Guest blogging is a way to gain links and exposure for your website. It has been one of the most popular strategies for building high-quality links for several years. However, some misconceptions surround it, such as:
— It takes hundreds or thousands of hours to guest blog on established publications with high domain authority
— Guest blogging is dead because Google penalized aggressive link building strategies
— Links from guest posts are worthless unless they’re from top-tier publications like Mashable and Lifehacker
These rumors have circulated for so long that many people have become disillusioned with guest blogging as a link building tool. In this post, we’re going to show you how you can use guest blogging to build high-quality links, even if you don’t have a large budget or connections at top publications.
Link Building Strategies
The first step in building these links is figuring out your end goals. Once you know what kind of value your business wants from the links, it becomes much easier to put together a plan and execute it successfully. There are three main categories of goals for using guest blogging as a link building strategy:
— Generating traffic
— Increasing conversions
— Boosting brand name awareness
Although you can use guest blogging to achieve multiple goals simultaneously, you’ll want to focus on one main goal if your resources are limited. Depending on the type of business you have and how much time you can dedicate to this project, one strategy will be more beneficial.
Generating Traffic
If traffic is your number-one priority, publishing content on websites already established in your industry should be your primary focus. These sites already receive millions of views each month from people interested in their topics. If you manage to get a link from any of these publications, it will send an immediate boost to the rankings of your website or blog for related search queries. Because many high-traffic sites receive hundreds or even thousands of guest posts each week, you’ll have competition for a spot on their homepage or blogroll. However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to succeed with this tactic — if you follow our tips below, you should be able to publish content on sites that receive a lot of traffic and bring valuable visitors to your site.
Increasing Conversions
If your goal is to increase conversions by earning more visibility for your website, then the best option is to search for high-converting guest blogging websites in your industry. For example, let’s say you own an eCommerce store selling wedding invitations. In this case, publishing content on The Knot will not only send a stream of clicks and social shares to your website but may also convince readers to purchase invitations if they haven’t already.
Boosting Brand Name Awareness
If you want to do it to raise brand awareness, then the best thing you can do is find publications that resemble top-tier sites in your industry. By targeting websites that are smaller than Mashable or Lifehacker but still receive tens of thousands of visitors each month, you’ll be able to get on their radar and attract new followers who are interested in your niche. Once these visitors see the value in your content and start following you regularly, there’s a good chance that some will go on to become customers or even subscribers.
The Process
Once you know what kind of link building benefit you want to accomplish, you can start thinking about the guest posts that will help you meet your goals. When choosing which publications to target, keep in mind that they need to be reputable sources of information within your industry. Focusing on high-quality sites with content targeted towards your customers or followers will make it much easier for people to recognize how valuable your content is.
As we said before, many popular websites receive hundreds of submissions every month; if their standards are too low, publishing on these resources won’t bring any benefits whatsoever. Furthermore, even if a site isn’t well known or respected among your audience members, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s not worth reaching out to them — as long as they’re relevant. Your guest post is high-quality; you should be able to get a link from them.
These publications all look different, but the one thing they all have in common is that they’re willing to accept and consider submissions from credible sources like yourself. By taking some time to browse through each website’s guidelines and past guest posts, you’ll get an idea of the content they publish and how your submission will fit in with their history of successful works.
Closing Thoughts
Guest blogging is a way to gain valuable links and increase the traffic on your website, but it’s not easy. Because most high-traffic sites receive hundreds of guest post submissions every day, you’ll have to exert effort to stand out from the crowd.
