Posted by In a world of numerous blogs, making yours stand out can be tricky. It’s overwhelming to create new and inspired blog posts while traffic to your site isn’t at the level you’d like it to be.
Between creating relevant content, keeping up with social media, and managing all aspects of your website, you can feel the burn-out overhanging your every step.
However, there is a way to build relationships between fellow bloggers, link your blog to a larger audience, and create content that will help you as a writer: guest posting.
What Is Guest Posting?
A guest post is when a different content creator writes, designs, or creates a guest blog post for your website and you do the same for theirs. These guest articles build long-term relationships with other blogs and can share a type of content that you wouldn’t normally produce.
There are also added advantages, such as having SEO benefits from your guest bloggers being able to link your blog to theirs. Many guest writers will also check for your website’s Domain Authority (DA) score, which scores your post on how well it does compare to other website postings on search engines.
Before you think about looking for a guest post, it’s important to have your guest post guidelines available. These rules will help guide you to find the perfect option for guest posting, and also help your guest writer understand what you’re going for on your blog.
Oftentimes, these guidelines include things such as what niche you’re a part of, what you’d like for your business in the long term, and how you want your blogs styled.
When looking into the possibility of a guest blogger, do some research into the current guest posting opportunities. Many bloggers will also be looking for guest postings, so you’ll have the ability to look towards either similar blogs you know of or test out third-party companies that match bloggers.
Either of these options would be a good choice if you would like to proceed with guest posting and have their pros and cons.
Looking at Similar Blogs
For this option, you’ll need to know your niche community. Once you’ve gathered all this information (your branding and the target audience), you’ll have to search for similar blogs to your own. Most of the time, you will find some similar websites just by your research for your niche.
Not every blog may be taking guest writers, but many do. Once you’ve found the ones you’d prefer working with, begin applying. Have samples of your past work to show while doing through this process.
Once you’ve entered, you’ll hear back from the business to see if you’re a good match.
The pros of this option are that you’ll have full reign over where you look and what sites you apply to. You may also find openings that aren’t on the average third-party company.
However, the cons are that this choice takes more work from the standpoint of having to dig through blogs on your own. It can take more time, and applying may be more work as well.
Third-Party Guest Posting Companies
These companies are equipped with a large database of postings from blogs. When you log onto one of these sites, you’ll often have to make a profile or even go through an interview process. Once you’ve been approved, you can start writing content for other websites.
The pros of using a third-party company come from how easy it is to find a listing. It takes less time to apply or join a guest posting website than it does to hunt down and message blogs that are in your niche.
However, the cons are from how popularized this option is. You may not be able to find a listing that is in your niche and cannot link back to your own blog. It may also be difficult to join sites that require you to show the past work you’ve done on guest posting.
Why is guest posting important?
When you’re looking into guest posting, you may be wondering why this option is so common and what are its benefits.
After all, if you’re looking to give other bloggers the ability to create posts for your business, you have to be sure that this option will be a positive solution. Here are some prime ways in which guest blogging opportunities can help you and your business.
1. Advanced Content
Content marketing is all about retaining your audience. To keep your audience returning to your business, you must keep supplying relevant content to your blog.
In order to keep up with the demand, guest posts can fill in this requirement for fresh content that can keep you in the minds of your target audience.
Not only does guest posting allow for frequent content for keeping up with other blogs, but it allows for the type of content and writing style to change depending on what articles you’d like to post.
For example, if you’re looking to meet with someone in your blogging community who is known for something that you can’t produce, they may be a good option for giving your blog that additional information.
2. SEO Optimization
Another benefit of guest posting is it allows more time on SEO optimization. In this, your content will have a higher search ranking, which is how high it is in search engines such as Google.
Having a high ranking means that your content and web pages will be the first to show up for your potential audience.
Another SEO benefit is having high-quality backlinks. These are links to deserving websites that will connect your blog to other blogs. These backlinks can also help with how high your website is on the search ranking, which is important to keeping your business relevant.
With this in mind, look for guest opportunities to write for blogs that allow you to link both at the beginning and end of your guest post. If possible, use different links as well, since the quality and quantity of backlinks are important for SEO optimization.
Where to Start With Guest Blogging
When you’re looking at opening up your blog to a guest author, you’ll want to first finish up your guest blogging guidelines. As mentioned previously, these guidelines should cover a variety of information regarding you, your blog, and what you’d like guest content posts to consist of.
Popular guidelines often have the following requirements for blog posts:
- Be able to write at a fluent level. The work created for your blog should be readable. This includes being error-free. If they wouldn’t post it on their blog, it shouldn’t have a chance on yours.
- Posts should be relevant to your blog. Keep articles updated with new information for your blog. They should include relevant information and be without excessive “fluffy” language. If you run a graphic design blog, make sure your content covers all the latest graphic design trends so your readers always have access to fresh information.
- Original work only. Guest posts should only include writing that hasn’t had a previous upload to other blogs or websites. Everything should be brand new and without plagiarization.
- No product codes or links. Linking back to their blog is what makes guest posting so popular, but providing links to products they sell or get money for isn’t allowed. You want the backlinks to be high-quality and beneficial for you just as much as them.
