Digital marketing is an ever changing landscape dotted by sign posts which all implore the traveler to follow with promises of success.
Due to the sheer numbers and complexity of the technologies employed today, it can be very challenging for the average website owner to exercise discernment in marketing and choose wisely.
One of the most vital SEO efforts that has the potential to yield enormous results is guest blogging. In fact, virtually all SEO experts believe the most effective SEO strategy a site can use is that of high quality backlinks – with guest posting being one of the higher forms of backlinks.
Guest blogging refers to content being written and published on referring websites for the purposes of embedding backlinks – thus, the ultimate goal of guest blogging is backlink generation.
Sites that ignore backlinks and choose not to pursue it are at not only a distinct disadvantage in the immediate sense in terms of search, they are harming themselves in a multitude of ways.
Guest blogging isn’t just about backlinking, it’s about building credibility, trust and displaying intelligence and authority over a subject, conveying professionalism..
It’s an understandable form of neglect, but one which can be lethal to websites unfortunate enough to have no backlinks.
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of guest blogging and backlinking:
- Improved search rankings!
- Increased trust and credibility!!
- Increased domain authority!!!
- Increased search engine indexing!!!!
- Increased website traffic!!!!
It is these all-important things and many others which make guest blogging and backlinking an activity you don’t want to miss out on.
In this piece we’re going to explore the importance of guest blogging and backlinking to give you the information you need to make an informed decision for your business.
Building Authority
Of all the things guest blogging can do for a given website and/or business, helping to establish authority is, in many ways the most important
The way it works is actually fairly simple.
When a given business chooses to publish unique or expert content and publishes it on another relevant website (Guest Posting), they effectively share that site’s audience as visitors read the post and click the backlink embedded within it.
Not only is a new, relevant, audience being reached – they are being introduced in a positive way that is likely to have a good effect.
The act of being introduced as an expert conveying important information is itself critical to reaching the audience from the right perspective – of authority.
Over time, the activity of guest posting builds brands by conveying a positive brand identity to the world and sending this message to the right core audience.
Driving Targeted Traffic
You may not know it, but guest posting is one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to drive relevant, real, targeted traffic to your website.
Guest posts from relevant, prominent, high-trust, high-traffic referring websites drive high-quality traffic to the target website.
They do this through visitors reading the guest post and following the link on to the target website.
These visitors represent both an immediate boost in traffic and, in the long term, an improvement in the target site’s reputation. The reason for backlinking being a boon to reputation is simple – people see and associate the target website with the referring (publishing) site.
Acquiring Valuable Backlinks
There are numerous strategies for acquiring high-quality backlinks, however guest posting is one of the most straightforward and reliable ways to do it.
With guest posting, referral websites receive content in exchange for allowing the placement of a backlink within it.
From their perspective they are receiving high-quality content that helps keep visitors coming back to their website and enhancing it with added content.
This symbiotic relationship between the referring (publishing) websites and the target websites is at the basis of what makes backlinking work so well – when done right, it’s good for all parties involved.
There are numerous ways of conducting blogger outreach to obtain guest posts by contacting websites to see if they would be open to it.
Some conduct their own outreach and contact referring sites directly to solicit them with the offer of guest blogging.
Others follow content development strategies whereby they publish expert content in the hopes it generates backlinks organically.
Purchasing backlinks directly is generally considered a bad idea, however, purchasing the service of guest blogging (such as our services) is perfectly fine. The only caveat being to make sure you work with companies which follow Google’s advice and best practices prodigiously.
No matter which route you take, provided the backlinks you get are from quality sources, the effects stand to be tremendous.
Backlinking is based upon the Page Rank system developed and maintained by Google and it is because of this, that backlinks have such power to influence SERPS.
When a backlink is established from a high PR web page on a highly prominent, high-traffic website, it confers link equity to the target web page.
When Google’s search crawlers go out and find the link, they will follow it through to the target web-page and re-index it, receiving the link-equity and usually improving in rankings.
Pages don’t just improve in rankings though – their PR scores improve as well and they themselves become authoritative, it is in this way that backlinks have proven to be such a force for search engine rankings improvement.
Also critical to acquiring backlinks is to acquire them from as diverse a set of sources as possible and in this way, build a diverse backlink profile.
With a diverse backlink profile there are numerous benefits, including the safety and surety in knowing that if any one link goes down, the loss is mitigated by the other backlinks in the profile.
