Guest blogging has been a staple in the online marketing world for a while now. There are multiple benefits of guest blogging to help build your online presence. Guest blogging can help you build links back to your website for search engine optimization benefits. It can build brand awareness around your company. Thirdly, guest blogging can drive targeted traffic directly to your website.
Guest Blogging To Build Back Links
Back in the old days (about a year ago), the best way to increase your search engine rankings was to get other websites to link to your website. Since Google’s been on its algorithm updating rampage over the last couple of years, that’s changed a little bit. While having links from quality websites that are relevant to your industry can still be beneficial, the general links back to your website have lost a little value. Writing articles with your expertise on popular websites in your industry is a way to get those still important links back to your website. When you are guest blogging, you will usually get at least a byline on your article where you can put a link back to your website, and you should also try to link in your article back to your own website. It’s a good practice to link to an article or two that you don’t own as well so that you don’t give the impression of being too self-promotional.
Guest Blogging For Brand Awareness
When you start guest blogging for popular news sources in your industry, it will no doubt get your name in front of your target audience. When your audience starts seeing your name pop up as the guest contributor and the author of articles that they find educational, they will begin to see you as a leading voice in your industry.
Guest Blogging Can Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Website
By contributing to websites that your customers visit on a regular basis and look to as a source of information, you will naturally be getting the attention of your target demographic. So in addition to getting links back to your website to help your search rankings, building your credibility and spreading your brand awareness, you are directly driving high quality traffic back to your website. The key to taking advantage of this opportunity, is to have a link in your guest article to another related article on your own website. A good idea would be to write guest content that is usually looked for by your target audience when they are entering your sales funnel. Then towards the end of your guest article, you suggest next steps to be taken and link to an article on your own website that offers that information that they would need next. This way you are building a natural path to get in front of your potential customers and providing them a valuable series of content that is useful to them.
Do You Take Advantage Of Guest Blogging?
How do you find guest blogging opportunities? Have you seen success with it or have you had a negative experience? Leave your thoughts in the comments!