Guest blogging has been a great addition to the inbound marketing strategy toolkit of businesses. Digital marketing companies experiment with several avenues to promote their content, and the majority of them find guest blog posting services to be a great way to improve the ranking of a website and acquire new traffic.
What Is Guest Blogging?
The concept of guest blogging is simple; you create a content piece, typically a blog post that another person or company will publish. The website can be an influencer or an information resource hub within your industry. To be effective at guest blogging, you must write an article that helps you achieve your marketing goals and provides value to the reader at the same time. By guest blogging on different sites, you leverage the site’s traffic and introduce your content to their audience. This can help you reach new readers and win new customers over as you can add links back to your site within it.
Learn why guest blogging is a powerful inbound marketing strategy and how to use it effectively.
It’s Free
There are many different marketing strategies that any e-commerce entrepreneur can adopt to promote their website and boost lead conversion. Many of these strategies are expensive, some require a lot of effort and time, and still don’t work. Guest blogging is a great marketing strategy that you can use that is extremely effective but is also free to implement. You’re not paying for ads or any other paid traffic method; you’re writing quality content and publishing it on a site that already has a readership. Posting your content on popular blogs will bring you much more traffic than paid methods could ever bring.
Potential for High ROI
The potential for high ROI stems from the fact that it’s largely free and has a very low-risk factor compared to paid advertising. It also involves minimal investment in energy and time, so even if you don’t get any sales from these blog posts, you won’t have lost anything more than a few hours of your time. There are websites out there that have seen a massive increase in their traffic off the back of just one well-written blog post posted on a high authority site.
Improves Sites Ranking and Generates Leads
Links are critical for ranking high on search engines such as Google. Through guest blogging, you can include your site’s links to well-known blogs, authority sites, and influencer mediums related to your niche. This helps create quality backlinks and gain more exposure for your site when Google sees traffic from the high-quality sites going to your site.
Their algorithm considers this an upvote to the approval and relevancy of your content and site. Because of this, they reward your site with a higher ranking. By posting a compelling piece of content on another website, people who read the article might be impressed and want to learn more about your website and see if there are other pieces of great content on there.
A Fresh Way for Users to Find Content
The time spent surfing from one static home page to another is over; instead, today’s online visitors want fresh content they can use right away. They’re looking for social media accounts that provide valuable information and blogs to follow. By guest blogging, you will be tapping into how people want to consume information nowadays.
Tips to Create Stellar Guest Blogs
Have a Clear Vision
Have a clear vision for what you want to achieve through guest blogging, whether that be generating leads or building your reputation as an expert in the field, for example. Once you have figured this out, you can find publications that suit your needs and help you reach your goals.
Know Your Audience
Research is fundamental for being successful at guest blog writing. You need to create consumer profiles so that you can write content knowing who your audience is and what information they are looking for. Only by understanding the problems your target market is facing can you propose solutions.
You will also need to research what sites these people visit the most so that you can get to share your content accordingly. Several social media analytics sites can help you in this regard. You can also hire the services of a professional guest blog writer to help in this regard.
Create Shareable Content
You must develop content that will encourage people to share it with their families, friends, and colleagues on different social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others. For this to happen, though, ensure that your content is valuable, informative, and engaging enough to elicit a positive response from readers.
Do Not Distribute Plagiarized Content
The content you share must be original. Google will penalize your website if it sees duplicate content. To avoid this, write your material and do not use article spinners.
Find Sites Relevant to Your Niche
The first step is to find sites that are relevant to your niche. They should also get a good amount of traffic and be an authority site within their field. If you can’t find such a site, find one as close as possible. You can check out their Domain Authority rating for free here.
Only choose to post on sites with high DA, as posting on ones with lower DA will negatively affect your ranking. Next, look at the content they have published and determine if you have something valuable to offer their audience. Remember, you are using them for promotion, so do not waste their time or yours by submitting substandard articles that nobody wants to read.
Build Connections in the Community
Try to make connections with other writers and influencers in the industry. This will increase the chances of your written content getting accepted and shared on social media. As an entrepreneur, you should know how to engage bloggers and get the most out of posting on their blogs.
Usually, bloggers don’t accept articles from people they don’t know or trust. To get them to accept your articles, you first have to get their attention. One way to do this is by commenting on their blogs regularly and by sharing their posts on your social media networks. This way, they will know that you are interested in their blog and that you may have something valuable to contribute.
Write Compelling Pitches
Don’t just write a one-liner telling them that you are interested in writing a guest post for them. Make sure you tell them exactly what your article will be about and give them some information about yourself as well.
Contact the Blogger
When contacting the blogger, keep it professional and offer something of value. Never just ask if they would like a guest post without giving them any details or ideas about what you want to write about. Make sure they know that it will be 100% unique content that has not been published anywhere else on the web previously.
If you want to increase your chances of getting a response from a blogger, you must send them a personalized email. This means that you don’t just send them an email with a generic subject line and body. Instead, you should make sure that your email is well-written and contains all the necessary details about your writing skills and what you have to offer in terms of guest blogging. For example, if they’ve mentioned that they’re looking for someone who can provide them with articles on SEO, then be sure to mention this in your email. You can also ask relevant questions and give them specific examples of your past work so they can get an idea of what type of content they can expect from you.
Focus On Content
Know what makes a great post. A great post is not an ad for your company or a list of links to previous posts on your company blog. A great post is something that provides value to the reader (who is also your potential customer). This could take the form of news, a story, an opinion, or even a long-form essay that provides information entertainingly.
Know what makes a great headline. Readers will decide whether they want to read your post based on the headline. So make it catchy while giving readers a feel for what they’re going to get in the post itself. Don’t try too hard; if you have to resort to gimmicky tactics like inventing words or taking cheap shots at people, you’re going about this wrong. Provide high-quality content with no strings attached. A good guest blog writer knows how to balance things.
Work With Professionals
Most novice bloggers try to get onto popular sites that receive millions of monthly hits. They think getting published on a big website will bring them tons of traffic and exposure. Not only is it hard to get on these big sites, but they can charge money as well. The best way to guest blog is by targeting small to medium-sized blogs that have a lot in common with your business or niche.
The most important thing is to build relationships with these bloggers and deliver value through your posts. This helps you establish yourself as an expert in your field and builds trust, which results in conversions/sales over time. Find a professional firm to help. Guest blog posting services such as Search Berg have a vetted list of guest blogs you can write for. They help match you with the right sites and also provide high-quality content. They also help you track results.
About the Author
Warren James is an experienced guest blog writer based in San Diego who has a proven track record of creating compelling content that helps online businesses boost their digital ROI. He has been linked with a reputable guest blog posting service in San Diego called Search Berg.
