Why Guest Blogging is Vital in Growing Your Audience
There are lots of reasons to blog – maybe to get your story out there, maybe to boost visitors to your website to sell products or services, or maybe to share information and be an authority.
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Whatever your reason for blogging, you need an audience and this audience needs to grow for the blog to prosper. One of the proven ways to do this is through guest blogging. Here we look at why guest blogging is vital in growing your audience.
What is guest blogging?
The idea behind guest blogging is simple – you get someone else to write on your blog. They talk about a subject that is relevant to your blog and to theirs. They speak in their own voice, with their own message, and tell a story their way. You can host guest bloggers and you can pitch yourself to other blogs as a guest blogger – both are beneficial for the same reasons.
Sometimes people do paid guest blogging or require payment to host a blogger on their site. I’m not going to go into this too much as it is a mega complicated area but will just touch on it to say that if you do take payment for a guest blogging site, make sure any links are no-follow. Otherwise, you could get into trouble with Google!
Does it have to be a two-way street?
No, guest blogging isn’t always about swapsies. You don’t have to write for someone or have them write for you. It can be one or the other.
You may want to discuss a specific topic with the audience of a specific blog, perhaps not even something you have written about on your own blog. Or you may want someone to bring their knowledge of a subject to your blog and write about something you don’t feel confident writing about.
How Do I Get Started With Guest Blogging?
Make sure you know exactly what you want to get out of your guest blogging experience before you begin. Look for industry blogs run by non-competitor firms where you may provide genuine information to readers.
There’s no denying that spam is rife on the internet. It’s your responsibility to make sure you’re not posting to these kinds of blogs or producing spammy material on your own blog.
Here are some things to consider before asking someone to guest blog for you or vice-versa:
- Is there a large number of people who visit this blog or blogger and leave comments? Are they active participants, sharing blogs with their friends and social networks?
- Do they have a Facebook or Twitter account where they frequently post their own articles?
- Do they have a lot of authority in their industry that would improve my SEO ranking?
- Is their profession and experience a good fit for me?
Here’s a little-known secret: When looking for blogs to publish on, use keywords relevant to your industry and “guest post,” “write for us,” or anything similar. For example, if you wanted to write about inbound marketing, you could search Google:
- Inbound marketing guest post
- Inbound marketing guest post guidelines
- Inbound marketing seeking guest posts
- Inbound marketing write for us
- Inbound marketing guest post submissions
This will assist you in finding relevant industry blogs that are interested in the subject you’re writing about and now taking contributions from guest bloggers.
Why guest blogging is vital
So regardless of which route you go down, the benefits are similar and guest blogging is vital for growing your audience and your blog. Here’s why.
1. Traffic
Say you have a guest blogger who writes for your blog. They link back to their own site during the article. So visitors might travel off to their blog. But also the blog itself will draw more traffic to your blog in the first place.
Also, the guest blogger will often mention on social media that they have written a guest post. This will include a link to their post on your blog and some of their followers will click it and then come and visit. You will also share the post with your followers, increasing the guest blogger’s exposure to a new audience.
2. Exposure
We mentioned exposure there and the more you get, the more people come to your blog. Say you get mentioned by a celebrity on their Twitter feed – that gets you loads of exposure, people will flood your blog and your ratings will rise. Guest blogging is a more reliable, lower scale way of doing this.
3. Credibility
There are a few ways to boost the credibility of a website and guest blogging is a good one. Sure, you want to be seen as an expert on your topic – but no expert knows everything. By having guest blogs from other experts offering their experiences and viewpoints, you can enhance your own credibility and offer an ever better experience for visitors.
4. Link building
Link building has got itself a bit of a bad name of late, mainly due to all those dodgy strategies over the last few years, throwing in links anywhere just to get a link in – no context, no benefit to the reader, and no real point.
But positive, proper link building can enhance your site – the more quality sites that link to yours, the better it rates. And vice versa, for the guest blogger’s site too.
How Does Guest Blogging Impact SEO?
The simple answer is that, as long as you are cautious and considerate in producing high-value guest blogs for reputable websites, guest blogging may be an excellent method to boost your domain authority and rise in search engine results.
