How can Guest Posts Grow Your Online Business? As an inbound marketer knows, blogging is vital for attracting exemplary visitors to your website. If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you might’ve begun toying with the purpose of guest blogging, too. And if you’ve been staggering with that idea, we’re here to let you know: You absolutely should.
What is guest posting?
First things first: let’s define our terms. Guest posting intends to write and publishing an article on someone else’s website or blog.
I allow this on my site (occasionally) and do it quite a bit on other blogs with audiences that I want to speak to. It’s a great method to connect with new readers and get your name out.
But for the longest time, I overlooked this vital discipline for growing a popular blog. I wish I hadn’t. And I hope you won’t.
There are three causes why guest posting is such an essential strategy for every blogger to build their online influence:
Guest posts build relationships
Bloggers need good content. By being a good guest blogger and adding value to someone else’s blog, you’re going to develop connections with other bloggers.
Bloggers make up a large percentage of conversations occurring on the Internet, especially on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. They can be tremendously influential. Which makes them genuine friends to have.
By making friends with other bloggers through guest posting, you’re going to increase your influence in the realm of social media, which will ultimately lead to more blog subscribers.
Guest posting is marvelous for search engines
The one non-negotiable you should have for guest-posts is this:
The host blogger must add a link to your blog in the post somewhere (usually at the beginning or end).
Over time, these backlinks will increase the value of your blog to search engines, making your content easier to find via Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others.
Guest posting introduces you to new people
Perhaps, the best part of guest posting is that it enables you to enter an already-established community and share your message. It will enable you to connect with new people, ultimately benefiting you if you do it right.
If you’re adding value to the discussion, you’re going to notice that converts over time to more readers, fans, and followers. Conversely, if all you’re ever doing is asking or selling, you may end up important, but with a reputation, you don’t want. (You don’t need to be that guy who’s hawking his plan.)
What about people guest-posting on your site?
I’m also a fan of allowing other people to guest post on my site from time to time. You should think of offering guest posting on your blog, too (if you don’t previously).
If you’re asking for changes to guest posts on others’ blogs, this makes sense. It enables the relationship you’ve begun with the host blogger to be mutual.
Some bloggers will even blog regarding their guest post and link to it from their blog (giving you some great link juice). I’m a fan of this practice.
The first law of being a good guest
When I guest post for someone else, I do the following:
- Link to the post from my blog
- Promote it on Twitter (several times)
- Share it on Facebook
- Thank the person
- Stick around and reply to comments on the post
While not everyone does this, it’s not a wrong idea. However, this is important: If you have to decide between getting people to guest post on your site or guest posting elsewhere, do the latter. It’s even better to get your name out into new communities.
Guest posting matters
According to my friend, when it comes to SEO, guest posting on other sites is five times as important as creating new content on your site. (So long as you make the backlink.)
Whether that’s exactly true or not, I don’t care. The point is that this is an outstanding strategy for extending your reach and boosting your reputation online.
Plus, if you’re a writer desiring to land more traditional publishing opportunities, this is a significant first step to eventually getting your writing featured in news sites, magazines, and other publications.
If you aren’t happy with your blog traffic but aren’t posting on other people’s blogs, you don’t have much to complain about. Start guest posting today, and examine your influence grow.
How Does Guest Blogging Impact SEO?
The short answer is: As long as you’re concerned and considerate about creating high-value guest blogs for legitimate websites, guest blogging can be an excellent tool for building your domain authority and moving up in SEO rankings.
It’s right, though, why many have questioned whether or not guest blogging will spoil their business. With the risk of spam bloggers who try to bribe blog owners into letting them post low-quality content for their link-building and SEO benefit, many marketers have decided to opt against it entirely.
Ultimately, developing an SEO-boosting guest blogging strategy comes down to giving genuine, helpful, and relevant content to educate readers — not low-quality content used as a mere container for links to your website.
So as long as your content is of high quality, guest blogging is a great idea to increase your site rankings. The process Google sees is, if other people are linking back to your blog on their websites, then the content on your blog must be relevant and interesting. When somebody comment, share, like, or link to your blog, it moves up in Google’s PageRank — that means it’s much more likely to pop up first when someone googles a similar topic.
But Google PageRank is only an algorithm, so it can’t distinguish between dynamic content and spam! So while cramming your guest blog posts with links and keywords will push you considerably up in the ranking, it probably won’t generate any new, high-fit traffic, and it definitely won’t set you as an authority in your field.