We’ve all heard about the benefits of blogging, but what about blogging as a guest?
Guest blogging is just like blogging for your own website with the added bonus of increased online exposure and some extra SEO points.
Sounds good, right? So how does it work?
Let’s take a closer look at what guest blogging is and how it can benefit a business.
Where to pitch for a guest blog
The first thing to consider when creating a guest blog post is where it could be published.
Think about the industry that you are in, then focus on the publications and brands that align with your work and values.
More often than not, the target audience for those websites will be potential customers that you want to speak to as well.
For example, a health and wellness website probably wouldn’t be a good match for a software developer specialising in the airline industry. But a trade publication about airlines would be.
Think about traffic (the website kind)
The amount of traffic a website attracts should be a key consideration when guest blogging.
This is because you want to maximise the effort of writing a guest blog post by placing your work in front of a large online audience.
As an added bonus, websites with high traffic rates often have a strong social media following, which provides another opportunity for your work to be promoted via likes, Tweets and shares.
However, don’t wait for guest blog post opportunities to fall into your lap.
Once you’ve identified the most relevant websites for your industry, niche and target audience, reach out to the people behind the scenes to introduce yourself and find out what they are looking for.
Finally, make sure the topic of the blog falls within the scope of your business or brand. Then back up your points by linking to credible sources to position yourself as a thought leader.
What are the benefits of guest blogging?
The biggest benefit of guest blogging is a welcome SEO boost for your website.
A guest blog post should link back to your site and social media channels, as well as include a brief author bio to provide further context about who you are and what you do.
But why do you need backlinks in the first place? In a nutshell, they attract traffic to your website and help with building domain authority.
Search engines like Google crawl websites to detect links, shares and likes.
So, the more links there are, the more relevant the content will appear to the search engine, which means a website will appear higher up in the search results.
Aside from the technical benefits though, guest blogging is great for networking and connecting with others within your industry.
No man (or woman) is an island, and collaboration can work wonders for the reputation of a business.
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Want to know more about my copywriting services? Get in touch at hello@hayleymaguire.com.
Hayley Maguire 