If you have a blog or website and your focus is on growing it through SEO, learning about guest posting can be a critical part of that. You might also accept guest posts on your site.
Despite the benefits of guest posting in an SEO strategy, it’s something many entrepreneurs overlook. They might feel like they don’t have the time, for example. There are guest posting services available if you think it’s something you should outsource.
Regardless of how you specifically approach it, the following are some things to know about guests posts.
What is a Guest Post?
The term guest post generally refers to publishing an article on someone else’s website. It’s that simple, but why do people do it? Why would you create content for someone else to put on their site?
The primary reason is to get referral traffic to your own site. Guest posts can help you build links. Link building is one of the key ranking factors for your site in search engines. You can also build brand awareness and become seen as an authority in your industry or niche.
When you guest post, you can organically connect with new readers as well.
We’ll go more into each of the specific benefits of guest posting below.
Related: Top Forex Guest Posting Sites List
Why Should You Guest Post?
- When you submit well-written guest posts to other sites, you build relationships with the site admin or the blogger. Building relationships is critical in blogging or online business. You want to be part of conversations and you also want to catch the eye of influencers. The more you build relationships, the more you’ll be able to achieve those goals. Also, the more you become friends with other bloggers, the more you’ll grow your own influence.
- One of the most important reasons you should be guest posting is for search engines. If your content or site isn’t ranking well, then no one is going to find you. You’re going to be incredibly limited in your growth and what you can achieve. When there are links back to your site from reputable websites, it will show Google that you have content worth sharing. The more links you’re able to build, the more value your site will have, in addition to being easier to find on search engines.
- You can introduce yourself to new audiences through guest posting. You’re able to share your content with an audience of people that you might not otherwise ever connect with. You want to generally add value to conversations so that you’ll gain your own readers and followers.
- You’ll develop a sense of trust with your audience because you’ll start to be seen as an authority.
What about letting other people guest post on your site? It can be a good thing on that end of things as well.
First, you can add content to your site, but it’s also part of the reciprocal relationship building that we talked about above. The blogger who creates a post for your site might also end up linking to it from their site too.
Related: Top Shopping Guest Posting Sites List
Reaching Out For Guest Posting Opportunities
One of the most challenging and labor-intensive parts of guest posting is blogger outreach. You need sites to agree to publish your content, and they might not always be willing to for one reason or another. It could be as simple as them being busy. Once you build relationships with bloggers, it’ll be easier to get your posts published, but what about when you’re starting out?
You’ll have to do blogger outreach to find opportunities.
Your ultimate goal is always to deliver a great post.
Outreach is not a short-term task. It’s something you need to be doing consistently, and it’s a process. You want to start engaging with bloggers to show them that you’re interested and can be helpful to them. It can take some time to get a yes, so prepare yourself for that.
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To start, consider creating a list of relevant sites and blogs. Then, you can track your progress and keep up with the response you get from each.
Before you reach out, read through their posts and see their content. Look for those pieces that have the most reader engagement such as shares or comments, because this tells you what their reader is most interested in.
Remember, guest posting isn’t about you—at least not directly. You’re adding value to the website and its readers. The benefits to you are indirect.
When you’re researching the sites you’re thinking about targeting, make notes for yourself.
You should also browse their social media profiles.
Once you feel ready and you’ve perhaps narrowed down your guest posting list of opportunities, it’s time to pitch.
When you’re ready to pitch, knowing the audience and coming from a place of pre-existing engagement are already likely to get the attention of the person you’re writing. Go into it knowing that high-traffic blogs often get hundreds of guest post emails. You need to stand out and show that you’re interested.
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Don’t use generic pitches and address the owner of the blog by name if at all possible.
Try to highlight things you liked about something else on the blog, and briefly go over what you’d like to submit a guest post about. Make sure there aren’t any grammatical errors.
Anything you’re pitching needs to be well-written and on topic. You need to pitch concepts that are going to be shareable as well.
Related: Entertainment & Music Guest Posting Sites List
Writing The Guest Post
A few takeaway tips if you get a blogger to say yes and you’re writing a post:
- Make sure your post is formatted like others on the site, even if the blog doesn’t give you any special instructions.
- Yes, you’ll include a link to your site, but you also want to include a few other high-quality links unless it’s against a site’s guidelines.
- Create a short bio for yourself. This might end up being the only place where you can put a link back to your site.
Finally, track your results. You can use Advanced Segment in Google Analytics to see the strategies you’re using that are getting you the most traffic.
