Guest Posting, Why You Should Be Doing it Now

Guest posting is one of the most valuable actions you can take to get your name and valuable content out on the web. In its early stages, guest posting started out as a way for multiple websites to share content or cite one another in a mutually beneficial way. Now it can be seen as one of the most positive action items to boost your visibility and rankings on Google and other search engine platforms.

WHAT IS GUEST POSTING?

Guest posting, in its simplest terms, is posting a blog or piece of content on another website other than your own. Guest posting doesn’t always have to be a blog, it can have many forms of content, such as Digital Assets. In almost all cases, Guest posting benefits all parties involved. One website gets “Free Content” while the other gets traffic and exposure. Sounds easy right? Although in theory, it is simple, you should have a well thought out strategy in place to get the most out of your guest posting efforts.

GUEST POSTING STRATEGY

Follow these steps to harness all the benefits of guest posting:

• Goal Setting – What are your goals? Are you trying to acquire as many links as possible or do you want to capture more followers? Knowing what you are you are trying to accomplish is key.
• Competition – The overall goal for any marketing campaign is to beat your competition, so it is important to see where your competition stands and where they are getting their links from. There are a lot of valuable tools such as Moz that you can use to help narrow down your search. Your strategy should be to first, mirror what your competition is doing and then second, find out what more you could do.
• Google is a Tool, Use It – You can go to the search bar and type in what keyword you want to rank for or subject related to your business you would like to write about, followed by, “accepting guest posts”, or “write for us”, or something similar. When we look for guest post opportunities for ourselves, the queries look much like the following:
• Reach Out – Once you have compiled an extensive list of the domains you would like to target, you move on to the outreach phase of guest posting. If you are doing these guest posts yourself, it is important that you use an email in the reach out process that has your business name affiliated so your message doesn’t look like spam. When you reach out, it is important to introduce yourself and your business. You should also include something that makes you better than your competition and include a value add for them as well. This generally comes in the form of offering to produce the content.

BENEFITS OF GUEST POSTING

Creating and implementing the strategic items above keep potential shortfalls from coming your way as a result of your efforts. One shortfall that is unavoidable is the time these strategies take to implement. If time is of the essence for you and your efforts, it may be more productive to hire a provider. If you do hire a provider make sure they are clear on their link building strategy. Google’s algorithm is advanced enough to catch bad link building that doesn’t make sense for your industry, so always err towards the side of caution. Always work with Google and their algorithm rather than trying to manipulate it. Some of the biggest benefits can include:

1. Building your Brand Awareness – You are posting your brand and expertise all over the internet. Make sure when producing your content, it is done with the intent behind it. Don’t produce content just for the sake of producing.
2. Broaden Your Audience – New eyes will be placed on your content. Make sure you captivate their attention and make new fans.
3. Relationship Building – By keeping the same things in mind discussed above you will build relationships with your new readers and the site to which you are posting. As long as your content is quality, the sites and their owners will begin to trust you and you will become the industry expert they lean on when any questions come up.
4. Links – Although your strategy around guest posting should be more focused on what is listed above, it will help your rankings on Google.

START GUEST POSTING TODAY

Chances are the competition in your market is already using guest posting as one of their marketing strategies. If you aren’t guest posting yet, you are wasting time on capturing new audiences and helping your google rankings… What are you waiting for?