The Importance of Guest Blogging

As one of the most effective ways to promote a business and gain brand authority, guest blogging is more vital than ever. There are many benefits to a guest blog post strategy, and brands that fail to adopt the use of guest posts

While a guest post strategy obviously benefits the hosts of the quality blogs that you connect with and publish on, there are also some major advantages for the businesses themselves. If you’re not yet using guest blogging as a means of boosting website traffic and building brand awareness, then here are some key reasons why you should reconsider, and how to get started creating the best quality blog posts.

What are the benefits of Guest Blogging?

Content marketing is something that all businesses need to focus on. Content is the key to business growth in the digital age, and guest blogging is a natural extension of your onsite content. There are three main benefits that you gain from well thought out guest post outreach. These include:

• Thought Leadership: One of the most important goals of any business with an eye on the digital is the establishment of long-term thought-leadership. That can take a long time to build, but it is becoming increasingly vital as search engines prioritize those websites that have authority. Thought leadership is part of building that authority. Guest blogging about your industry improves your standing in that industry and will encourage both search engines and your audience to visit your pages for the answers that they need.
• Brand Awareness: One of the core goals of any digital strategy, brand awareness is critical. The faster that consumers remember you when they need your product or service, the more likely that they will visit your website or social media pages. With so much competition from big brands and social media influencers, standing out is increasingly challenging. Building brand awareness through guest posts and guest post linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. vastly improves your ability to build that all-important brand awareness.
• Link BuildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs.: One of the most valuable factors of guest blogging is the ability to create a wide range of backlinks that lead directly back to your web pages. Search engines use links to both discover new pages and evaluate how valuable a specific page is. The more high-quality backlinks that you have, the easier it is for search engines to index your website and rank you accordingly.

Guest blogging builds trust and can have a huge effect on your SEO. It needs to become part of your overall digital marketing and content marketing strategy, and using either guest blogging services or content writing services can be of major benefit. For those business owners with little time or skills to write consistently high-quality content, guest blogging services can be a valuable resource that can help your brand grow.

Creating a Guest Blogging Strategy

If you have decided to start implementing guest blogging into your digital strategy then it needs to be planned in the right way. A series of clearly defined steps should be taken, although it’s becoming increasingly common to see businesses of all sizes cut out the hard work and make use of guest blogging services. Whether you want to go it alone or use the best guest posting service you can find for some steps, or even hand over the entire strategy to those services, here are the steps that will need to be carried out.

1. Define Your Goals

All marketing strategies need to set goals, and guest blogging is no different. Without goals, you will simply be creating blog posts or using a guest blog writing service just because you think it needs to be done. The most common goals of a guest blogging strategy are:

• Generating more website traffic and landing page visits
• Improving brand awareness
• Becoming a thought leader
• Boosting social media presence

Knowing your goals makes it much easier to create content that will deliver those goals. Think about your goals when you are writing your guest bio, and make sure that your landing pages are created specifically to meet your goals while delivering the value that consumers are looking for.

2. Finding the right websites

Of course, you won’t get far into your guest blogging strategy if you don’t have sites to create content for. Not only that, but you also need to identify which sites are going to be of significant enough value to be worth posting on. Finding high-quality websites that are looking for or happy to publish guest content can be very time-consuming, which is one reason why guest post outreach services can be so valuable. Whatever route that you use, make sure that the website that you guest blog on:

• Has a high level of domain authority
• Comes with high numbers of social media followers
• Has high-quality content that’s relevant to your brand
• Includes author bios that credit the writer and can send readers to your web pages

It is always worth building a relationship with the owners of the sites where you decide to guest post. Relationships can be more easily built by getting involved with the publisher’s output. Comment on their social posts and their blogs, and get to know the ins and outs of their audience.

3. Choosing Content Topics

If you are not using a guest blog writing service then you will need to create all of your guest posts yourself. You will need to have a clear idea of the best topics that you should pitch. That means knowing more about the target site, what the owner considers to be important, and what subjects will boost your domain authority. The key is value. Consider:

• Addressing subjects that are prevalent on the website
• Going more in-depth than existing content
• What is important to readers that is missing

Some online tools and resources can help you to narrow down your content topics, and those should be used extensively.

4. Pitching

Once you have identified the best site for posting your content on, you will need to send them a pitch. Avoid using generic pitches. Your research will have given you a good indication of what to pitch and why. Make sure that your pitches:

• Are short and to the point
• Are personalized
• Include the title of your post
• Describe what the post will be about
• Explain the benefits that their audience will get
• Showcase exactly why you are the best person to write the post

The more that you pitch, the more likely you will get that guest blogging opportunity. Take your time to get your pitches right.

5. Creating Content

Many guides can walk you through the process of writing the very best in content. Content marketing is vital in the digital age, and the tactics that you use to create content for your own web pages can also be used to write your guest blogs. Remember that domain authority is boosted by high-quality content, so use an SEO guest post service if you need to. It’s important that you:

• Write a headline that includes action words and emotional terms
• Create content that has value to a reader
• Use short and long-tail keywords throughout your article using in-depth keyword researchKeyword research helps websites unearth the best keywords to drive traffic and visibility. This research is supported by a number of powerful web-based tools, the best of which we’ve listed here.
• Understand the value of SEO link building and use your links following the site’s guidelines
• Include relevant and valuable images
• Match formatting to other posts on the site

While providing value is always the goal of content and content marketing, for businesses hoping to get the biggest rewards from a guest blogging strategy, backlinks are the core goal. Back link services can be very valuable for this reason.

6. Work on Your Bio

If the site that you write for allows for embedded links in the content itself, that’s always good news. However, the bio at the end of the post should be a priority. This is where readers will find out more about you, and if your content has worked then it will drive them to your website. You could include a link to your home page, although it’s often more valuable to backlink to specific landing pages, articles, or even your social media pages. It’s often worth including a call to action in your bio, with relevant landing page links.

7. Engagement is Essential

You must engage with those readers that comment or mention your guest post. This will help you to build connections with people that aren’t already followers of your brand. The owners of the site that you post on will also be more likely to accept additional content if you have shown that you are keen to get involved in conversations. If the site doesn’t allow for comment subscription, then track your mentions and your shares by using a Google alert.

8. Promoting your Content

This is a key stage of your guest blog strategy. Put simply, the more people that you can get to read your content the better. You should already have established channels for promoting the content you publish on your own website, so use those for guest posts as well. Remember to share your guest posts in your email marketing and your social media, and don’t forget to engage when comments are made.

9. Measure your Results

You will only know if your guest blogging has been of value if you track the success of the strategy. Bear in mind your initial goals and measure whether you have met those targets. You might also consider using Google analytics to measure landing page success. An SEO blog posting service will manage this for you and can track your goals on older campaigns or brand new ones.

It can take a very long time to launch and perfect a guest blogging strategy. Using guest blogging services can speed the process up but the process can still take time to positively affect your domain authority and website visits. Take the time to get your guest blogging strategy right, and the benefits can transform a business of any size.

and guest blogs will inevitably fall behind their competitors.