Guest posting is simply publishing an article on someone else’s website. 60% of bloggers write 1-5 guest posts a month and 3% write more than 100. It has become a massive part of running a successful blog by building potentially useful relationships with other bloggers in a certain niche. It is also an easy way to reach a whole new, relevant audience, and drive traffic back to your site.
In this article, we will show you how to create and execute a successful guest blogging strategy. Our aim is to equip you with all the necessary tools to use guest posting effectively to improve lead generation and gain more visibility for your business.
Determine Your Goals
Before you even start, your first task is to decide what your goal for guest blogging is. This is key in determining the right blogs to submit your guest posts to. Typically, there are three main goals that you should have at the back of your head before you start guest blogging.
- Getting traffic to your website is the main goal here. Traffic is everything in the online world.
- Establishing a name for yourself in your niche is also crucial.
- Although Google is not a fan, building backlinks can also be something to aim for while guest blogging.
You can achieve all these by posting the right content on top blogs. Sometimes you will need to post on a blog with an engaged audience, while sometimes all you need is a blog with a strong root domain authority.
Knowing your goals earlier will help you determine the kind of blog for you to guest post on.
Find Sites to Contribute to
After determining your goals, you’ll have to find a site that accepts guest authors and is looking for the content currently. Beyond that, you’ll need to ensure that posting on the site will help you meet your goals.
But how do you find a site that accepts guest blogging? There are lots of ways to do this. For starters, you can use Google to find these sites by using keywords such as ‘write for us’ or ‘become a contributor.
A site should not only be happy to accept your post, but it must also meet these criteria.
- The content on that site must be focused on your niche. You cannot go on to guest post on a site that has completely different content.
- The audience should also be interested in your type of content. 62.96% of readers perceive blogs with multiple authors to be more credible, so as long as the content interests the audience, you are good to go.
- The blog owner should preferably be active on social media so that you know that they will be promoting your content on their site.
Before You Pitch…
Pitching is approaching site owners to suggest a guest post, But before you do that, you must form a connection with them. For most site owners cold pitches won’t work unless the content is stellar.
Most site owners get tired of irrelevant pitches and poor quality content, according to Pageonepower. For this reason, they’ll only take guest content from people they already know, trust, and are fond of. But the million-dollar question is, how do you become one of those people? Here’s how.
Understand Their Blog Content and Audience
Getting to know and comprehend your target blog’s content is key. Sure, you already know that the content matches your niche. But you need to know even more about that content, such as, what level of audience they are writing for, and what makes most of their content. Is it general concepts or specific, any detailed tutorials? or do they like lists?
How Are The Other Guest Bloggers Doing?
Some sites might accept guest posts, but the audience only ends up tuning in for the blog owner. If there are other guest blogs on the blog, you need to know if they do well. Also, check if the owner gives the guest blogs comments and social sharing. If not, you don’t expect to do so well if your goal is to get traffic back to your website.
Make Your Pitch
The next step in creating a guest posting strategy is to finally sell your content idea to the site owners through email.
Make sure to connect with site owners on social media, so you can tag them when you share the content on their site. You can share anything you like and include a comment so it’s not just a plain link. Commenting on their blogs and signing up for their email marketing newsletter are also effective ways of creating a connection.
Submit a Great Guest Post
The common question when it comes to guest blogging is whether or not you should be using your best content for your guest posting. Actually, it depends on the quality of the blog you are submitting the content to.
If the site has 500-word articles with images, then your content should go in line with that trend. Businesses that blog have 434% more indexed pages than businesses that don’t create content, so having state of the art content on your guest blogs is an added advantage. Below are some tips to make your guest post as astounding as you can.
It's Not All About You
Information about you and your business should be on your author Bio. A guest post should never be all about your business, products, or services. It should be a source of information and not an advertisement. However, occasional mentions here and there won’t do you any harm.
Create Similar Content
Take a close look at posts on the site. If there is any special formatting on their blogs, make sure that your guest post has similar elements matching other posts on the site. For precise content, you can count on us to provide the best SEO services to take your content to the next level.
Include Internal Links
Quality guest post content should include internal links to your client’s posts. This will do you a favour by showing them that you have gone through their content and you understand it.
Generally, guest blogging on relevant eminent sites is a great way to soar levels and achieve the success of already popular blogs in your industry. Follow the strategy above and grab those guest blogging opportunities to grow your business or brand.
