Link Building Strategies: Why You Should Include Guest Posting

Blogging has revolutionized how we share information and interact – and guest blogging takes this concept to a new level. Do your content marketing tactics include leveraging guest posts? Guest po sting is a powerful SEO strategy you should use if you haven’t already.

Many people have predicted the end of guest blogging over the years, but it remains one of the most effective marketing strategies. Guest posts are almost always beneficial to bloggers and to the websites that host them. Guest blogging can help companies succeed in several ways.

Guest blogging is an effective way to spread your brand’s message and promote your company’s growth, which is why it has become so popular in digital marketing. In short, sharing your knowledge on other businesses’ blogs is a great way to gain credibility as an industry expert, network with other influential people, and introduce your name to a wider audience.

To what extent does guest blogging feature in your content marketing strategy?

Guest posting is integral to a good SEO strategy, so let’s explore why:

• Why use guest posting as a link building technique?
• Benefits of guest posting
• How to find effective guest post opportunities

Why use guest posting as a link building technique?

Although my first go-to technique for building high authority links to any site is to use digital PR techniques including data led proactive campaigns, press releases and reactive PR, guest posting is a valuable tool to add into the mix to offer link diversity.

There is less flexibility from reactive PR channels like HARO since the links acquired point directly to your homepage. The importance of guest blogging to be able to diversify the pages you build links to can never be overstated.

According to Growth Badger, there are currently more than 600 million blogs out of a total of 1.7 billion websites, and 77 percent of internet users say that blogs are their preferred form of content.

A big reason for the growth of guest blogging is that 48% of businesses use content marketing. As a result, many reputable blogs and online publications that concentrate on a particular niche now permit guest posts as part of their guest post policies. But they are far more selective than the average blog, and guest contributions must adhere to a much higher standard.

Although it may take more effort to approve a guest post by such outlets, the resulting backlinks will have far more search engine optimization value than those from more traditional guest-posting sites.

The Benefits of Adding Guest Posting to Your SEO Strategy

Including guest posting your SEO strategy comes with a plethora of benefits.

• Develops trust
• Creates a network
• Improves organic marketing
• Builds links
• Expands your target market

Developing trust

Including guest blogging in your SEO plan is a great way to gain credibility with prospective customers. If you can’t connect with the individual on the other end of the screen, your marketing efforts will be fruitless.

Creating a network

By developing relationships with webmasters, you can build your own list of trusted sites that you can work with repeatedly to not only build high quality links to your website, but establish yourself as an authority within your industry with their audience.

Organic marketing

The guest blogging platform also allows unpaid promotion of your company’s name, domain, and offerings. Including a link with a good anchor text and a clear call to action is essential to making a credible impression on your audience.

Link-building

Every time an algorithm is updated, link building becomes more of a challenge.

Guest posting can ensure you build high quality links to specific pages you want to boost “link juice” to, such as commercial pages and specific informational content. However, refrain from relying solely on guest blogging to boost your backlink profile.

For a fully comprehensive link building strategy, use guest posting in combination with other techniques for best results. Boost your public relations efforts with press releases and proactive and reactive techniques, as well as other traditional link efforts like niche editing and local citations.

Expansion of your target market

Creating guest articles for popular sites with your ideal readers might be a great way to reach out to them and gauge their interest. Being presented as an expert by an authoritative site within your niche can build trust and popularity with their audience, naturally leading to more leads and sales.

Increase traffic

Increase your site’s exposure and get potential new regular readers by guest posting on blogs that attract an audience similar to your own.

Increasing brand recognition and your own expertise can help you to gain both an extended social following as well as organic traffic to your website.

Finding effective guest post opportunities

So we have established that guest posting can benefit your overall marketing strategy beyond just building links. But how do you find quality guest posting opportunities?

Not all guest posting opportunities are created equal. To maximize your time, effort, and energy, you must be able to identify options for high-quality guest posts.

Let’s examine a few ways to get started.

• Do your own outreach
• Use SEO tools
• Check content relevance
• Check the intended audiences
• Check traffic volumes
• Engage readers

Do manual outreach

Never use a service that offers generic guest posts, since they often operate off a list that anybody can access. Often, these are low quality blogs that won’t benefit your company or personal brand or offer any kind of additional benefits like traffic, leads, or sales.

Usually these sites simply fit vanity metrics aimed to tempt site owners into buying guest posts in order to boost their backlink profiles. However, more often than not, these sites’ metrics have been manipulated and offer no real value.

To maximize the value of your links, you should do manual outreach instead of purchasing them from the same source as your competitors; after all, 77% of bloggers agree that blogging drives results.

To maximize the value of your links, you should do your own manual outreach instead of purchasing them from the same source as your competitors.

Once you have determined that the site fits the criteria best suited to you and your client, reach out to the webmaster or site editor and pitch them your ideas.

In most cases guest contributions are free, but there will be times where an administrators or webmaster fee is applicable.

Use SEO tools

To determine whether or not a site is high quality and ensure it is not part of a private blog network (PBN), you should use a tool like Ahrefs to look at metrics like Domain Rating (DR), User Rating (UR), and explore the backlink profile and referring domains.

There should be clarity on how guest pieces are to be submitted to the site. Most sites have their own criteria for putting together your guest post and editorial guidelines. If no contact details are provided, you can use tools like hunter.io to find the contact details of the website.

Check content relevance

Your chosen site should be appropriate for your niche or specialty. If the site doesn’t attract readers interested in your topic, there’s little purpose in contributing as a guest blogger there.

Intended audiences

The visitors to both of your sites should be in the same demographic. In most cases, audiences will be interested in significant themes.

For example, as an SEO expert, I contribute to a number of industry blogs including Ahrefs, Lumar, and OnCrawl. This helps to build my authority with their audience — people wanting to learn about SEO.

The volume of traffic

You want to ensure that any site you are contributing to actually has traffic. After all, you won’t get any of the benefits of guest posting if no one actually sees your content.

Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can give you an overview of a site’s traffic. Comparing this with their perceived domain authority can also give you an idea whether their metrics have been manipulated or not.

For example, a site that has an Ahrefs domain rating of 60+ but has zero traffic, has most likely been manipulated.

Engaged readers

Although a high volume of traffic is a great initial indicator, depending on the site (and niche) the traffic could all be directed to parts of the site other than the blog.

Look at the traffic for specific pages or use Ahrefs site explorer and look at “Top Pages” to see if blog articles get a percentage of the overall monthly traffic.

Go one step further and check the number of comments and shares of specific articles to get an idea of how interested people are in the subject matter. You want interested readers to engage with your content.

Final Thoughts

Posting as a guest blogger may be an excellent opportunity to introduce yourself and your business to a broader audience. At the same time, ensuring you spend your time and effort wisely by contributing to quality blogs is the only way to reap the associated benefits.

Remember to use guest posting as part of your wider link building strategy and combine it with digital PR efforts for the best results.