Though Google has promoted the idea of community and cooperation online for years, most marketers still opted for cheaper, readily available link building alternatives.
Then the proverbial s#$%! hit the fan. Recognizing this cynical gamification of its results, Google and other search engines issued increasingly strong crackdowns and algorithm updates aimed at targeting artificial SEO methods that clog search results with useless spam or low-quality content. Some unethical individuals still may scrape by for now, but the current trend makes it obvious that online businesses must either adapt or fade into obscurity.
If spinning articles and posting them to directories is no longer a viable source of back links… what is? The answer is simple: Guest blogging.
Essentially, guest blogging involves writing and publishing content on someone else’s blog or website. It allows you (the guest blogger) to reach a novel audience, build credibility, and gain backlinks to your own website, improving your ranking. And it’s a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” arrangement, too; for the host blog, guest posts can provide fresh content and different perspectives for their readers. Win-win.
Guest blogging is now one of the most powerful ways to build natural-looking links while still keeping control over your SEO efforts. In this article, we detail the steps you can take toward hosting your SEO-primed content on someone else’s site.
Why Guest Blog?
Before detailing how, let’s delve a tad deeper into the why.
At first blush, contributing free content to a competitor’s blog might sound like a terrible business practice. However, as mentioned, the gesture is mutually beneficial.
The blog owner gets a low-effort bit of content that leverages a fresh perspective. They just have to hit “publish” (and maybe give it a once-over for grammar and spelling). The contributor, meanwhile, cashes in on an interested audience and backlinks. A link from a highly ranked blog is seen as an endorsement by Google and will improve your own ranking. It’s one of the few remaining link building strategies that search engines favour.
Want to be a good guest? Here’s how to get invited to the party.
Finding Other Blogs
The best blogs for guest posting are already ranked well. They have the greatest influence in their niches and a link from their domains is worth far more than from a website no one has ever heard of. Start finding potential partners by running searches on your primary keywords.
The top five blogs for each are preferred, but don’t be afraid to look lower if necessary. Check for active blogs and whether or not they have hosted guest posts before. Make a list of candidates and begin the research process.
These can be general interest sites. Or they can be niche sites in your particular industry that have a dedicated following among your industry’s practitioners and consumers.
Reaching Out
Before sending out any emails, look over every blog to get a feel for its general tone, topics and readership. Come up with a list of post ideas that it hasn’t covered yet, and don’t repeat them for multiple blogs. This prevents a conflict, should both accept the same idea.
Introduce yourself, pitch your topics (titles and a short description should suffice), and thank them for their time and consideration.
The blog owner will appreciate you taking the time to personalize your email and is more likely to respond if you already have a plan. Don’t expect a perfect reply rate, but with any luck you will get a least one or two offers.Because we like things neatly organized around these parts, we suggest creating a spreadsheet or online task folder to keep track of submissions. Yellow for pending, green for approved, etc., with site names, submission dates, and points of contact attached to each submission. You can even include a cell for follow-ups.
Writing the Post
Good news—you’ve been approved!
Once everything is arranged, you can start the meaty task of actually writing the thing.
It can be helpful to pre-write the post, but it usually isn’t necessary. (Your time is valuable, after all, and you don’t want to write a whole blog post that doesn’t end up accepted).
Remember that your name and potentially brand will still be attached to this content, so don’t go cheap or lazy. Follow a few general writing tips to start:
- Review the site guidelines: To start, review any site requirements, including minimum/maximum word lengths, tone, and stylistic recommendations. (I.e., some blogs may insist on a 1000+ word blog written in list form). Paste these guidelines at the top of your working document and refer to them through the writing process.
- Let your voice shine through: A guest post can provide more than just link juice. If your post impresses readers, they may click through and become loyal new followers or even customers. Don’t be afraid to inject your personality, experience, and unique know-how into the article.
- Be informative, be helpful, add value: Start from a place of actually wanting to provide value to readers, and everything should fall into place thereafter. This whole strategy might’ve started as a ploy to gain some SEO points, but you can’t write with that as your primary motivator. Readers can sniff out opportunism from a mile away. Be generous with your insights.
- Be clear: C.S. Lewis once wrote a letter to an aspiring writer, urging them to “Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.” What’s in your head might not make perfect sense to a reader. When in doubt, ensure that your meaning is inevitable and clear.
- Edit, Step Away, Edit Some More: There’s a saying in professional writing that an article only truly comes together in the editing process. It’s only with some critical distance that you can pick out existing inefficiencies, unclear language, and opportunities for improvement. Write the blog post as quickly as you need, but build in time to let it rest. Then come back with fresh eyes and tweak what isn’t working. Similarly, pass it to a co-worker or trusted reader for a second opinion.
Next, ensure that you’re writing optimized content with organically interwoven keywords. You may choose to optimize the content after writing by dropping in a tasteful keyword; similarly, you can optimize from the word ‘go’ by conducting keyword research before you begin writing. You can read more about optimizing content at the link to the left. Or drop us a line for a consultation.
Before submitting a copy to the blog owner, double-check everything, including spelling and grammar, once more to be safe. The blog owner may request some edits, which, if reasonable, should not take long. After that, it is up to them to decide when to publish.
Building Connections
In particularly competitive niches, or when a blog is very new, it may be necessary to start at lower-ranked blogs and work your way up. This is just another part of developing SEO. Stay in contact with any bloggers who make guest posts an easy process and inquire periodically if they would like another.
On the same note, be amenable to others seeking to either swap or contribute their own guest posts. Google’s vision of bloggers assisting and recommending each other is a two-way street, and you never know which friends will one day take off in the search results. Guest posting is unavoidable in modern SEO, so don’t hesitate to begin making plans today. For more SEO tips and strategies, consult our blog or contact us here at Paul Teitleman SEO Consulting.
