The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging

Guest blogging remains an interesting marketing action. Publishing on other sites is too often neglected as part of a content marketing strategy. Let’s see how to do it:

Benefits of guest articles

What is guest blogging?

If you are using content marketing, a guest blogging strategy can be a key tactic for increasing your traffic and the ROI of content marketing.

1. New Hearing

Posting as a guest is a great way to increase your brand awareness because the content you post on other sites speaks to a new audience about you. Another blogger makes his audience available to you, which allows you to make yourself known to other Internet users and to broaden your contacts. These new readers can visit your site or homepage, which means guest blogging helps you attract new subscribers and improve lead generation.

2. Your Reputation

Guest blogging also builds trust. If trustworthy and authoritative sites publish your content, some of that trust rubs off on you. In fact, regular guest posts can help others see you as an expert, which is perfect for your reputation.

3. Your SEO

When thinking about the benefits of guest posting, SEO is one of the main things. Building links from high-quality sites is a major SEO ranking factor and will improve your site’s position on search results pages.

4. Free Content For The Webmaster

As a guest blogger, you are not the only one who benefits from the guest blogging strategy. The blog that hosts you too. Since content creation is a major challenge in content marketing, guest blogging helps site owners by making it easier for them to meet their content needs.

How to do Guest Blogging or Guest Articles?

Best Strategies for Guest Posting

1. Define Your Goals

Like any other marketing strategy, an effective guest posting strategy starts with knowing your goals. After all, you have to know where you’re going if you’re going to get there. The typical goals of a guest blogging strategy align with the benefits described above.

They understand :

  • Drive traffic to a specific landing page
  • Promote or promote your brand, products, and services
  • Improve SEO by attracting inbound links
  • Position yourself as an expert in order to be quoted more often and to obtain conferences
  • Increase the number of email subscribers or your social media audience

Having a goal in mind is essential so that you can frame your bio appropriately. This is the best way to build a trusting relationship with the new audience you attract.

2. Find Sites to Write About

Before writing a guest blog post, you’ll need to find a site that accepts guest authors and actively searches for content. Beyond that, you will need to make sure that posting on the site will help you achieve your goals.

How do I find sites that guests post?

There are many ways to find sites that are happy to accept guest posts.

A. Google

For example, you can use Google to find sites that accept guest posts on topics you want to write about. Some examples of search queries include:

  • keyword + “become a writer”
  • keyword + “become a contributor”
  • keyword “submit a guest post”
  • keyword “guest post”
  • keyword “guest post by”
  • keyword “accepting guest posts”
  • keyword “guest post guidelines”

You can also use similar queries on Twitter. Whether you’re using Google, Twitter, or some other research source, make a list of sites that publish guest posts. You will need it later.

B. Competitors’ social media

You can also find opportunities to post guest posts by checking where your competition is posting guest posts. Since most people share their guest posts to improve their reputation, you can find out by following your competition on social media or subscribing to their email newsletter.

C. SEO tools: Majestic or Semrush

Another way to find this information is to see where their inbound links are coming from. Subscriptions to Majestic SEO or Semrush are chargeable, but a one-month subscription is sufficient. There are also Facebook groups where you can share these types of subscriptions for low costs. When you have access to a paid account, type the URL of the site you want to verify in the search box. When you get the report, you will be able to see backlinks, anchor text, referring domains, and more.

D. Relational

The best way remains relational. If you blog and are active on social networks, you will inevitably make new contacts and you can offer to these contacts to post on their site.

Rate sites where you can write

Finding the sites is only part of the equation. You should also determine if these sites are worth it, and will help you achieve the goals you have set for your guest blogging strategy.

There are several possible metrics to check:

At the SEO level
  • The trust flow
  • The Citation flow
  • The Domain authority
  • The number of keywords positioned in the Google TOP100
  • The number of referring domains
At the notoriety level

Check the numbers of newsletter subscribers and especially Instagram followers, Youtube subscribers, Facebook Fans or Twitter Followers. Most site owners post them if they are high enough, and that will give you an idea of ​​the size of the potential audience you could reach. Otherwise check out their social media profiles yourself and see if the site owners have an audience and if they are actively promoting all of the content posted on their site (including guest content).

In terms of traffic

You can ask the traffic question to the site owner. You can also try to get an idea with Alexa. You can simply type the URL into the on-screen box on the homepage, and you’ll get a quick overview of key traffic metrics.

3. Contact The Site Owner

If the site has a guest blogger form, take the time to introduce yourself and succinctly highlight why the site will be interested in posting your content.

In another context, you need to prepare for this type of approach and bond.

