There is no denying that blogging is a prominent way of attracting visitors to your site. Speaking of blogging, if you are new to this industry, you must have heard the term guest blogging. This blog explains what is it and why it is an integral part of digital marketing today.
Guest Blogging 101
Guest blogging, as the name implies, is the act of writing blog posts for another company. So here’s how it works. You find bloggers similar to your niche, contact them, and publish a blog on their website. In that blog post, you subtly add a link to your website without making it sound pushy or promotional.
Guest blogging is a two-way street. It offers benefits to you (the guest blogger) and the website where you are hosting your content. If you are going to do guest blogging, you might as well create a blog on your website and become a guest blogger, too.
Guest Blogging and its Relation with SEO
Guest blogging has a significant impact on SEO. That’s why you will hear SEO experts emphasize curating only high-value guest blogs and post them on authoritative sites. This practice builds your site’s domain authority and its SEO ranking improves over time.
Being a blogger myself, when I was writing for engineering staffing agencies, I happen to come across many spam bloggers. Part of my job was to write pitches and collaborate with the SEO analysts. My team and I were strictly prohibited from publishing content on spam blogs because it could affect the ranking of the staffing agency’s site.
High-quality content and legitimate sites are a great way to increase the ranking of your website. Google thinks that other site owners are linking back to your blog on their sites. Hence, your content must be engaging. Remember that it will only work if your content is dynamic.
Advantages of Guest Blogging
Some people haven’t been able to wrap their heads around the concept of guest blogging. They think you are building someone else’s blog and neglecting your own. It might feel that way but posting on established blogs has a significant impact on your site’s ranking and it brings tremendous other benefits. Let us have the look at the importance of guest blogging in digital marketing of today. You can search using Submit a guest post technology.
A Great Tool for Networking
Guest posting helps you build a relationship with bloggers from your niche. If you are new, this can be particularly useful. You will be surprised to find how welcoming some bloggers can be. They will not just accept your post but a link to your blog. After all, they are getting free content for their own site!
Imagine, wouldn’t it be great you know prominent bloggers in your industry? You will also be building credibility in your niche. If you keep on producing quality content, people in your industry will recognize you as a talented writer.
Target a Wider Audience
Guest blogging also serves as the road to reach a wider target audience. You could be driving traffic from authority blogs (where you have hosted your content) to your own site. You could never have gotten the same amount of traffic if you had published that same post on your blog.
It gives you a chance to expand your audience reach and let new people know you exist. Not only will you get more traffic but more followers on your social media handles.
Get More Social Media Shares
Yes, guest blogging has its impact on social media as well. For that, you must submit your content on a blog that is active on social media. This will bring your blog post more shares naturally once.
For better results, curate highly sharable content. Add images, videos, or perhaps embed infographics. This will bring 3 times more engorgement if the content is shared on social media.
Backlink Profile
Most bloggers who accept guest posts allow the contributors to add one link to their site. This link can be added to the content’s body naturally. Sometimes, they also allow you to share the link of your website in the author’s bio.
The more backlinks you generate from authoritative blogs, the more SEO benefits you will enjoy. If one of your blog posts can build a solid and reliable backlink profile, it may even be indexed on the first page of Google.
Bring Quality Leads
When guest blogging, you must be extra cautious in picking sites relevant to your niche. Once you have found a bunch of sites in your niche, narrow things down and choose those that receive a steady flow of traffic.
If the site from where the traffic is coming is not even relevant to your industry or nice, you are just going to increase the bounce rate on your site. Even if they click the link and land on your site, the visitors won’t act. They will simply close your site because it is irrelevant to their needs. You will be losing the opportunity to generate leads.
Reduce the Sales Cycle
As you distribute your content on popular blogs, you are making the audience familiar with your brand. In other words, you are shortening the sales cycle.
If you can talk about a product or service in the guest post and a reader shows interest and clicks on the link, it means they are here to make a purchase. This eliminates the need for waiting for leads to come to visit your website.
The key lies in picking topics that address customer pain points and introducing your brand as the solution. A visitor in need of a solution is likely to click on your site’s link and convert into a lead.
Conclusion
Aren’t you in need of all these benefits? Then give guest blogging a start. It is for every business starting from IT staffing firms, eCommerce, healthcare practice, to the finance sector.
You must look for legitimate sites that accept guest posts and craft quality and engaging posts to skyrocket your success.