However, many have questioned if guest blogging would have a detrimental influence on their business. Many marketers have chosen to avoid it due to the potential of “spam bloggers,” who offer money to blog owners in order for them to accept low-quality content for their own link building and SEO benefit.
Finally, in the end, providing quality, useful, and relevant information to educate readers rather than low-quality content designed only as a vessel for links to your website is what constitutes an SEO-boosting guest blogging technique.
Guest blogging is a terrific method to boost your site rankings as long as your content is of high quality. Google sees it the same way: if other people are linking to your blog on their own sites, the material on your website must be relevant and compelling.
It advances in Google’s PageRank if individuals comment, share, like, or link to your blog. As a result, it will be higher up in Google’s search results when someone searches for a comparable subject.
Although Google PageRank is just an algorithm, it can’t tell the difference between dynamic content and spam. While cramming your guest blog articles with links and keywords will push you higher up in the ranking, it is unlikely to generate new, high-fit visitors and certainly won’t help establish you as an authority in your field.
What Does High-Quality Guest Blogging Look Like?
The key to producing a high-quality guest blog is to consider it as a value-add for your readers rather than an advertising vehicle!
Guest blogs, like any type of inbound material, should be designed to educate rather than promote your own product or service. If the subject is relevant to your business, there’s no issue featuring it in your blog. But there’s a significant difference between marketing yourself and providing useful, implementable information to your readers.
Instead, create guest blogs with the goal of establishing yourself as an expert figure in your area and gaining a new audience.
Here are a few more short suggestions to assist you develop your guest blogging plan:
Write a strong, succinct author bio. Although some businesses allow you to include links back to your website within the main body of your blog, many prohibit it or change the links over time. As a result, your bio will almost certainly be the only location in your guest post that contains a permanent link back to your website.
Within your guest post, try to incorporate at least one relevant internal link back to one of the firm’s prior blog entries. They’ll appreciate your efforts and this little action will enhance their authority and traffic.
End each post with a call to action to encourage readers to leave comments. The more people that comment and share your blog, the more popular it will be on search engine results pages (SERPs).
On your own social media platforms, promote your guest blog post. This is a kind gesture that will also bring more visitors to your hosted writer’s business. It should now be second nature for you to share your material, and it’s a wonderful method to say “thank you” for offering up your guest post.
Track how much traffic your guest post receives using Google Analytics. This will provide you with a better idea of what people are searching for and interested in, allowing you to figure out what works best for your business.
Adding a user to WordPress
In my reading and experience with a guest blogger on another of my blogs, I found it easier to add them as a user on my WordPress site. That meant they had limited access to the site to add their article, images, and links but couldn’t change the big stuff about the website.
I used a tutorial from WP Beginner to walk me through the process but here are the highlights.
- To add a new user, click Users in your main WP menu and select Add New.
- Fill out the form with the guest blogger’s details – give them a username or use the one they have on their own site. You’ll need their email for them to receive the invitation and you can then add their name, own website, and give them a password. You can select to send this via email.
- Finally, select a role – the author allows them to create and publish the post while the contributor lets them create but you have to publish.
Once created, you can add, amend or delete the user through the same Users section and assign them different roles if required. It isn’t advisable to let them be Admin unless they are going to be permanently running the website with you as this lets them amend everything on the site.
Hit social media
In the lead up to the post, you can generate a bit of interest by telling your social media followers that you are hosting a guest blogger. The guest blogger will likewise do something similar with their followers.
After the post is live, advertise it like you would your own posts and this will get more exposure for both of you. You may even gain some new followers from the process, as may your guest blogger.
Quality above quantity
The last key point to make applies to blogs in general – it is all about the quality not the quantity of posts. You could have a hundred guest bloggers but if they all wrote complete crap, then it wouldn’t do your blog any good. You need to offer good quality, relevant posts that fit in with the niche of the blog and are well written. Otherwise, your efforts to use guest blogging to increase your audience will be of limited success.
Have you had positive or negative experiences with guest blogging? Or would you like to guest blog here and tell everyone about your experiences? Get in touch and we can chat!!
