Guest blog posting is arguably the best method of inbound marketing that your team can employ. However, only 6 percent of marketers are using guest posting as the majority of their original content strategy. Considering the vast amount of marketers who are (rightfully) making content marketing a priority, it’s surprising to find that more businesses, particularly small businesses and startups, aren’t taking advantage of the guest posting benefits. After all, marketers who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to receive a higher ROI than those that don’t.
Through guest posting, you’re able to provide your expertise on a topic via another website. As a guest blogger, this means you’re also able to leverage the audience of that website and brand. But that’s not the only benefit of guest blogging. Once you understand the wide range of pros, you can start taking advantage of all that guest blogging has to offer.
Strengthen Your Backlink Profile
Your backlinks are critical to your SEO, and can make or break your position in search engine results pages. “Without high-quality links, you can’t successfully rank your best content pages in Google – and consequently, your business will suffer,” says Atlanta-based Cardinal Digital Marketing. “The good news is, guest blogging is powerful enough to help you acquire backlinks, the most-relevant and user-friendly links.”
The majority of websites that allow guest posting will allow some form of linking in the post. This backlink is a powerful piece of URL real estate. The number of quality backlinks to your website can make all the difference. In the ever-changing landscape of SEO, backlinks are something that aren’t escaping the algorithm any time soon. Having a backlink from an authoritative blog means that Google will know your blog is more valuable, and your content will be much more discoverable.
Expand Your Network
When you become a guest blogger on a platform, you also become a part of a community of guest bloggers, and collaboration among writers is often encouraged. For example, you might be invited to participate in a brainstorming session among writers for future pieces. In business, networking is everything, and as a guest blogger, the ability to meet new experts across different fields is an added bonus. You may even want to collaborate with someone to co-author a post.
Widen Your Social Reach
When your write for different websites, you expand your reach, and when you expand your reach, your social influence benefits. You’ll get more social media shares and followers, which can increase the chance that someone will read your post and eventually come to your site. There are ways you can make your blog post more shareable by crafting your content with social media in mind.
For example, consider creating an infographic to embed into your post. Posts with visuals tend to do significantly better than those without, and marketers are following the trend. According to Vennage, visual content in articles published by marketers increased by 130 percent from 2015 to 2016. You can do this with no design experience with one of many infographic creation tools, like Canva, Snappa, and Piktochart.
Be Careful
The biggest controversy surrounding guest posting it’s that it’s gotten entirely too spammy. And this is something that you really need to be mindful of. Business owners who view a guest post as purely promotional lose a lot of value. A guest post opportunity should not be exploited. This isn’t a chance for you to advertise; this is a chance for you to offer something valuable to readers, and your self-promotion should be an afterthought. This isn’t just playing by the rules: this is following an effective strategy. After all, most of your traffic referrals will come from people who appreciate the information your provide, and trust the high-quality site it was published on.
Don’t post for just any site. Most sites, even if they are in your industry, will not have authority in your niche. Therefore, not only will your efforts to get referrals fall short, but it can also backfire. When you have bad backlinks, it can actually hurt your SEO. If the website your publishing your guest post on is known for black hat tactics, or comfortably rides the line between what’s right and wrong in terms of SEO, you can suffer from those consequences, too. Never associate yourself with just anyone. Target high-quality sites with good authority that are relevant in your niche.
Kostas Chiotis is a blogger and a content marketing specialist. You can find more about him by checking his blog opportunitiesplanet.com
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