As the blog owner, you’ll have to make tough choices when looking for new relevant blog posts. Make sure that the blogs you do add are for your niche.
Just because a popular blog wishes to make you a guest post, ensure that the article will be able to enhance your domain authority to the audience you’d like it to.
How Can Guest Blogging Enhance Your Business?
The guest blogging process can be long but can enhance your business in the long term. It creates quality content for you while allowing for more guest post opportunities once you’ve hit a certain level of customer retention.
Once you’ve done all the proactive work, you’ll see the benefits of guest blogging are long-term and can expand your business beyond what you thought possible.
To get the most out of guest blogging, you must first know your content marketing strategy. This is how you’ll create that customer retention, which is when your audience returns to create engagement.
Content marketing is what most people think of when it comes to managing a website. You can do this in several ways, but the most common is content promotion and organic keywords.
Content promotion refers to how you market your content to audiences. How you promote it over different websites and applications. Many blogs use social media, such as TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to promote their work. So, creating an audience on your social media can help with engagement.
Meanwhile, look for if there are opportunities with influencers on social media. Or, if there are advertisements you can run for your blog. You should also make use of cold email outreach campaigns that target the specific blog audience you are looking for. Many guest post opportunities arise from email campaigns.
Organic keywords are about including in article keywords that come up without supplying links to paid advertisements or products. Keywords like this can have uses in the guest posting by requiring a certain number of keywords in the blog post before uploading.
This will raise the domain authority so it’s easier to post content without having to pay for content promotion.
When you’re creating your guest blogging strategy, be sure that you’re keeping yourself and the other blogger in mind. Content promotion, organic keywords, and customer retention are only words if you don’t put effort into keeping your guest blogging strategy at the heart of what you do.
Development of your guest blogging strategy should include:
- Use your guest posts as promote for your blog, but also you. Whenever you write for another blog, use your bio to explain your goals. What do you write about? What’s your favorite style of writing?
These questions should have the answers in your bio and advertise what you can do for other possible blogs. - Building relationships with other blogs. Writing guest posts is a great way to expand how far your business reaches, but creating relationships with other blog owners goes much farther. Pay close attention to how you manage your contacts. It’s important not to reach out to the same people and blogs twice. Invest in a CRM to keep track of all the contacts you’ve reached out to already.
With the ability to create long-term partnerships with other businesses in your niche, you’ll have the opportunity for more guest writing, have your name be well-known in your community, and have verified published pieces of guest posting. - Create promotions for your blog. Foremost, you want to ensure that your blog will have a proper promotion. If your guest post won’t reach back to you, it shouldn’t be an opportunity that you take. Everything should be to promote your brand and your business.
- Only invest time into blogs that will benefit you. It can be easy to feel swept up in the number of blogs you’d like to post for. However, make sure that their audience and content align with your goals.
If the blog doesn’t get many views, doesn’t promote themselves or their work well, and doesn’t give credit to you and your blog, they’re not the option for your time.
These strategies may seem a bit selfish but at the end of every day, you want your business to thrive. Keeping yourself open to new experiences while still holding to what is best for your blog will keep you flourishing.
Benefits of Guest Posting
After all the work you’ve done, it’s important to remember why you’re putting in so much time and effort:
- You can promote your blog by doing what you normally do. Guest posting allows for content promotion with organic keywords without having to put in the extra effort for advertisements, social media posts, or campaigns.
Just by doing what you do for your own business, you can reach audiences in ways that are easier and cheaper than paid options. - Traffic to your blog increases overnight. When you work with another blog that credits you, you’ll see a large influx of traffic to your site. Audiences want to have more and they’ll search for other sites that give them their niche interest.
For this reason, credits to your blog on sites similar will help the traffic transfer to your website. - Following, sharing, and subscribing on your social media. When linked to your blog, audiences will be able to share your work. This is as close as you can organically get to Tesla’s $0 marketing strategy.
They’ll also be able to find your social media. This will increase your ability to later promote on social media blogs, which keeps audience retention at an all-time high. - Expand your brand awareness. While you and your guest blogger exchange posts, you’re also enhancing your brand. Even on another blog, audiences will come to know you for your brand and look for it in other posts.
They may also return to your site more once they know about you and what you’re trying to accomplish. - Feedback from your community. In this case, every feedback is positive feedback. People will always give their opinions and you can use those opinions to help create better content.
This interaction between you and your audience will also help solidify how much they mean to you, making them feel heard.
The Future of You and Your Business
Approaching guest posting can seem like a long process but it creates more promotion for your business.
In the modern technological era where everyone is trying to keep their digital business thriving, many aspects go into creating content — SEO optimization, advertisements, marketing strategies, and more — and it can be easy to feel burnt out.
However, guest posting helps create content, raises DA scores, and creates relationships with other blogs to make your website grow under these harsh conditions.
For further readings on how to guest post, here are some helpful guides. Quicksprout offers this wonderful guide to guest posting in 2022 that can be helpful for newbies in the guest blogging realm.
New Breed has this helpful informational article on defining and understanding how to
use guest posting. Lastly, if you’re looking for an extremely detailed guide to SEO optimization, check out Google’s SEO start guide, which is a prime source for Google’s domain authority.