Before you approach site owner’s to suggest a guest post, you’ll need to establish a connection with them. Get to know their site and the type of content they post by following them on Twitter, Facebook, where many people share their content, or by subscribing to their site so that you are informed whenever there is something. something new. Read content steadily for a few weeks or more, so you understand what matters to them and their audience.

Connect with site owners on email or social media, so you can tag them when you share content on their site. Share anything you really like and add a comment so it’s not just a simple link. Comment on their blogs, subscribe to their newsletter.

It is about forming a real relationship with the owner of the site. Don’t pretend, they’ll notice and you won’t achieve your goals.

4. Choose a Relevant Topic

Once you have a good understanding of your target site, and what matters to the site owner, it’s time to come up with a topic to present.

You should already know what is popular on the site. Now think about how you can add value by:

  • Respond to what is on the site
  • Provide additional information on a popular topic
  • Write something new on a topic that fits the editorial line

If you find a topic that is popular and relevant to a site but has not yet been published on your target site, this is a good topic to kick off your guest blogging strategy.

Are you looking for an advantage in choosing your subject? Research shows that in-depth content, posts that use exclusive searches, and posts that share life experiences tend to be popular.

5. Write Great Content

Many articles published on this site talk about copywriting, we advise you to reread them so that your content is optimal. Here is a summary of good practices:

Make a Headline That Grabs Attention

Some of the best titles:

  • Include the benefit for the reader
  • Use action words
  • Leveraging emotion

Keyword Research

If your article continues to be read long after it is published, it should rank well in the search engines and drive traffic to their site. So, just like you would your own content, do keyword research to find a few key phrases that you can use to optimize it.

Good keyword usage shows search engines that the content is relevant, which helps searchers find it – and you too.

Relevant links

Ideally, you should include relevant internal and external links in the article you write. Ideally, you can link to your site, link to an authority site, and internal links. It helps to give the content a good link profile which is also good for SEO. Be sure to follow the linking guidelines set by the site owners. For example, some people refuse optimized anchors.

Include Images

Finding images can be a problem, but Pixabay is your friend, otherwise use a site like deposit photos. Note that the best solution is to have your own images or photos.

Whatever photos come with the guest post, make sure the site owner doesn’t have a problem with images that aren’t copyright-free.

Lighten and resize images so that they don’t delay loading the page your article will be on.

Format The Message Correctly

Finally, format the post to match others on the site. Note how they use captions, caps, bold text, lists, etc. The less work you leave for site owners to do, the more you will be appreciated. Some sites provide guidelines for guest post content writers, in which case all you have to do is follow them.

6. Write a Bio

Biography is important for your visibility and credibility. Most blogs allow you to include a bio of the author of each article. You can include links to your social profiles which represent an opportunity to have new followers.

7. Promote Your Content

Promoting content is a key part of your guest blogging strategy to get more people reading your content. The site owner will also be happy to benefit from the increased traffic. You can promote guest blogging content through the same channels that you use to promote your own content. For example, you can notify your subscribers by email and share the guest posts on social media. Encourage your followers to visit, comment and share. Some will be happy to help you.

8. Follow Up

This involves responding to comments and mentions in your post.

Why?

  • On the one hand, these are good manners, on the other hand, it is by being receptive that you make connections with your new audience, which can help you achieve some of your strategic goals.
  • Blog owners will also be happy with you’re responsiveness, which will make them more receptive to new placements or suggest ways you can contribute more. This brings you even closer to your goals for your guest blogging strategy.
  • If the blog owner allows it, subscribe to comments on your guest post so that you will receive an email alert when someone comments. You can also track mentions and shares of the post through a Google alert.

9. Measure Profitability

If you want to know if your guest blogging strategy is working, you will need to measure its success. This means that you have to use some of the tools mentioned earlier in this guide.

  • For example, if you want to see if your content is bringing more leads, track traffic to your homepage with Google Analytics.
  • You will also be able to see how your referencing and your positions in Google are evolving on the queries that you will have tried to work.
  • You can see what the impact is on the number of your social connections.

10. Write Multiple Guest Articles

One guest post will hardly help you achieve your goals, in order to be successful you need to write more than one. With a good guest posting strategy, more is more, as long as you can maintain the quality of your guest blogging.

The more posts you write, the more presence you have online and the more people think you are an authority. This leads to more invitations to write and attend events, more traffic to your site, and more leads and sales. Of course, if you write a lot of guest posts, you’ll need a way to track them. This is why it makes sense to have a publication schedule.

Conclusion

You know the steps to create an effective guest blogger strategy, learn how to implement good content marketing practices, and track content marketing ROI.

 

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