The Guide to Using Guest Blogging as a Link Building Strategy

Want to give guest blogging a shot but don’t know where to start?

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!

Despite so many other ways to promote your business, like Instagram or Snapchat, 53% of marketers still claim that blogging is their top priority when it comes to inbound marketing. That’s why many of them choose to invest in guest blogging as an effective link building strategy.

Nevertheless, guest blogging is a rather controversial topic and many marketing professionals still remain skeptical as to whether it is still effective for SEO.

So why does Guest Blogging have such a Controversial Reputation?

4 years ago, Matt Cutts, who is a former head of web spam at Google, wrote an article about guest blogging, claiming that this is a “spammy practice” and that he wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting. He based his claim on a letter from a guest blogger offering their services in a very spammy manner.

Even though the article was written a while ago, many marketers still remain hesitant about guest blogging as a good link building strategy and an effective approach to inbound marketing in general.

However, it’s important to emphasize that the article by Matt Cutts is rather emotional than objective and insightful. Moreover, the stats show the results in favor of guest blogging: 57% of business bloggers have outsourced blog posts from guest blogging.

Of course, there’s more to guest blogging than you think. If approached with the wrong intentions, it definitely can look like spam and can be a real threat to your reputation. Guest blogs of a bad quality will definitely be taken down by Google, who are particularly picky when it comes to high-quality content.

So How Should You Approach Guest Blogging to Make it Benefit You?

We’ve prepared a complete guide for both marketers and bloggers who want to use guest blogging for their benefit. By following these easy and clear steps you’ll be able to approach guest posting sensibly and use it to benefit your brand.

Step #1: Find the Places Where Guest Posts Live

If you’re a blogger looking for places to outsource your articles or a marketer looking for well-established guest bloggers, you need to know how to find a place that will fit your needs.

So how can you find guest post targets?

Way #1: Google Keyword Search

You can find a guest post target by using the good old keyword search. Here are some clues for you to use:

Way #2: Twitter Search

Guest authors often use social media to inform the vast audiences about their work. If you’re marketer looking for a guest blogger, this is the best way to find one. Twitter, in particular, will help you find guest blogging opportunities you couldn’t find on Google.

How to use Twitter to find guest bloggers?

Go to Twitter search and type in your keyword and “guest post”.

After that, you’ll get a search result with tweeted guest posts.

Way #3: AllTop.com

If you’re not interested in spending hours looking for guest blogging resources around the Internet, there’s one place where all guest blogging opportunities are collected together – AllTop.com.

Go to this website, select your topic and you’ll find all guest blogging opportunities in your niche.

Way #4: Influencer Blogging

Influencer marketing is the latest and the most popular trend in modern-day marketing. Influencers have huge numbers of followers, who you can instantly reach by inviting an influencer to write a guest post for you. Influencer guest posting is also a great way to increase customer awareness if you own an e-commerce business.

How can you find an influencer that suits your needs?

• Identify the niche you’re working in. This will be the decisive factor when choosing an influencer to work with, as they also need to be interested in the same niche.
• Select the topic. It’s better to discuss the topic with the influencer instead of just imposing your own ideas. Influencers are creative people and can offer you some fresh ideas and insights. “When working with on a guest blog with an influencer, let them be ahead of the creative process”, says Ann Johnson, a content manager from A-Writer. “This way you’ll get the original content you’ve been looking for.”
• Discuss the links that will be present in the article. Influencers often require including the links to their own resources, but your task is to make sure that all the links are included organically. Stellar SEO, a highly sought after link building company stated that relevancy is the most important part of a good guest post placement.
  
  

Step #2: Set the Requirements

A successful blog is one of the 5 key elements to consider when building a website. So you need to fill it with good high-quality content if you want your website to be informative and insightful.

The only way to do that is to set the requirements for your content up front. No matter if you’re a marketing specialist looking for guest bloggers, or a writer looking for guest blogging opportunities, you need a serious, concrete approach to the quality of content you’ll work with later.

Even before you select a topic, you need to make sure that you’ve set the following requirements:

• The content should be straightforward – imagine the disappointment of your readers when they see the exact opposite of what they were expecting? The content should give practical advice and be directly linked to your niche. This is the major requirement for the success of your guest blog.
• Personalization is the major target – the content should appeal to each reader in particular, offering a solution to a specific issue.
• Backlinks aren’t the key reason for creating content – if you use guest blogging as a link building strategy, strangely enough, backlinks aren’t the major reason for creating a post. What you should really be interested in is creating original content, where all the links are included organically. Greedily pushing the backlinks will not only harm the content but it will also affect your brand’s reputation.

Step #3: Give the Content a Thorough Examination

It would be a mistake to claim that you’re safe when doing guest blogging. If you’re a writer, you can be tricked in many different ways and your reputation can be severely damaged. And if you’re a marketer collaborating with a guest writer, you can get content that is unoriginal and of a low quality.

Guest blogging can be an effective link building strategy but only if you keep an eye on it. When the content is ready, check it for:

• Organic links. Since you use guest blogging as a link building strategy, it’s absolutely vital to check the links first. All backlinks should be relevant and helpful.
• The originality of the content. Make sure that your website isn’t guilty of plagiarism in Google’s point of view if you want it to appear on the first page of search results.

Making sure that the content doesn’t contain any grammatical or spelling mistakes is even out of the discussion. If you don’t thoroughly proofread the content, you'll leave all the mistakes in it and it will show that you treat the content carelessly.

What Happens When the Content is Published?

Use social media to notify your followers about a new guest post on your blog. After that, check the results of your link building strategy. You can use website analytics tools like Google Analytics and other online tools. By doing a repost on social media you’ll be able to increase the number of visitors, which will positively influence the results of the link building strategy.

Don’t Abuse the Benefits of Guest Blogging

There’s no doubt that guest posts can benefit your link building strategy, but if you overpower the content with links, you’ll turn it into spam. Use guest blogging wisely, and there’s no doubt that it will benefit you. For additional tips you can visit this link building guide.