Guest Blogging - What, Why, How And Where

As of now you may have noticed my love of post series. I’ve done a couple of them so far in which I tried to cover that particular topic completely from head to toe. This month I’m going to write a post series on Guest Blogging, starting today. In this post series I’ll cover the biggest and the most common questions in guest blogging including…

Guest Blogging – What, Why, How And Where?
How to guest blog for getting maximum results?
How to write epic guest blog posts?
Things to remember to become a better guest blogger
How to find authoritative guest blogging sites?
And much more…

So, in short you can call this month (Feb ’13) as Guest Blogging Month. There’s a lot of cool information on its way this month. So, I’d recommend you to subscribe to my email updates from the box shown on your right. Here we go…

Guest Blogging – What Is It?

If you want to get higher search engine rankings for your blog/website on Google or on any other search engine, then the first and the most important thing that you need to have along your side is the backlinks.

The more backlinks you have pointing to your website, better you would be able to do with search engine rankings.

Now as I discussed in my previous post about off-page SEO that getting backlinks is not enough. These links should be dofollow, from sites with high authority and some of other things. Here’s where guest blogging comes into action as it not only helps you in getting high quality backlinks to your website but also helps you in getting more traffic and subscribers to your blog.

So what is guest blogging?

Guest blogging is basically writing content for other blogs that offers space for people to write content and publish it in exchange of a backlink or two on their blogs.

In other words guest blogging is a way of posting articles on other blogs specifically written for them and their audience in order to introduce yourself or your brand to the new audience and indirectly direct them to your website/blog along with getting a backlink.

It’s a win-win situation for both you and the blog owner as you (the publisher of guest post) get dofollow backlinks and free traffic to your website and the blog owner gets free content for his blog.

Guest Blogging – Why Do It?

You may have a question as of why take the headache of writing content for other blog when you can use that in your own blog instead. Guest blogging is now a proven marketing strategy for marketing a business online because of the following three major reasons –

1. Off-page SEO By Getting Backlinks

Strong, fruitful and effective backlinks which would allow your website to prosper and get higher search engine rankings especially over Google is the foremost priority of guest blogging. Blogs allow you to put a couple of backlinks to your own website in the content or in the bio section.

It is really very important for you to add a link back to your website in your guest post, else it would be completely worthless as you are taking the entire headache of writing the content for the other blog.

2. Establishing Credibility In Your Niche

Guest blogging can help you to gain credibility and authority in your niche as well as help you establish yourself as an expert in your particular niche.

Guest posts can help you outreach a larger audience via different blogs and result in greater awareness about you and your brand online. It’s just that single guest post of yours that can speak out load for you and your brand.

3. Driving Traffic To Your Website

Guest blogging can also help you drive a lot of traffic to your blog or website in a short period of time through the link you post with the content. You just need to make sure that you select a blog that is authoritative and already has a lot of people visiting it.

You can use this sudden spike of traffic by converting them into subscribers to your blog or getting more products or services sold just by writing a couple of guest posts.

Guest Blogging – How To Do It?

As the primary goals of guest blogging are off-page SEO, establishing credibility and driving traffic there are three things about how you should do it to make sure you get the maximum results.

You need to take care of these core points when writing down a guest blog.

Keyword optimize your links for better off-page SEO. Use proper anchor texts for your links.
Write epic, in-depth and compelling content that shows your expertise and will help you in establishing your credibility in your niche.
Properly plan your content and channelize it in a way that people can’t resist to follow through your link wanting to know more about you – driving more people towards your blog.

These are the three core things to remember about doing guest blogging. Now where should you guest blog…

Guest Blogging – Where To Do It?

After knowing and being fully aware about the fact that what guest blogging is, now you need to know where you need to post your content. You can’t just post your content over any blog, there are some of the things you should remember when choosing a blog to guest post:

The blog should be related to your own niche.
The blog should allow dofollow backlinks..
The blog should have higher PageRank than your blog/website.
The blog should already have an audience that can be directed to your website.

There are a lot of sites on the web like My Blog Guest where you can find blogs to publish your post. Or just search “your niche” + “submit your post” on Google and you’ll have the list of blogs that you can submit your post to.

Just by keeping the above things in mind you can filter out the best blogs to guest post on.

Conclusion

After reading this entire content, I’m sure now you know what guest blogging is, why do it, how to do it and where to do it. What I shared today was just the tip of the iceberg and there’s a lot more to come. In the coming days I’ll get deeper into guest blogging and discuss some of my best strategies and tips on it.

Stay tuned till then and have a great day.

Guest Blogging – What, Why, How And Where