What is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging, sometimes referred to as guest posting, is the process of writing content for another website’s company and posting and publishing information in pursuit of generating traffic, growing the brand, and increasing conversion rate. Guest blogging is an opportunity for small businesses to grow by accepting outside writers to write them for content. Also, the purpose of guest blogging encompasses the perks of boosting domain authority and building relationships with other business brands.
Importance of Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is somehow misunderstood by many business owners, claiming it as ineffective in terms of generating technical results. Although it’s becoming less popular nowadays, the essence of guest blogging still remains neutral. By doing such action, it can offer a lot of benefits for the website. It will serve as an opportunity to introduce new content and fresh information to the readers, filling in the knowledge gap in the market. Obviously, guest blogging is important because it’s content writing and imparting knowledge to the readers.
Benefits of Guest Blogging
When guest blogging is done and agreed correctly, numerous benefits will be bestowed on the business and the wholistic attributes of the website.
- Build trust – as mentioned earlier, guest blogging boost domain authority and the higher the DA, the more people will trust to the content of the website.
- Reach wider audiences – coming from the word itself, guest meaning that other people, outside of the target audience can read the content whatever point of interest it delivers.
- Establish a relationship – guest blogging is immensely perfect to get in touch with other websites and develop a relationship for future partnership and collaborations.
- Generate website traffic – new readers from the website being guested may visit the website that created the content.
With this part only, it’s logical to say that guest blogging is still taking space in SEO and digital marketing. The benefits it offers for a business to grow is undeniable, and it’s the kind of practice that everyone should be able to manage. There are many strategies that can do the same, but the essence of guest blogging is simply distinguishable and organic compared to others.
> Read more on Outrankco SEO services
How to do Guest Blogging?
- Prerequisite guest blogging attributes
Before finding a website for guest blogging, it’s vital to assess first the capability of the writing team, since there will be a new venue for the content and a new set of potential readers. The writing team should be able to write well-meaning ideal grammar, punctuation, spelling, and coherence of ideas, but these are all on the technical side. A content writer is not only professional on the construction of the sentence, but to be able to write what is needed by the readers, filling in the knowledge gap in the market.
Research is included in this part, meaning the initiative to take the opportunity to create quality content coming from the causes of misinformation and lacking of information that requires attention and resource to address as this might be one of the problems faced by the customers. This could also pertain to choosing the websites to guest blog but not just an ordinary website. A website that discussed the same niche or offers customized written content to be published, as long as it suggests relevance and usefulness to the whole population.
As mentioned earlier, guest blogging helps businesses to grow, and that means, it’s open for all who are interested and want to make their business grow. It’s a helping link to acquire more backlinks and generate website traffic. It may seem like a long-overdue process but guaranteed good results in the guest blogging.
- Find guest post opportunities
The first actionable process of guest posting is to make a search word or a keyword to find websites that offer guest blogging opportunities, even though they might not explicitly state it. Use keywords to find such as:
- Keyword + guest post
- Keyword + write for us
- Keyword + submit content
- Keyword + guest blogging opportunities
- Keyword + guest blogger
- Keyword + writers wanted
- Keyword + become a guest blogger
Not only those keywords are essential, using other platforms such as Instagram and Twitter are both effective in finding guest blogging websites. Twitter is a microblogging platform, and it uses the hashtag to reach a wider audience. By this, it will be easy to find the website’s account that accepts guest blogging in just a search. Before proposing to a website or emailing the websites, make sure to choose websites that of the same niche and interest because it might not intrigue the readers and sees it as less relevant to the usual publication.
- Research and prepare the guest post
Preparing the guest post meaning examining the website and if it’s compatible with the vision and goals of the company’s writers. It’s not a good move to just randomly pick a website without prior research. It’s important to look at the internal and external capacity of the website to be able to deliver the content well. These are the things needed before proceeding to actions:
- Relevant niche – partnering with a website that delivers the same point of interest and same persona of the audience so the content will not go to waste
- Eligibility of the website to drive traffic
- Has a good domain authority score – it’s not advisable to guest blog a website that has less than 10 DA score
- Following platform – ensuring that the website has social media presence with organic followers.
Also, this is the part where the research of ideas is made through. There’s a diverse population on the market, and people have different tastes of reading materials and information, and the best counterattack is to write for a topic that is interesting, most-searched, lacking in the market, and trending. A topic that is not only a reading material for leisure and entertainment, but a topic that solves and provides a solution to the people who are facing constant struggles. By this, it would be easy to pull in traffic to the website and attract new readers.
- Pitching the guest post
In this step, this is time to connect and reach the website if it passes all the standards for eligibility for guest blogging. It should be done by emailing the website – being welcoming and grateful to the opportunity the share content ideas and information. Sending three best-narrowed topics to the website and test if they like the three or not.
Personalizing the email for the website as if both parties are talking in a personal setting and agreeing to one topic. Be creative in reaching out to these websites as it will increase the chance of getting accepted by showing also professionalism and courtesy.
- Writing the guest post content
This is the most crucial part of the process – the writing phase. After a thorough understanding and research of the topic and website, it’s time to put it to test. With a group of a professional content writer or even a freelance content writer, it’s a huge responsibility to impress both the website and their audience as this will reflect to the host. Write the best content and follow the standardized level of English for inclusivity. Make sure that the content has an intriguing yet cohesive title, interesting introduction, chronologically arranged based on paragraphs, enticing call to action, and addition of creative visual presentations.
In addition, as the author of the content, it’s important to put the biography of the author so it won’t be viewed as less credible by the readers. This is to present credible and authoritative content showing it’s written by a professional writer with enough information resources and related literature.
- Follow-up
After a successful guest blogging process, it’s logical to say to respond to the feedbacks and comments of the readers who engaged with the content. This could be an opportunity to nurture new readers and promoting the website for a good cause. Be thankful to the people who took the time to read the content and be appreciative also to their critics.