another website. You basically write content for another website that is relevant to your niche and in return you get backlinks to your own website and gain exposure. To boost your Domain Authority and increase your brand visibility in search results, backlinks are extremely crucial. Basically backlinks are like a vote of confidence for the search engine that the website has credibility and can be ranked higher.
Orbit Media conducted a survey that showed over 60% of bloggers publish guest blogs and it significantly improved their SEO rankings. A good guest blog depends on the quality and relevance of its content, so it is important to understand how to write a proper guest blog.
Why Is Guest Blogging Important In Modern Digital Marketing?
In today’s fast-moving world, guest blogging holds great importance. It helps us in expanding our reach and making sure that we reach the audience that is relevant to our industry. By constantly showing expertise on your niche through the blogs, you build a reputation of an expert. This allows you to capture the attention of readers and gain their trust and turn them into potential customers. According to HubSpot, publishing regular guest blogs can bring 13xmore ROI for businesses.
Along with that, with guest blogging you can find influencers that fall into your niche and then build a relationship with them. These relationships will benefit you in the long-run because influencers can bring a huge audience towards your brand as well as, bring joint ventures, webinars and smart marketing campaigns.
Another major benefit of guest blogging is that it improves SEO with backlinks. When you post on a reputable and known site, it brings quality customers to your own site through backlinks. According to Backlinko, backlinks are one of the top three ranking factors in SEO but to get backlink from a website that has high DA and similar content is the major task. It is very important to get backlink from a credible website because search engines have started recognizing spammy or low quality backlinks, so quality over quantity must be the focus.
A Step-By-Step Guide: Selecting The Right Blogs For The Guest Post
● Search for Relevant Blogs:
Before stepping into guest blogging, it is crucial to find the suitable blogs for your niche. You can do so by using specific search strings on google regarding your niche or your topic. Another way of doing that is by social media, since many guest post opportunities are posted there. Most importantly, you can identify the right blogs by going through guest blogging platforms, such as MyBlogGuest and GuestPost. You have to find the website that has an audience that falls into your target audience.
● Evaluation of the Blog:
It is essential for you to ensure that you’re targeting a blog that has a high Domain Authority, a huge engaged audience and quality content. There are several tools such as Moz or Ahrefs that allow you to check the DA of a website. If a website has a DA of 50 or more then it falls into a highly ranked website and can provide you with high quality backlinks. Along with that, you must also ensure that the blog has a high engagement rate, for example the comments on the blog will tell you the level of audience interaction towards that blog.
● Crafting the Irresistible Pitch:
You should make a strong, persuasive pitch to the editor of the blog that you choose. Your pitch should be clear and comprehensive, and it should include why you’re interested in their blogs and how your content will bring more reach for them. You should be specific to them about the examples of posts that you loved on their blog and then pitch in your topic with proper justification that would add some benefit to their already existing content. The editor should be able to see that you have done a thorough homework on their blog.
● Writing a High Impact Guest Post: Key Elements for Success
Before you start guest blogging on someone’s website, it is essential for you to do a detailed research on its guidelines. You must be aware of it’s cover length, writing style, tone and whether it allows you to include backlinks to your website. Your blog should provide valuable content for their website and should be well written. It should not be a promotion of your brand but an insightful, actionable advice to the audience. You must keep in mind to include links to the other posts of the host’s website as this will help in boosting their SEO. You can include targeted keywords that resonate with the blog’s SEO strategy.
Promoting Your Guest Blog: Maximizing Your Reach
Once your guest post is live, the work doesn’t stop there. You’ll want to ensure your post reaches as many readers as possible.
- Social Media Promotion: It is important for you to promote your guest blog online. You can use your social media accounts, tag the host and encourage your followers to read and share the blog. You should use tools like Canva to make interesting social media graphics that grab the attention of people at the first look. It is also essential to share your posts on different social media platforms such as, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
- Email Marketing: You should create a newsletter of your email list and include your guest post in it. This will prove your credibility as well as promote your blog. Make sure to convince the subscribers on how this guest post is valuable for them and how it is an answer for all the questions they might have in their mind.
- Engage with the Audience: You must respond to the comments of the audience and answer all their queries. This will build a genuine and trustworthy connection between you and your audience. This will also keep bringing the audience back to your website hence developing a deeper relationship with your brand.
Common Mistakes To Avoid In Guest Blogging
- Ignoring the Host Blog’s Audience: You must make sure that your content resonates with the audience of the Host blog. The audience should find your blog relatable and it should be able to keep them engaged with the blog. Your research on the previous posts on the blogs should be up to the mark and you should be able to match the tone and depth of the host blog in your work.
- Focusing Only on Backlinks: As much as backlinks are important, it is also essential that you don’t direct all your focus towards it. Your primary goal should be producing quality content and delivering it to the host blog’s audience. Content stuffed with promotional links or irrelevant references can get rejected or hurt your reputation. Your main focus should be building a strong and trustworthy relationship with the host blog that will prove beneficial to you in the long run. You will be able to secure more collaborative opportunities and other forms of benefits.
- Neglecting to Follow Up: After submitting your guest post, don’t disappear. Follow up with the editor to check on the post’s progress, and once it’s published, continue engaging with the audience. You should keep asking for feedback on your post, so that you have a clear idea about what sits well with the audience and you can avoid making the same mistakes again.
Conclusion
Guest blogging is much more than just a way to gain backlinks. It’s an effective strategy to increase visibility, grow your audience, and establish yourself as an authority in your field. As much as businesses and marketers continue to prioritise content marketing, guest blogging will remain an indispensable tool for online growth and one should be able to take all the benefit from it. By being consistent in producing high-quality and valuable content, you not only improve your SEO but also build long and meaningful relationships with big industry professionals and potential customers.