At first thought, the idea of guest blogging may seem counterproductive to your content marketing strategy. “Why would I want to work for free for someone else’s blog essentially?” you might think to yourself.
However, the truth is that guest posting is one of the most powerful and valuable strategies to grow your audience and drive traffic to your site. A guest post is an article published on a blog by an author who publishes a different blog. A guest poster contributes content to other blogs related to their market or niche.
So, here are six compelling reasons why guest posting provides a great advantage:
Boost SEO ranking
A guest post always includes a backlink to the guest poster’s blog. This might be embedded in the text or might be included in the author’s bio. Backlinks are one of the most crucial ranking factors in improving a website’s domain authority, which is the ranking given to it by major search engines. Google’s PageRank is a popular tool used to assess your domain authority.
Being referenced on reputable sites with large audiences and high-authority domains significantly improve your website’s rank. In other words, it means that if influential blogs are linking back to your blog on their own websites, then the search engine concludes that the content on your blog must be relevant and engaging.
Unfortunately, the prevalence of using guest posting as a method of boosting SEO resulted in an influx of fake bloggers who demand payment for including a backlink to your blog on their website. This is a direct violation of Google’s policy, and anyone caught doing the same faces a heavy manual reduction in their search engine ranking. That’s why it’s more important than ever to contribute high-value guest posts to legitimate blogs that cater to your niche.
On a final note, guest posting can be an immensely valuable tool to boost your SEO rankings as long as you don’t treat it as a fast-track ticket to internet traffic. If you don’t know where to start, you can check this guide on how to start your own blog.
Exposure to new audiences
Guest blogging introduces you to the already established audience of your host blog. If your content connects with them and adds value to the discussion, they will definitely visit your blog out of interest and curiosity. This can directly translate into new readers and exponential growth of your blog.
If you frequently guest post on reputable and popular websites, you may expand your reach to hundreds or even thousands of potential new followers over time. This is a major reason why guest blogging is considered to be the fastest and cheapest way to reach massive audiences.
Establish authority in your field
Guest posting can be used to establish yourself as an authority figure and expert in your field. It can take many years of work to transform your website into a reputable source of knowledge in your industry if you choose to forgo guest posting. Readers are naturally wary of fresh blogs and tend to trust the established ones.
Contributing well-written and highly researched articles to top blogs in your niche will build your credibility with readers and cause them to recognize you as a go-to source of information. If you consistently demonstrate your expertise in your area of specialization, it won’t take long for your name and brand to gain respect as an authority figure in your field.
Form important connections in the industry
Guest posting helps you build relationships with other relevant bloggers from your niche, which is particularly useful for those who are new to the field. Interacting with the audience in the comment section and becoming a consistent and dedicated guest poster and strengthen your ties with host blogs, leading to many networking opportunities. You might even be invited to contribute to an email thread where bloggers belong to the same community brainstorm potential topics.
This can also lead to working on co-authored posts with reputable bloggers in your niche. Another advantage of being active in the community is that you get to receive insightful feedback and criticism from other content creators. Their suggestions can prove valuable in helping you refine your content marketing and strategy. Over time, your connections in the industry will prove beneficial in the form of increased business opportunities and partnerships, resulting in the accelerated growth of your brand.
Increase social media visibility
Guest posting on popular blogs leads to your content being shared on social media; a large number of continuous reposts can even lead to a particular post going viral. This attracts the attention of a large number of users and can lead to a sharp increase in visitors to your website.
This will also result in you amassing a significant following on popular social platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. These followers will get instant notifications whenever you post new content, and they will also bring in new readers by sharing your content. In this way, your brand’s influence and visibility will extend to an ever-increasing audience via social media.
Refine your writing skills
Guest posting requires you to deliver content that is both extremely well written and highly engaging. It demands attention to minute details, including research, grammar, writing voice, as well as miscellaneous formatting rules that can differ from one blog to another.
Continuously writing for your own blog can make you complacent if you become accustomed to writing the same type of articles for loyal readers who don’t offer much criticism.
Guest posting offers unique challenges that will force you to adapt your writing style and cater to the tastes of diverse audiences. In the long run, this will provide you with the experience to constantly improve your own blog and avoid falling into a rut.
