Guest blogging and SEO - How are they related?

        To be completely honest, I’ve never been that interested in blogging until recently. So as a new blogger, I didn’t realize how important blogging can be to search engine optimization (SEO). There are a few different aspects of blogging that can improve one’s SEO, including personal blogs, blog commenting and guest blogs. Since the topic of blogging is so vast, I’m going to focus specifically on guest blogging and how it can affect SEO.

Guest blogging – What is it?

What exactly is guest blogging you ask? Well, it is exactly as it sounds. A blogger writes a post for another blog or Website to be featured on that said blog or Website. Timothy Carter (2020) explains guest blogging as “the practice of writing and posting content on another’s blog or website in order to gain great exposure, referral traffic, leads and backlinks for SEO.”

Relation to SEO

Guest blogging is considered an off-page optimization technique that can help improve a sites SEO. Michael H. Fleischner (2020, p. 56) describes off-page optimization as what one does on the Internet, not directly on his/her Website, to improve search engine result placements. As Carter mentioned, guest blogging is a great way to gain backlinks to one’s Website, and backlinks might be the number one off-page optimization technique for improving SEO. Fleischner states guest blogging is one of the most powerful strategies for attracting third party links.

How to guest blog?

Julia McCoy (2020) offers the following guidelines for successful link building while guest posting:

1. Be selective about where you pitch

2. Craft a pitch that’s impossible to ignore

3. Write a guest blog that will have reader flocking to your site

4. Funnel your readers to an outcome

5. Reply to comments on your post.

Let’s dive into these guidelines a bit more. 

Being selective about where you pitch means that you should only guest post where your featured content will succeed. It wouldn’t make sense for me, a blogger for SEO and Web metrics, to post content on a food blog. Bloggers should stay within their area of expertise or niche to ensure they receive higher engagement and click-through-rates on their provided links. Besides choosing a niche-specific site, bloggers should also be selective about blogs when it comes to getting a featured bio. A featured bio should always include your byline, a headshot and link back to your site for readers to follow (McCoy, 2020). If a blog won’t allow you to include a bio, it is not the right blog for you. Niche-specific blogs should also have a strong authority and good quality. Ideally, you should look for sites that have an equal or higher Google authority than your site and have many quality sites linking to them (Fleischner, 2020). 

Once you find the right sites for your guest post, you must craft a pitch. A great pitch should be direct, personal and informative. The Website owner needs to understand that you are credible and knowledgeable about the content you are writing about. Once the pitch is finished, then comes the blog post. McCoy (2020) provides the following tips for writing a post that will resonate with readers:

• Know what your audience needs,

• Have a catchy headline,

• Go in-depth with your content,

• Provide content that is easy to understand.

Lastly, make sure that your content is enough to bring readers back to your site or to bring them to convert a different action, whether that is to sign up for your email newsletter or follow your blog. Once the guest post is published, keep an eye out for comments and be sure to respond to them. While it won’t necessarily build your backlink profile, it will help build relationships with readers, which can increase engagement rate and awareness.

Benefits of guest blogging

Now that we’ve discussed how exactly to pursue a guest blog, let’s discuss the benefits of this off-page optimization technique.

Carter (2020) claims the top benefits for guest blogging are:

1. Link building,

2. Referral traffic,

3. Brand recognition and reputation building,

4. Social audience building.

I want to emphasize the importance of link building since it carries the most weight in improving a site’s SEO. By guest blogging, you can grow your backlink profile which will help improve rankings on search engines. In order for this technique to truly work, these backlinks should come from quality Websites that carry authority. While it is (somewhat) true that the more backlinks a site has, the better it ranks on search engine results pages (SERPs), it is more important to have quality backlinks. So, by guest blogging for quality sites, you can positively increase your “link juice” which can improve your SEO.

Potential pitfalls of guest blogging

Since we’re not all perfect, let’s discuss some common mistakes that can occur when implementing this type of strategy. John Rampton (2017) lists the following as the 10 most common mistakes made when guest blogging:

1. Writing about your business – this can make the piece sound too promotional or ad-like

2. Not linking back to your website

3. Not including an enticing offer

4. Writing for a site that won’t send targeted traffic

5. Using it solely to get inbound links – It should be used for building reputation and awareness as well

6. Not having great content on your own site first 

7. Contributing low-quality posts

8. Doing one-off posts instead of building relationships

9. Ineffective pitches to blog owners

10. Not writing with the blog’s audience in mind.

One additional mistake that can occur when implementing this strategy is that a blogger quits too early. Guest blogging is a time-consuming technique, but the results are well-worth it. In the video below, Neil Patel (2018) recommends guest blogging for at least two years. In order to get featured on high-quality blog’s, it will take time to build a strong reputation and authority, so, remember to keep pushing and you will begin to see results. When guest blogging, be sure to keep these common mistakes in mind to ensure you are maximizing the success of your post.

(Neil Patel, 2018)

Conclusion

While there are a lot of other off-page optimization strategies out there, guest blogging can be a fun and effective way to improve one’s SEO. So, reach out to a quality niche-specific site, write a killer blog post, and watch your search engine rank improve! 

I would love to hear your thoughts on guest blogging and if it has previously worked for you! And don’t forget to subscribe to follow along on my SEO and Web analytics journey.

References

Carter, T. (2020). Guest Blogging for SEO: White-Hat Guest Post Guide. Retrieved from SEO.co: https://seo.co/guest-blogging/#What-is-Guest-Blogging-for-SEO

Fleischner, M. H. (2020). SEO Made Simple: Insider Secrets for Driving More Traffic to Your Website (7th ed.). USA: Michael H. Fleischner.

McCoy, J. (2020, January 15). How to Use Guest Blogging for Natural Link Building. Retrieved from Search Engine Journal: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/link-building-guide/guest-blogging/#close

Neil Patel. (2018). Is Guest Posting Worth It? | How to Boost Your Seo Rank Through Guest Blogging. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=231&v=KYMEmtI8U5Q&feature=emb_logo. 

Rampton, J. (2017, January 31). 10 Mistakes People Make When Guest Posting. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2017/01/31/10-mistakes-people-make-when-guest-posting/?sh=728516f3589e