Both guest blogging and link building are some of the most powerful SEO tactics. These can bring best ranking results when done right. SEOs all over the world are always striving to better these two techniques to get the most out of their digital marketing campaigns.

Although you can find so many failing examples of guest blogging, it is still a recommended tool from Google. Most of those failed attempts have errors from their own sides without even realizing them. Correct guest blogging always boosts brands beyond limits making it famous on the digital arena.

First, lets get our concepts clear about what guest blogging really is:

Guest Blogging – What Is It?

Also termed as Guest Posting, is an activity where you publish your content on other websites, blogs or online companies that will preferably be related to your own business website niche. A link to your own website is posted in the guest blog content that helps drive traffic from that platform to yours.

Adding links to your site however is becoming difficult with time as major platforms are now stripping out links altogether or at times only offer nofollow links. Yet, Guest Blogging is here to stay for a very long time and it has been there for a long time too.

The one major aspect you need to keep in mind is industry niche. Both your website and the one where you are posting should be from the same niche industry. This should be a collaboration between two websites from the same niche in the perfect scenario.

Reputed websites and online companies also usually invite quality authors to write content for their website and post on their blogs. This often brings a backlink to author’s own websites in return.

How Guest Blogging Provides Benefits:

There actually are several Guest Blogging Benefits that have made it one of the most loved activities for many SEOs. Some of the major ones are:

• Boosted brand awareness – Your brand gets to a lot more audiences through guest posting
• Possible more transactions for sites – Sign up pages for newsletter and links on landing pages also prompt readers and visitors to perform more transactions on your site
• Contacts and references that you can use – Another benefit is reference-building with guest blogging. You build contacts that can come useful at any time
• Speed up your sales – With efficient guest blogging, you will not have to wait for visitors to come to your website. Getting to your links from external sources, they will be able to buy quickly

How to Use Guest Blogging as Your Link Building Tool – Pro Strategy

Start with Finding Relevant Opportunities

Planning is the mother of success. You will need to plan your guest blogging strategy from scratch in order for it to work. Go on Google and get down to finding welcoming guest blogging opportunities. They are all there, you just need to find the right ones.

Searching for queries with your business niche in them often provides best search results. Also add phrases like “write for us”, “guest blog”, “guest post” or “contributor” at the end to find results that you are looking. If you are from the interior design niche, your search query can be something along the lines of “design write for us” or “design guest blog”.

Analyzing your competitor’s links is a must do as well. From your selected websites, you can see which bloggers are posting links on them. You should be able to see their major strengths and weaknesses. Smaller and medium sized platforms that do not have that many blogs to post on that many websites can do this easily. Larger settings can use tools like the Moz Link Explorer or Netpeak Spider.

Influencers play a vital role as well. Successful bloggers always seek help from influencers. These are heavy ranking site owners who influence decisions of their readers by appraising products and services of brands. You need to socialize with influencers of your niche and build relations with them over the internet. Their websites will come very useful when posting your guest blogs on them.

Now, Refine Your Found List of Websites for Guest Posting

Having made your list of potential gust blog target websites, now you need to go through them in detail and refine the list. Study those websites deeply and keywords on them that are ranking for content. With this data, you can analyze your content placement costs. Some of the important considerations are:

• Their own domain authority (DA) needs to be 50 or above. Any less and you are probably wasting your time and money. Although this might not always be the case.
• Their content quality is of great importance. More valued content will keep them safe in the future. Google has been particularly vigilant for content quality lately.
• How much organic traffic they get will make your links more important. They will also be able to lend more traffic for your website if they have a good amount of their own.
• Author Bio and your post location on their website is important as well. When your content published at a prominent place (their main pages at top spots), chances are great of people clicking on them.

Low traffic websites and the ones with small number of keywords don’t matter much. Get rid of them in your list. In fact, they can sometimes be harmful to your ranking outcome. Websites with a narrow theme that is directly relevant to your own niche are always most beneficial.

In case you find a quality site that is general, do make sure to select an anchor according to your promotion plan. Narrowly specified sites can have your anchors based on their own keywords as well.

Start Brainstorming Content Ideas

Then comes the most important part (many would argue there are more important parts). It is creating your content. Above all, your written content in shape of articles should be attractive and thematic in accordance with the host website. It should be compelling pulling attention from visitors and readers.

When starting to write your article, be sure to analyze content trends in vast detail. Visit other sites and blogs to get a better understanding of what is in people’s discussions on the web. This can take a bit of time but will be worth the effort when you finally create a piece of content that does all you need.

Your titles and headings will almost always be the most attractive parts in any content-based article. One thing you always need to account for is that your content should be readable and helpful for both beginners and pros. Keeping this in mind, you should be able to create compelling high-quality content at all times. Be sure to use this content on the above-discussed high-quality sites.

Move on to Your Outreach

Having made and refined your list of potential blog websites that you will be posting your content on, its time to reach out to them. Not every blogger will be willing to accept your content and not all of them will even see your outreach attempts. Usually, their “Contact Us” section is a pretty good start.

When you don’t get much response from their Contact Us section, world doesn’t end there. You can explore some other avenues as well. Go on social media and find their representative bloggers and writers. Add page admins and company leadership and talk to them in any way that you can.

All this is good for your relation building in the industry as well. Tools like Anymail Finder can help you locate emails of people you need to contact. You might have to wait a bit to get that response you are looking for when reaching out. Substantial bloggers are busy and have tons of requests to process before they get to yours.

You must be ready to spend as much time as required in relation building with reputed bloggers and website owners. Having found their social media profiles, comment on them and get under their radar. Be sure to follow below rules when sending out cold emails to bloggers:

• Do not use unnatural company name-based addresses, they are often directed to spam folders with filters.
• Write original text in your emails and try to be engaging with the bloggers on target.
• Make sure to refer to content found on their website as you would have studied it. Point areas to them where your content can be beneficial for their blogs or pages. Suggest your own article placement where necessary.
• Offer them interesting and valuable guest post ideas that they can use and get in touch with you for their completion.
• Offer them some gains as well like sharing their website or blog on your own social media feeds. Make them feel that the thing is of mutual benefit and not just yours.

Create Your Content for Posts Adhering to All Discussed Points

Now, it is time to create your attractive content. Keep in mind all the mentioned points and go about the job professionally. Make sure to keep SEO requirements in mind when creating your content. Optimize it internally and organically with keyword placement and natural ideas.

Do avoid rusty anchors like “click here”, “follow the link” or “get more info with this link” etc. Find organic and attractive ways of guiding traffic to your landing pages. These types of anchors don’t really get attention from readers anymore. Ensure to proof-read your written material before sending it to be posted. The blogger will read it thoroughly scrutinizing it under various tools as well.

Be Patient and Track Your Results

Every SEO or at least professional ones have gotten used to the fact that results will not come immediately. And they simply don’t. You have to be patient and also track progress continuedly without getting frustrated. However, you should see results within a week or two from when you posted content on a blogger’s website.

A well-organized tracking system goes a long way into telling you how stuff works. You will have to determine efficiency of each post on any third-party website and distinguish positive trends coming from it. This will help you shape your future posts accordingly as well.

Google Analytics is a great tool as always and provides proper insight into what is going on and how. You will see all your affected keywords and also how much traffic is being brought in by that link on a host site. Keep track and modify your approach accordingly to get best results at all times.

Summary

All this discussion should have made clear that guest blogging when done right can improve your brand awareness greatly. It also helps your site build SEO authority. People will see your site a lot more when you have posted your links in content on powerful host sites.

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