How to Make Guest Posting Work for You
Are you looking for new ways to increase your reach online, build brand awareness or just get more people to notice your brand? Are you looking to build quality backlinks to your site without spam or buying them (which Google frowns upon)?
Guest blog posting could be the perfect solution but it’s very important that you do it properly and that you don’t just post your content anywhere and everywhere. You need to get high quality backlinks from beneficial sites in your targeted niche. You want to get your articles published on the top sites in your related field and it won’t happen if you don’t have quality content.
The Great Blog Post
So it all begins with writing one excellent post. If you don’t know how to do that, you can hire a guest blogging professional. Be cautious of hiring SEO companies that cannot show you proof they use experienced writers and that your articles will be of highest quality. I often do contract work for SEO companies but there are many others out there who do not hire professional guest blogging experts for their work.
Some use their own in-house staff to crank out subpar pieces, some go to bidding sites or TextBroker to buy cheap articles and worse, some spin articles to use for your guest posts. The worst part is they probably charge you even more than a professional writer would charge you direct for the same work. Sending out poor quality articles with your linkback is equal to spam and it’s going to hurt you more than not doing any guest blogging in the first place.
If you’re serious about making guest blogging work for you then the very first step is a high quality, original article. If you don’t feel you’re capable of writing one on your own, you can hire professional help. However, not every professional article writer knows how to write for guest blogging. Many are in the habit of producing “keyword articles” or have been writing for content mills for so many years, they wouldn’t know how to create a quality guest blog for you. This doesn’t make them bad writers; it just means they are not right for your job.
A quality guest blog will have an original topic that is not found anywhere else on the Internet. It will present some familiar information in a new way or provide new insight or tips to an existing topic. A quality guest blog is not promotional and does not advertise your company or website but instead provides great information the reader can use and then links back to your page, usually in the author bio but sometimes in the body itself, where relevant.
The Right Website
After you have the great post, you need a great site to post it on (and in some cases, we pick the site and target the post to that site). You don’t want to just place your blog post on any site that will accept it. You want to do some research into the sites you are considering and make sure they are the right pick for your post.
Look for sites with high domain authority, relevant topics and keywords and high quality content already posted on it. PR (page rank) counts but it’s not the only deciding factor. Just because a site has a high PR does not mean they have quality content; it just means they are good at building backlinks. Concern yourself less with the PR of a site and more with the content that is already on it and its search ranking.
When choosing the right websites for your guest blogs, think of sites you normally read or share content from. Look for the top sites in your niche and those that have content similar to yours. You want to find sites you would be proud to be published on. Usually the sites that publish anyone and anything do not have content that Google or human readers will find relevant.
There is a lot more to guest blogging than one article can convey but here are some beginner tips to making guest posting work for you. If you have any questions or concerns about guest blogging, let me know. I do this every day and I’m happy to answer your questions.
See the infographic below to learn more about blog posting and guest blogging and how it can help you.
Happy posting!
