Guest blogging is among the top recommended strategies on how to build and grow a blog. It’s one of the fastest ways to secure a better future for your blog.
Just a single guest post on a very influential blog can massively boost your own blog’s traffic and brand. You won’t just receive these benefits on the day your guest post was published.
These benefits will continue to trickle towards you in the coming weeks, months, or even years. This is how powerful guest posting can be.
It exposes your blog to a much wider audience. In fact, a lot of bloggers rely solely on guest posting as their only marketing strategy.
In simple terms, guest blogging is merely the process of creating content and having it published in another website to build your reputation as well as drive traffic to your own blog. You are literally giving out good content for free.
Although you don’t get paid for your efforts, you will benefit from them via the targeted traffic that is driven to your site or your own blog. This is not to mention the boost in your blog’s search engine rankings as a result of the link you dropped in your guest post.
The bigger and more influential the site you guest post in, the more benefits that you can reap. As a general rule, it’s best that you write guest posts only on blogs that have better positions on the search engine results page than yours.
This maximizes the results you receive.
There are certain steps you need to follow when guest blogging. You shouldn’t just submit content to every blog that accepts guest posts. You have to make sure that the site you are guest posting on is appropriate to your blog.
Below Are The Simplified Steps on How You Should Create and Submit Guest Posts
Step 1 – Search Within Your Niche
Find blogs that belong to the same niche as yours. To find these blogs, you can use search engines and blog directories. Or you can visit the top ten blogs in your niche and look into their blogrolls.
Step 2 – Segment for Blogs that Accept Guest Posts
Once you have a list of blogs at your fingertips, start segmenting those who accept guest posts. To find out if a blog accepts guest posts, you should visit the blog and browse through the content.
If you see articles written by people other than the blog owner, this means the blog accepts guest posts. Sometimes, you can find a “contribute” tab in a blog. This also means it’s okay to send in your submissions.
Step 3 – Brand Yourself Through Your Bio
If you’ve decided which blog to target, you should start creating your author bio and guest post right away. You will want to browse through the blog and read some of its content to familiarize yourself with the blog’s style and voice.
Always remember that you are guest blogging so you need to adapt your submission to the overall feel of the blog you are submitting to in order for your post to be approved by the editorial team. Your bio should include your areas of knowledge, expertise, a description of your website or blog and a link to it.
Step 4 – Add Impact to Your Posts
Add impact to your blog post using images and video. By using graphs, charts or images you will help communicate your ideas and improve posts’ performance.
Step 5 – Enjoy Your Hard Work
Send in your guest post and wait. If you followed all of steps 1 to 3, there’s a huge chance your submission will be accepted and eventually published. Your publisher may have social sharing options to help drive traffic to your website and further give you credibility.
Be sure to follow up on blog post comments and questions in a timely fashion regardless if you publish them all or not. You will want to keep the conversation going and readers returning again and again.
Step 6 – Stay Relevant As a Thought Leader
Rinse and repeat to keep yourself, your website and/or blog relevant in your niche.
Pursuing guest blogging opportunities will position you as a thought leader and it helps give your blog exposure. Remember to comment and leave intelligent feedback where the influential blogger’s in your industry are to drive traffic and open up other opportunities for guest blogging.
How has guest blogging helped your business? Leave a comment in the box below.
