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Guest Blogging is a traditional backlink strategies used to obtain links, although people tend to abuse this strategy which may result in Google penalties. However, when done properly it is an affordable link building technique that can boost your SEO performance to rank on search engines.
Guest blogging is also known as guest posting is a new link building opportunities, which is a strong marketing approach for many businesses. It is a norm to feature in a post published for a reputable brand with high authority. This will help your brand drive organic traffics and attract new visitors through referring domains metric to earn links.
For most people, the sole objective of blogging is to build links which shouldn’t be the case. Your sole aim should be to provide valuable insight to people in specific niches, that way they are able to connect and build relationships and trust with your brand. This is the easiest way to earn social media links as guest posts are distributed to various channels.
This article will break down the key concept of blogging, the importance of guest posts in digital marketing, and strategies involved in building link through guest’s own blog.
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What is Guest Blogging?
A guest blog is written content that is published to a high domain authority highlighting the author’s profile as a contributor or guest. The guest author could either be paid for their contribution or rewarded with a link back to the author’s website. For example, Hackernoon is a well know technical publication brand that has thousands of subscribers.
Writers, brands, and journalists are given the opportunity to impact the tech world by providing relevant information to their readers. The articles provided are published, then link to the brand author’s website or page.
This natural way of obtaining quality backlinks has proven to be an effective guest blogging SEO strategy as well as a marketing concept to create brand awareness, visibility, and authority and drive conversion. These publishers may give you a guest post ideas of what they want for their readers, that way guest bloggers provide explicit high quality content for their users.
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Benefits of Guest Blogging
We know that the more other websites link to your site, the more Google algorithm reverence your website page and boosts your SEO performance. You can easily create contents and earn quality backlink naturally without running ads or investing so much in campaign strategies. It is important to explore guest blogging opportunities as a beginner in your industry to build authenticity and credibility for your brand. Below are the top 3 benefits of a guest post;
It Drives Organic Traffic to your Website
Publishing high quality blog posts on another website can spark reader’s interest, attracting new visitors to your page. This is important as it boosts your online presence and authority because audiences are able to relate to this similar niche.
Before you can drive traffic, it is also good to note that creating guest post should be in alignment with a particular industry, this way your audience is able to perfectly connect to your intent. You can be a health blogger and publish guest post on a technical publishing site, this can backfire and ruin your reputation.
You can increase referral traffic by providing links pointing to the relevant page that provides users with interesting insights on the subject. In as much as your content provides a useful resource page, it enables you to genuinely advertise your product and service in the most traditional way. The more content ideas your business can create and share with users, the more visibility you gain to rank on search engine results pages.
It Helps you Build Valuable Relationship
Building a long-lasting relationship with your audience is as important as building links for your business. Site owners use guest blogging outreach to link prospects in a B2B setting to build new business relationships and also build connections with audiences outside their immediate niche. To establish a relationship using guest post you must identify the problem of your audience and provide insight to them on possible solutions to their pain point.
For example, as a health niche guest blogger featured on a maternity website, you can create blog post providing content on “Pre-natal tips on Trimester Pregnancy” Or “How to determine the Sex of a baby”. This will make them connect with your unique writing style and compel them to take action on your page. When you accept guest posts as a link building tactic, it helps you utilize backlink gap tool for analyzing your competitors link building strategies in other to grow your audience and build a network of professional partnerships.
It Increases Website Authority
Search engine rankings are judged better depending on a website’s authority. The higher your domain score the higher your position on the result page when you use simple Google search metrics. According to Semrush 76% of blog editors showed interest in publishing a minimum of 10 guest post per week, which is a good way to build a backlink profile. You can use relevant publications to boost your website authority, It all depends on how much traffic your content impacts on your website.
Providing valuable guest blogs is a vital SEO link building tool used to measure rankings on search engine. As you rank on search page, the more high quality backlinks your website gains. No doubt, providing unique guest blog content can improve the way search bots see your website page. Although, Google alerts flag spammy content on a website page, reducing the possibility of a website ranking. Google is aware of these fraudulent SEO practices and has devised means to reduce these practices.
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Best Guest Blogging for Link Building Strategy
Most link builders or SEO agency leverage guest blogs as the best link building strategies. They also leverage broken link building (which is the process of finding broken links in pages), contextual links (they are dofollow link that points to a website), and manual link building campaign for SEO gimmicks. It is important to know the right strategy to embark on while building backlinks. Let’s look at the On-page SEO to implement.
Research Your Guest Blog Target
The proper way to connect with your target is simply by researching them before pitching your idea to a website. Understanding the purpose of the site and how it operates will give you a better understanding of how to achieve this. Review their guidelines and follow them up with your request.
You also need to build a personal relationship with the editors or publishers, simply by introducing yourself, appreciating them for their time, and politely requesting to stay connected. How can you achieve this?
- Follow them on Twitter and respond to 2-3 tweets.
- You can also make a list of contact details to help you.
- Make sure to leave comments on blog posts.
- Suggest ideas and feedback to their blogs through emails; you can find email addresses using tools such as Interseller.io to find target domain names.
Regular communication can open the doors of opportunity, so make sure to start a communication channel with authoritative sites.
Write Captivating Content
It is an absolute must to create content that is unique and free of fluff, that way your audience is able to understand your content perfectly. To produce content make it readable while making the quality of your content explicit. To achieve this you should;
- Keep sentences between 10-15 words at most while paragraphs should be 2-3 sentences.
- Add captivating titles and sub-headers.
- Add bullet points to highlight content.
Aside from creating a readable piece add contextual backlinks using anchor text to give you the perfect link juice to your site. Images also enhance content because it serves as an illustration of the written content. Custom images help you break articles into sections by improving the value of the existing posts.
Brainstorming Ideas
Using competitor analysis tools you can generate ideas that will help you craft content that is relevant to your industry. You don’t need to copy everything your competitor does, this is where creativity comes in for your brand. You can analyze their most share content and consider creating what your target blog wants for its readers. To analyze this content better you need to consider the following:
- Know if the article is a guide, listicle, or opinion piece content.
- Know the type of voice or language used.
- What topic generates traffic the more?
Also, keep SEO in mind while building backlinks. Keyword research tools and the use of target keywords will help your content rank while you align your topic with your target audience. Know how to use target keyword, this will help searchers find you.
Pitching Ideas for your guest post
You can use a cold email marketing template available online that works for your brand. This will make it easier for you to input details and ideas f what to write. You can also pitch through personalized comments on social media platforms. You can also post messages on forums that match your industry, you don’t need to post sales content, an interactive session on social channels can boost engagement.
Conclusion
If you want to push your name out there and gain trust and credibility for your brand, you need to focus on guest blogging. It is simply the most affordable link building strategy any brand can take up. Not only does these backlink strategies help you earn link naturally, but it promotes your website visibility and improves domain ranking.