Also with a diverse backlink profile comes a major increase in the awareness surrounding your website amongst target audiences.
Expanding Reach & Exposure
A major impact of guest blogging and backlinking is an expansion in the reach and exposure of the website to new visitors.
When a prominent website publishes expert content that interests audiences from a topically related website, it often has a big effect.
It’s not hard to see why, the fact is people visit websites to read things and browse and relevant content gathers interest.
Guest blogging pays big dividends and, if done right, it can pay them indefinitely in a multitude of ways.
Enhancing Content Marketing
Something to seriously consider is the importance of content marketing as both a vehicle to obtain backlinks organically and also as a means to grow authority and obtain new customers.
Search today treats content with a high degree of importance and if you are going to the trouble of producing it guest blogging can be a vehicle for enhanced content marketing in several key ways:
- Guest blogging can be used to directly syndicate content, reaching new audiences immediately.
- Authority can be built by using guest blogging as a showcase of expertise, winning over new customers, followers and friends.
- Organic links can be garnered by publishing expertise content that has a tendency to attract backlinks by those citing it in their own writings and other places online.
- Guest blogging can be used to build audiences and enhance other content marketing efforts being carried out on social media platforms or other locations.
The importance of any one of these in isolation is huge, however taken as a whole it reveals the broad scope of guest blogging’s appreciable effects.
All of this makes guest posting an integral part of content planning and marketing for informed digital marketers the world over.
Measuring & Analyzing Guest Post Performance
One thing everyone considering guest posting should know is how to properly analyze the performance of guest posting and backlinking.
There are numerous free tools from Moz, Ahrefs and even Google’s own Search Console for conducting analysis of backlink profiles.
These tools offer comprehensive analysis features and will give important insights that allow for extremely nuanced analysis.
But we’re not going to go into tools right now, because in some ways a discussion about guest post analysis metrics is better done without any proprietary tools or terms clouding it up!
What’s important are not the tools you use, but what key performance indicators (KPIs) that indicate whether a guest post is performing or not.
Assessing The Numbers
There are several key numbers or metrics that you should know and understand so you have an idea of what you’re reading when you look at backlink analysis software.
Traffic: If there is one single metric that tells a lot about a guest post it is whether or not the backlink associated with it is referring traffic or not.
Although it’s sometimes untrue to judge a backlink by low traffic – such as situations of extremely niche content published on extremely niche venues.
However, generally speaking, traffic is a sign that a guest post is engaging its audience, keeping their attention and they are following through with clicks!
Conversion: Sometimes it isn’t about the volume of traffic, but whether or not it’s translating into the right kind of traffic that converts well.
If a backlink is sending a lot of traffic through to your website, but the bounce rate is very very high, it may be a sign something is wrong with the backlinks anchor text or some other problem.
Engagement: Beyond the metrics resides the real-world human interest in what’s being written and if a post is not interesting to readers, it may not get clicks either.
Low engagement guest posts are also the first items on the chopping block for webmasters curating content – why would they keep stuff no one wants to read?.
To help keep engagement high, it’s advisable to spend some time researching trends and/or coming up with great topics for guest posts – quality over quantity!.
Low Relevance: Though engagement is tied to relevance, the two are not the same thing. A low relevance piece of content is a piece of content that is mismatched with either the referring publisher or the target website.
Sometimes coming up with a good idea to write about just isn’t that easy and in an effort to find something to guest blog about, the wrong topics are selected. When this happens and the process moves forward, it can lead to mixed or negative outcomes down the road.
This is why taking the time to do research is so important to ensure that the content produced for guest postings makes the grade.
Conclusion
Guest posting and the backlinking associated with it, represent one of the most effective forms of marketing that’s accessible and relevant to almost all businesses.
In today’s world online marketing is increasingly a necessity for businesses large and small alike, who rely on online customers to fuel their businesses.
Guest posting has emerged as a highly effective, low-key way to not only earn highly prized backlinks, but also to build authority and brand awareness.
Businesses that engage proactively by demonstrating their expertise in written form are much more likely to earn the trust and loyalty of customers who are increasingly shopping online.
If you find yourself wishing you could spend the time to write guest posts yourself but just don’t have the time, give us a call!.
Our services are designed to help websites obtain the search rankings their owners want them to through entirely ethical, best practice compliant backlinking and guest posting services.
We hope to hear from you!