If you have a website that engages in digital marketing, you are acutely aware of how competitive the web is. It takes creative strategies to stay ahead of your competition, and guest posting is one often overlooked way to get your brand out there, increase your SEO and further your company’s success. Here, we’ll look at how guest posting works and the many advantages it can have for your brand, from increased visibility to SEO boosts that bolster your website’s standing online.
Expanding Your Audience Reach
Guest posting expands your reach into an existing group of users who might not have heard of your brand. By putting out genuinely good content on reputable sites, these new followers will get exposure to your expertise. You’ll take on a meaningful number of new readers if your outsized reach is channeled towards addressing more than just your existing userbase.
When you guest post for a site in your niche, you’re not only getting your work in front of more eyeballs, you’re also getting your work in front of eyeballs that trust that site – and, by extension, you as an authority figure. They will go on to follow you on social media or subscribe to your email list or head over to your site. The pageviews could grow and grow like the pebbles thrown in the pond. With each guest post, your reach increases; with repeat guest posts, you’re getting into an iterative feedback loop that could show significant growth over time.
Building Relationships with Industry Influencers
How often do you get to write for a publication that reaches your audience and allows you to develop a relationship with the movers-and-shakers in this niche? But guest posting is not only about producing content for someone else’s publication. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, because everyone wants the guest post to be published. You want it, they want it. Working with a worthy blog, publication or website now opens up opportunities to network with the people connected to that site. If your message is good enough, you will end up with more exposure and new business opportunities from new connections – and hopefully those connections will want to share your message with their audience, as well.
These aren’t just reciprocal promotional opportunities for the two of you, by the way. The influencer has a finger on the pulse of the industry, alert to what’s coming down the track; if you’re not already there, these are exactly the types of information you need to inform your strategy. The same goes for your connection’s reputation: by associating with them, you bolster your own credibility by association. Together, you rise up the rankings, and the more followers you amass, the more visible you become.
Boosting Your SEO Performance
Guest posting for SEO is another effective way to improve the search engine optimisation (SEO) of your website. When you write articles on other websites, especially ones with authority, you usually get the benefit of a backlink back to your own site. Backlinks are one of the main factors SEO experts take into account when analysing ranking factors. A backlink is like a vote for your site. The more backlinks you have from authority sites, the more likely your site is to be seen as a central hub of knowledge on a given topic. The more backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).
In addition, guest posting can help you target the specific keywords and phrases you want Google to associate with your site. If those phrases are relevant to your industry, you can pepper them throughout guest posts and blogs to increase your site’s relevance for that search term. This can result in more organic traffic when your site rises in the rankings and becomes more visible to people who are searching for those keywords. Guest posting, in other words, flows to your SEO indirectly as well as directly.
Establishing Authority and Credibility
You can reinforce your claim to thought leadership by writing and publishing good quality articles on relevant authority sites. Readers want to know that you understand your subject, and that your views can be trusted. So the more articles you write and position online in relevant authority sites, the more likely it is that when people see your name appear, they will recognise it and be more receptive to your views. In turn, that can help to develop the more intangible business benefits of credibility – for example, customers come to trust you more and you get invited to speak at industry events instead of simply attending as a delegate.
Establishing authority is especially important for brands in competitive industries where consumers have many choices. Displaying subject-matter-expertise through high-quality guest posting over time will distinguish you from your competitors and can also lead to higher conversion rates. If consumers think you’re an expert who can answer their questions, they’ll be more likely to convert – which was likely your goal in the first place. With time, those quality connections across quality sites will provide you with a foundation as a go-to expert for your niche.
Enhancing Your Content Marketing Strategy
Guest posting provide you with the opportunity to market your content beyond the confines of your own website, broadening reach and boosting your visibility to fresh of droves of new readers and prospect writers doesn’t necessarily preclude you from using the same content on your own blog. Indeed, a guest-posting strategy can complement your overall content marketing strategy, generating a string of links to your site through the sharing of your ‘evergreen’ content across different forums.
This diversification also prevents the trap of repetition that you can fall into with your content. You can write about a subject you haven’t covered on your blog, explore a topic from a different perspective, keep your writing sharp by writing for those all-important deadlines, and pick up great prompts for more of your own content. Guest posting also gets your site more backlinks and visibility, so your content gets that added push from more viewers and great linkable content.
Driving Targeted Traffic to Your Website
One of the most immediate benefits of guest posting is the influx of targeted traffic to your website. Readers who find your guest post valuable are likely to click through to your site to learn more about your offerings. This targeted traffic is particularly valuable because it consists of individuals already interested in your niche.
High-quality guest posts can also lead to long-term traffic benefits. As your guest posts remain on reputable sites, they can continue to drive traffic to your site over time. Additionally, if your content is shared by readers or picked up by other publications, you can experience a multiplier effect, where one guest post generates multiple streams of traffic. This sustained traffic can lead to higher conversion rates and overall growth for your business.
Conclusion
Guest posting is a multifaceted and strong approach to enhancing your marketability online, and the expectation is that its use will become more widespread in the near future. The expansion of your audience reach, the development of strategic relationships with influencers in your industry, improvement in your SEO results, the establishment of your authority in your chosen niche, the enhancement of your content marketing strategy, and the generation of qualified traffic to your site are all made possible through the implementation of guest posting as part of your marketing strategy. If you truly want to harness the power of guest posting as part of your digital marketing strategy, it’s important to have faith that you’ll reap the rewards of your efforts over the long term.