WHY GUEST BLOGGING NEEDS TO BE PART OF YOUR SEO STRATEGY

Guest blogging has become a widely-used content marketing and SEO strategy in recent years, which involves writing unique pieces of content for placement on websites that are not your own.

This modern internet marketing tool has many benefits, including brand exposure, industry credibility and, in many cases, an increase in search rankings. However, any good SEO Company will advise you that it must be used with caution.

We discuss the main advantages of introducing guest posts as part of your overall SEO strategy, as well as how to properly implement this method in 2018.

Improve your search rankings

Guest blogging as a marketing strategy has specific Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) benefits. This is because, on many occasions, the host website will allow the author of the piece to include a link back to their own website, which can, in turn, lead to an increase in search engine rankings, since high-quality website backlinks are one of Google’s top ranking factors.

That being said, whilst gaining a link back to your site is cetrainly beneficial, it is important to ensure that this isn’t your sole reason for guest blogging, and that every article you post is there to educate, inform or add value for readers.

Establish credibility

If you manage to get your work published within key industry publications and are able to create engaging content that educates readers (who may also be your potential clients/customers), you will begin to establish your business as a credible source of information.

An important aspect here is to find the websites which are most relevant to your industry or niche. There is simply no point in attempting to get published on finance-related websites when your business is in the medical field. Instead, start by identifying the websites your customers read, as well as those where you have seen pieces of content written by your competitors. Then, you can contact these websites to offer something better!

Consistently producing unique, high-quality content on these types of website quickly builds up trust and positions yourself as a thought leader within your sector.

Brand exposure

One of the key benefits of offsite guest blogging is that it allows you to gain brand exposure in the key places where your potential customers hang out. Moreover, by producing amazing content and writing about the topics that interest the people in your sector most, you are increasing the likelihood of the audience remembering your brand or, better yet, bringing targeted traffic to your website, which could result in conversions.

Build relationships with key influencers

Whether we like it or not, influencers have gradually taken over the internet marketing landscape, making modern-day celebrities out of ordinary people. They are popular, powerful and often come with a legion of loyal followers, who hang on to their every word.

As such, if you manage to build relationships with just a few of the key influencers within your industry niche, by exchanging great content with them, you could easily be gaining a whole heap of new exposure for your brand.

Guest blogging in 2018

It is vital to point out that guest blogging is only beneficial if used in the correct way. Guest blogging has, in recent times, become a prevalent SEO technique, which means that is has naturally become a prime target for spammy link builders to post poor-quality content on any and every website they can, simply as a means of gaining a link.

Google themselves have voiced their concerns with this type of guest blogging, making it quite clear as to what they consider good and bad practice. Matt Cutts, the former head of the Google WebSpam Team, has scolded the idea of guest blogging becoming a tool which is “overused by a bunch of low-quality, spammy sites”.

So, what does this mean for ethical SEO’s? Well, as long as you are using guest blogging as a means to provide unique, insightful content which actually delivers the audience value, rather than as a quick link-building tactic, then you are on the right track.

It is, therefore, imperative that any good SEO company will follow proper guest posting approaches, as well as taking heed of Google’s webmaster guidelines with regards to link schemes.