Several years ago, Google announced that guest blogging for the sole objective of accumulating as many backlinks as possible would no longer be rewarded. This came in the wake of marketers creating an abundance of low quality, spammy articles and posting them on external sites as a way of gaming the search engine ranking algorithms to improve the visibility of their sites. Fortunately, this is no longer viable but guest posting for the sake of sharing awesome content with a brand new audience absolutely is! Guest posting is one of the best ways to improve your niche authority and get your message across to a wider audience.
Jesse Linklater, writing for Sweet IQ states: “Established bloggers will usually bring with them a portion of their own traffic when they post on another blog. This is especially true if they are social media-savvy, when many of their Twitter and Facebook followers should reach your blog too.”
If you’re serious about guest blogging and want to build a brand in the long-term (not just accumulate a bunch of backlinks quickly!), follow these guidelines.
1. Pitch correctly
Not every site solicits guest posts, but for the ones that do, they normally have a guidelines page for pitching articles. It’s essential that you follow all their rules exactly to show that you’re someone who will take the opportunity seriously. Some sites require you to post a selection of potential headlines for approval, while others will request that you send a completed article and then work with them in order to finalise it via several rounds of edits. In any case, if you’re serious about forming a new working relationship and producing content that they will love – follow their instructions precisely.
2. Familiarise yourself with their site
It’s important that you spend some time checking out the content on the site you wish to feature on. It’s particularly crucial to understand what types of content resonates with the target audience, so you can hit the right spot with your guest post. Social media shares are often counted next to the article, so be sure to work out which articles receive the most engagement before you pitch anything. If they can see you’ve spent a lot of time researching their audience, they are much more likely to accept a guest post from you because it’s obvious that you care about delivering value.
3. Shoot for evergreen content
Articles which pertain to specific news stories or time bound events are great – newsjacking is an excellent way to insert your brand into a narrative and leverage the extra attention. However, when you’re writing a guest post, aim to produce something evergreen. In other words, produce content which will stand the test of time. You don’t want to be writing just for the audience who will see your article when it’s posted, but also for the people who will come to the page via a search engine enquiry several years from now. This is an excellent way to build your brand for the long-term.
4. Promote, promote, promote!
Just because it’s someone else’s site doesn’t mean you should allow them to do all the promotional work – this is a great way of never being invited back to do a guest post! Instead, take the promotional effort just as seriously as you would if you were publishing something on your own site. Remember to share the post to all of your social media accounts and answer any questions which might come up in the comment section on the guest site. Always be sure to tag any experts you mentioned or quoted in the article on social media, as this will bring even more attention to the post.
Conclusion
If you’re considering guest posting as an underhanded SEO tactic – don’t even bother, you won’t get anywhere. However, if you’re committed to providing high quality content to a range of sites which will truly help their audiences, guest posting can be incredibly powerful as a brand building strategy. Best of luck!
Tags: blogging, brand building
