One of the most important strategies for growing your site’s popularity is producing a blog post, then submitting it to a high-quality and well-known blog so that they can publish the blog on their own website. This is called guest posting. It is believed by many marketers that guest posting is five times more effective than writing a post on your own blog. Guest posting is a great way for new readers to become familiar with your product or service and for you to get your company and its product out into the virtual world.
Why Guest Posting Is So Important
- It introduces you to new communities. When you join an already-established community, your blog content can reach a lot of people who are a good fit for your blog—so posting to that community is an excellent way to get a fresh, informative discussion going. And, when you bring something unique to the situation, readers will turn into followers and fans—unless, of course, you only go there to promote your business’s products or services. Being there to help people means they will appreciate you and will come back to your site in the future. Spend some time with them and answer their questions and concerns. This is the only way to be an effective guest poster and get results.
- It is great for search engines. When guest posting for another blog, make sure you require them to let you link to your own site. This is a must when developing a guest post for another site, and works best when the link is towards the top of the article and surrounded by relevant content. If you guest post to many blogs, this builds up your collection of backlinks and enables Google to consider your site even more important.
- It builds relationships with other bloggers. Writing guest posts will enable you to develop connections with various blog owners. In short, guest posting produces mutual benefits. For the host, there is the advantage of receiving high-quality information that they did not write themselves. In addition, the public becomes familiar with your name and it generates backlinks to your site, which is a win-win situation for everyone.
Guest Posting Guide
Here is a quick “how-to” guide to guest posting:
- When looking for websites and blogs, choose ones that you think will gain some benefit from having links that lead back to your site.
- Develop proposals containing unique information to present to your target blog.
- Once you find a site you’re interested in, immediately begin to develop relationships with the webmasters.
- Be polite, and send notes to webmasters to let them know you wish to guest blog on their websites.
- Only include topics you have specifically discussed with the webmaster.
- Send the post you’ve written directly to the webmaster.
- Always send a follow-up email to the webmaster (who is as busy as you are!) so you can be sure the post is actually published on their site.
- After your guest blog is published, go to that site to ensure that the link works properly and leads back to your site.
- When a new guest post is published, make sure you promote the blog post on social media outlets and that you include a link to your own blog.
Guest posting is done for several reasons, including gaining new audiences and creating a network of backlinks and associations with other bloggers. Regardless of the reason, however, guest posting is a strategic marketing technique that is very effective.
