- What are Guest posts?
- Why Is Guest Posting important for your Business?
- How to get started with Guest Posting?
- How to find Guest Posting or Guest Blogging opportunities?
- Tips and recommendations for Guest Posting success
What are Guest posts?
Guest posting(or guest blogging) is writing and publishing an article on someone else’s website, and the articles that are written in this case are called guest posts.
And why do people do guest posting? – so they can get more traffic back to their website and increase the brand presence. Traffic from such sources is known as referral traffic.
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Why Is Guest Posting Important For Your Business?
Guest posting offers various benefits for any business or organization. By sharing your posts/articles on other websites, you can build credibility and establish yourself as an authority figure in the market, build relationships with other thought leaders and increase your brand presence.
Also, guest posts are a different way to engage users instead of the same old conventional blogs. Blogs, like OpenView, source most of their content from other industry leaders.
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How to get started with Guest Posting?
Before getting started with guest posting, it is important to be clear about what you want. Determine your guest blogging goals, which is the first crucial step in the process. Generally, these are a few of the guest blogging goals:
- Building credibility in your industry as a thought leader
- Getting traffic to your website and increasing brand awareness
- Building backlinks to your website (which is not recommended by Google itself). One way to achieve some of these goals, especially when focusing on backlinks, is through strategies like niche edits links, which involve inserting your links into existing content on relevant sites.
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After you have determined your guest posting goals, time to research and find guest blogging opportunities, here are a few ways to find guest posting/blogging opportunities:
1. Google Searches using Strings
As they say, Google has almost answers to everything. Google is one of the best places to find guest posting opportunities. Here is an intelligent way to do a keyword search on google:
The format is basically “keyword” “write for us”
Here keywords can be anything relevant to your industry or business.
Similarly, few other search types:
- “keyword” “submit a guest post”
- “keyword” “write for us”
- “keyword” “guest post”
- “keyword” “guest post by”
- “keyword” “guest blogging guidelines”
- “keyword” inurl:contributors
- “keyword” inurl:authors
2. Search Top Blogs
The best way to get the list of top blogs of an industry is by using google. Search for queries like Top E-Learning Blogs List, Top Marketing Blogs List.
Once you get this list, go through each blog and check its content and domain authority. You will find a lot of blogs this way, but not all might accept guest posting. Ensure you do a competitor check and do not approach your competitors.
3. Search Popular Individuals
Another way to do this is by searching for popular blogging individuals who have good followers and brand presence.
A few of the top influential marketing guest bloggers include Neil Patel, Jenny Halasz, Brian Harnish, Kevin Indig, Kirk Williams, Andy Merchant, Ian Chandler, and Larry Kim.
A guest post on prolific bloggers like this will increase your credibility and help you reach new audiences. Use the keywords prolific guest bloggers or top guest bloggers and the industry keyword to get a list of good bloggers.
4. Competitor Analysis
Another way is to do a competitor’s backlink analysis as part of your SEO strategy. There is a high chance that you will find guest post links.
You can do this by using tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer or by doing a google search link:www.domain.com – www.domain.com “guest post”
domain.com can be the domain of your competitor.
You can also check external links for a domain with the Screaming Frog tool. This can also help you hygiene check and ensure the websites you are linking to exist and are not returning a 404 or redirecting to different content.
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A Reality Check
All seems excellent about guest posting, right? But there are two things you need to be careful about:
- Few don’t like it
- Few charge for it
Yes, that’s the truth you need to know.
Few website owners or bloggers do not like asking them for a guest post collaboration. One of the reasons why few bloggers or websites do not accept outside contributions is that this tactic has been lately spammed by SEOs and marks them as poorly written articles for just links.
And then some websites ask you to pay to publish something on their site. Besides the financial aspect and the Return of Investments, this strategy might not be worth it as you have the risk of getting caught and might get penalized.
Paying for links is against Google’s policy, and if they find out, you will face a massive drop in your search engine rankings. Also, it is advisable to use no-follow links if you are guest posting.
So, Research plays a significant role in Guest Posting.
Now, after knowing all this, you might be wondering what to add to the content for guest posts? Is there any format that we should follow?
Here are a few tips and recommendations for Guest Posting
Tips and Recommendations for Guest Posting Success
1. Know your Audience
The most essential part of any blog is content. You should know your audience and write the blog accordingly. Speak directly to the reader’s problems, pain points, and needs, giving you attention and engagement.
2. Brand Alignment
Align the content with the author’s brand. Every author has a different and unique way of writing content. Similarly, every blog has a particular style of writing, a specific tone, and a unique way of approaching it. So, it is important to ensure that your guest post aligns with the blog or blogger’s style of writing to have the maximum impact. Be yourself but align your content with the brand guidelines.
3. Actionable Content
There is no point in writing a 5000-word blog with no actionable steps to readers. There should be a takeaway for readers from every blog. Always give the reader something to walk away from; it can be practical steps or a user guide. There is a high chance that the reader will recall you every time he needs help with anything related to the topic written, and it is a huge brand recall.
4. Don’t sell but still sell
One of the things that many writers go wrong with is direct selling. Few start their blog by selling their course or giving a quick redirect to a resource or another webpage. But this does not work anymore with plenty of resources available on the internet.
Content Marketing here plays a key role here. Creating online materials like articles, blog posts, social media posts, etc., that don’t directly promote a brand but still grab the reader’s attention and make them interested in your products or services.
The key to best content marketing is that it shouldn’t feel like marketing. Chose value addition over sales/leads.
5. Create a Hook from your Headlines
Headlines are the first thing that any reader reads, and the catchier it is, the higher the probability of someone reading the article/blog.
Consider the following headlines:
1. A guide to creating an effective meme marketing strategy.
2. How did XYZ company gain over a million followers on LinkedIn using meme marketing strategy?
Which one would you click? Probably, the second one, right?
Catchy headlines will give you more clicks and less bounce rate. Try to be creative and engage with your readers in your guest posts.
6. Use the right CTAs
Do not overload your content with CTAs. CTAs should be minimum, and only relevant ones are recommended to be used. If the content is not pertinent to your CTA, do not redirect users unnecessarily. Instead, redirect using the author section or a small contextual message in between. Redirecting users with irrelevant CTAs increases your bounce rate and is not user-friendly.
7. Use Infographics/Images
Infographics and Images are some of the best ways to represent your data in a simpler way. Many readers prefer infographics over long text-based content, which also helps in your image SEO. So, use infographics to the best impact possible, wherever needed.
So, in conclusion, guest posting or guest blogging is a crucial part of your SEO strategy, and guest blogging on popular sites with high credibility gives you massive leverage over your competitors in the industry.
Guest blogging is one of many marketing strategies to incorporate in your content marketing and SEO plans.
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