Top 10 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Is Important For Your SEO
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By Mervyn Kinuthia on December 30, 2017
Nowadays, guest posting is quite synonymous with backlinking and off-page SEO. There are many benefits that would accrue to any site editor that chooses to actively engage in guest posting in the long term. One of these benefits is the opportunity to build new relationships. Even though not a lot of people put enough effort into networking, you’d be surprised by the results you get when you build strong partnerships with influencers in your niche.
But networking is just one of the benefits. There are many other advantages you enjoy by posting your own content on other people’s sites. This article will cover the top 10.
Targeted Traffic
The secret to getting solid results when guest posting is quality content. Yes, content is still king. Unfortunately, not many people truly appreciate this maxim. Quality content draws in quality traffic to your guest blog. If you have optimized the blog with links back to your site well enough not to appear spammy, it will blow your mind how high the quality of content you receive.
By optimizing your guest posts with various forms of media and well researched but easily palatable information, you convince others to link back to your guest post which with a little bit of outreach can propel your guest post to a top spot in the SERPs.
Of course, if you manage to rank for a certain term, you will be receiving top of the cream traffic and who doesn’t want that!
Authority Blogger
By guest posting you’re letting people know of the existence of your brand and/or of you. A guest post is a great way to let people know that you’re a bona fide expert in your field. You do this by putting out content that’s not run-of-the-mill. When you choose to use guest posting for branding purposes you need to show people why they should take you seriously. Create content that is both entertaining but also comprehensive and well researched. There are a couple of ways to do this.
The easiest is by quoting your sources. So, you can link to another site that you used for reference or use annotations when quoting to an offline source like a book.
Another way of showing off your expertise is by creating video tutorials. This may not work for some niches, however, if a video tutorial is something that is plausible for you, then, by all means, go ahead and shoot one. Videos are a perfect way to keep your audiences hooked while teaching your audience something new. They would be perfect for a guest post in the home improvement DIY niche or web development or a recipe for a smoothie etc. The list of ways you could apply a video to your niche are endless.
Improving Your Writing Skill
Now, this might sound obvious but there are different kinds of writing. When writing for marketing purposes online, there are a number of things you need to consider like SEO and persuasive copywriting. Both types of writing are very different, SEO writing is aimed at ensuring that your writing is structured in such a way that the search engine spiders find your page easily readable hence improving your chances of your guest post ranking better. Copywriting on the other hand is aimed at the actual audience that you’re targeting. If you’re writing a promotional guest post where you are advertising goods or services that you produce, you’ll need to convince the potential buyer that whatever you’re offering is best bought from you and nowhere else.
Your writing skills cannot be learned in a fortnight. This is something you will constantly need to put effort in especially because online marketing is ever evolving.
Backlinks
You probably already know of this one. Backlinks are external links (links from other websites) that point back to your site. Search engines interpret backlinks as votes. Consequently, the more backlinks you have from multiple sites the greater your chance of ranking better.
Most people use guest posts as a way to link back to their site. That is, they’ll provide content for free and in return they get a link back either within the content of their guest post or in the author bio.
Not all links are created equal. Links from some sites are better than others. So for instance, a link from CNN is better than a link from Cartoon Network.
CNN has a DA of 100 while Cartoon Network has a DA of 46. DA is an acronym that stands for Domain Authority; a metric that shows how popular a site is with search engines.
Blog Reactions
This is not very common, however it is a thing. Perhaps you’ve heard or even come across a video on YouTube where people record themselves reacting to other people’s videos. The concept is similar only in this case the reaction is to a written blog post in another blog post.
The reaction might be negative or positive. The writer might choose to agree or disagree with your guest post. One thing’s for certain though, your blog ends up getting more traction. Another way of looking at it is that it helps you work on your weak points while consolidating the strong ones.
Improve Your DA
You recall that I mentioned DA a few paragraphs ago. There are many factors that contribute to the DA score. Important to note is that Domain Authority is not fixed and the score is likely to change over time.
As you attract more traffic to your site based on your guest blogging efforts, Google and other search engines begin to see that as a vote of confidence in the content you produce and the overall quality of your site.
This will keep you in Google’s good books.
Customer Retention
There are two kinds of guest posts that you can do:
Promotional guest posts
Non-promotional guest posts
Promotional guest posts are those that promote your business. By using guest posts as a tool for advertising, you’re able to keep your existing customers by constantly giving away coupons and other offers. In addition, you could use the guest posts to teach your existing customers how to use a product they bought from you or how a new service you’re offering would be of benefit to them.
Improved Branding
If you remain consistent with your guest posting, your brand as well as you – the writer, are likely to become household names. Every single time you put out a magnificent piece of content, you’re helping build a strong brand. If you decide to go the extra mile and promote your guest posts in forums as well as social networks where the primary audience for your content can be found you’ll easily build a strong brand.
Expanding Your Customer Base
A guest post on a popular site might bring in new customers, especially if the site is in a niche that is closely related to your own. These subscribers might decide to add you to sites they follow since you’re offering plenty of value. Once they visit you should entice them to sign up to your newsletter and add them to your list.
Keeping Sites Up-To-Date
This is a benefit that is specific to the site you’ll be posting your content on.
Sometimes site owners find themselves too busy to keep their sites updated. This is especially the case when they have a small team. Instead of overlooking this critical fact, take advantage of this and use it in your pitch. Let the blog editor know that you’re a huge fan of their content and that seeing how they haven’t updated their site for a couple of weeks, you’d like to become a regular contributor on their site.
If you have strong credentials there’s no reason they’d say no.
I hope that this shows you the importance of guest posting and that if it’s not part of your SEO arsenal you’ll consider becoming an active guest blogger. Leave any questions you might have in the comment section and I’ll get back to you.