12October 2020
The ultimate guide to guest posting
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Sep 28, 2020 38 min read Anybody who has ever written a piece of content knows how much time it takes to craft a quality blog post. But why would you offer somebody else to publish an insightful article you’ve been working on for a week? Because guest blogging remains one of the most effective marketing strategies for growing brand awareness, building quality backlinks, and driving referral traffic to a website. We at SE Ranking are strong believers in the power of guest blogging, so we regularly share our experience and expertise across various digital marketing platforms. For example, this summer we contributed to Search Engine Watch sharing our thoughts on using customer feedback to grow a product. But since some marketers call guest posting a waste of time, we decided to reach out to leading SEO experts and ask them for their two cents. It turns out they all have guest blogging included in their marketing mix, but still admit that it can be tricky at times. In this blog post, we’ve outlined the benefits that guest posting can bring along with some pitfalls you need to be aware of. The post is full of practical tips that are based on our own experience and insights of several SEO experts. So, hopefully, after reading this guide, you’ll know for sure whether guest blogging is the way to go for your business, and if so, will be able to build your own impactful guest posting strategy. We’ve also prepared a fun bonus for you. Make sure to check out our INFOGRAPHIC if you prefer to learn things visually and/or love board games. Step 1: Understanding your goals Before you start looking for guest blogging opportunities, there are two questions you need to answer. Why do you want to get into guest blogging? How much resources do you have on hand? If you think of guest posting as a way of quickly building backlinks to your website, I have some bad news for you. Every expert we reached out agrees that writing guest posts just for the sake of links won’t do you any good. Here’s what Jason Barnard, a digital marketing consultant and host of the SEOisAEO podcast at Kalicube.pro, says on the matter: Guest posting just to get links is not something I recommend. John Mueller has stated multiple times it is against Google’s guidelines. Google is working to devalue these links so, even though it may sometimes work today, it isn’t an effective long term SEO strategy. On the other hand, approaching guest blogging with the marketing-to-humans mindset will work wonders for humans… and (as a bonus) give your SEO a boost. Jen Penaluna, SEO Manager at Bigfoot Digital has a similar opinion: The old-school guest posting just for the sake of links is dead, or at least becoming less valuable because it’s been done to death. I’m on a mission to re-classify ‘link building’ as ‘link earning’ because any links worth their weight are earned, not easily built. So, while guest posting can still help you acquire backlinks, the trick is to treat it as a way of finding platforms other than your own website to communicate with your target audience. Here’s how Igor Kolesnikov, Head of SEO at SE Ranking advises to approach guest posting: It all depends on what guest posting means for you. I believe that today to succeed with guest blogging you need to create every article with the intent of bringing something of value to your audience. If you create quality insightful content and offer users solutions to their problems, such posts would be of great value regardless of whether they strengthen your backlink profile or not. Surely, to offer truly valuable content you need to be an expert in the niche and if you lack expertise, the right thing would be to get some help from other members of your team or third-party experts. With such an approach to guest posting, you tick all the three boxes: brand awareness, traffic, and backlinks. But it means you’ll have to aim for truly authoritative websites in your niche that have both a dedicated readership and high domain trust. And as you can imagine, knocking at their doors won’t be an easy venture. Guest blogging can work for a business of any size If you are a small business, industry leaders will naturally be ou…