Stagnant website traffic and lagging search engine rankings are common concerns for bloggers. With the current tough competition, attracting visitors to your site isn’t as easy as pie.
Statistics reveal that 90.63% of published pages never get organic search traffic from Google. Thus, you must be intentional in driving visitors to your site. One way to do this is through guest posting.
You basically publish an article on an already established website, usually with a backlink to your site. This has several SEO benefits. In this article, you’ll also learn about these benefits as well as the best practices for guest posting.
- SEO benefits of guest posting
Guest posting isn’t just a hype. It unlocks immediate benefits. Most bloggers submit one to five guest posts per month, and there’s a good reason for that. Below are the top three advantages.
- Boosts your backlink profile
A backlink is a link that comes from another website to yours. It’s an essential ranking factor for search engines. Out of the over 200 Google ranking factors, backlinks are one of the top three that really matter, according to Search Engine Journal. They show that the publishers linking to your site have confidence in your content and aren’t afraid to recommend it to their readers.
Guest posting allows you to earn high-quality backlinks to your site. The more inbound links you have, the higher your domain authority. And that means a higher search engine ranking, which helps you surge past your competitors.
Guest posting service can help link you to relevant publishers in your niche. They usually act as brokers between clients and established websites.
- Audience growth
Guest posts allow you to showcase your brand and expertise to a wider audience. Every article you publish leaves a lasting impression on the readers, reminding them about your brand and what you offer. By and by, they’ll start visiting your site to learn more about your company. Traffic to your site can significantly increase if you guest post on sites with many visitors.
Moreover, with higher search engine rankings, you stand a chance of attracting random web users who aren’t part of the audience of the sites where you post your articles. These fresh leads can soon become loyal customers. In 2022, organic clicks made up 45.1% of all search result clicks. That implies web users are more likely to trust organic search results than other sources like paid ads.
- Content collaboration network
Guest posting fosters cross-promotion, wherein you team up with other bloggers, mention one another in your write-ups, and mutually boost reach. It helps build a knowledge exchange hub where you can share your expertise with diverse audiences. Your knowledge builds bridges and opens doors to even more collaborations.
Writing articles for other websites also challenges you to explore other writing styles so you can be consistent with a particular site’s theme. Such diversification is fun and also encourages you to be more creative.
Guest posting also links you to industry heroes, an essential part of online marketing.
- Mastering the guest posting landscape
Guest posting is a strategic expedition, not just dishing out articles left, right, and center. With the right approach, you’ll realize the desired results. Here are three noteworthy tips.
- Post on high-quality sites
When building backlinks, it’s critical to post your guest articles on reputable sites. Getting links from dubious sites can affect your SEO, leading to lower rankings and decrease in traffic. Search engines can also blacklist your site, and it won’t show up on search engine result pages. Your winning point is guest posting on high-quality websites.
Choose publishers that mirror your niche, as it’s also essential for search engine ranking. So, when researching potential sites, strive to understand their audience. Write posts that offer genuine value to the readers.
Also, write in the style the already established audience is used to. Use the right tone and writing style that matches the host’s articles.
- Craft a sound content strategy
To write guest posts that really capture the audience’s attention, you must master the art of storytelling.
Stories catch people’s attention. In a Stanford University study of short speeches with three statistics and one story, only 5% of the audience remembered the stats, while 60% recalled the stories. Aim to be informative and interesting at the same time. Provide valuable insights in a captivating fashion that keeps the readers hooked. Remember, expertise with a bit of entertainment goes a long way to fascinate readers.
Besides storytelling, ensure you weave SEO into your content. Use relevant keywords to help search engines understand what your article is all about and suggest it to web users searching for information. Just keep it natural and human-readable. Web users shun robotic content that’s obviously written to satisfy search engine algorithms.
And finally, add a relevant call to action. If you don’t expressly tell readers what to do, you may not achieve your objectives. Guide readers to visit your website with clear invitations like ‘Visit for more tips’ or ‘Download the definitive guide here.’
Following this content creation blueprint helps your guest posts stand out and boosts your site’s visibility.
- Subtly promote your site
Once your guest post is published, don’t leave it to the mercy of search engines. It helps to let your targets know you wrote it. Promote it on your social media platforms and email list. Leave links to the guest post on relevant Facebook groups, Instagram, and X. You can also boost these posts by paying a small fee for them to be distributed as ads.
Furthermore, build relationships with the host site’s audience. Read their comments and respond accordingly, taking care to be kind and helpful. Answer questions precisely and participate in open discussions.
Finally, track and analyze your post’s performance. You can use Google Analytics to set up tracking links for each article to measure its traffic, bounce rate, user engagement, and other relevant performance parameters. SEO tools can also help you analyze your backlink profile to know its strengths and areas for improvement. And conversion tracking tools can help you know how your guest posts contribute to lead generation, email signups, or sales.
Conclusion
Guest posting is essential in link building and SEO stardom. Being consistent at it significantly grows your audience and cements your brand as a leader in the niche. Approach it with a long-term mindset. Collaborate with reputable publishers for several years. These practices help skyrocket your SEO efforts.
