If you aren’t guest blogging yet, it’s probably time that you do. Here are some facts that will show you the usefulness of guest blogging for promoting your business online.
- 23% of internet time is spent on blogs
- 77% of internet users read blogs
- 61% of consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post
But before you go any further, read this article before you burn your budget with bad guest posting practices.
However, SEO and PPC are often handled differently. Some brands only invest in SEO. If you’re looking to improve your digital marketing performance, adding PPC to your marketing strategy can boost your SEO efforts.
What Is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging or guest posting is simply publishing content for a website in your niche. It allows you to capture a new audience and get quality backlinks to your own site. By adding links from your website to your guest post, you’re adding value to your site and boosting your domain authority.
Guest blogging remains one of the most effective link building strategies used by marketers. That’s because it works when used in the proper way while avoiding black hat tactics that Google frowns on.
What Guest Blogging Practices are Frowned Upon by Google?
The more Google ‘likes’ you, the higher you’ll rank on its search engine results pages. So you’ll want to avoid tactics that Google disapproves of when guest posting for a website. Here are some bad guest posting practices that Google penalizes.
Stuffing content with backlinks
Don’t cram as many backlinks as possible into your articles. Google’s sophisticated algorithms can detect if you’re posting for the sake of getting backlinks and will penalize you for it. Another mistake you’ll want to avoid is stuffing the backlink anchor text with a ton of keywords. This isn’t natural and makes your article look spammy.
With PPC, you can simply choose a keyword that you can likely rank highly for and bid for that keyword. If you perform well, then you should be optimizing your website for it. If you perform poorly, you may want to avoid optimizing your website for this keyword.
You only pay for clicks with PPC advertising so it tends to be inexpensive. This allows you to test profitable keywords without investing too much time and budget.
Low-quality content
Outsourcing content creation to cheap writers has become a trend among many marketers now. They ask them to write variations of the same article and spread them as guest posts to multiple websites. But Google has a problem with this approach, its algorithms can sniff out plagiarized content and penalize them. Writing high-quality content remains to be one of Google’s top ranking factors. So if you’re publishing content for the sole purpose of getting backlinks, you’re just pouring money down the drain.
Duplicating or re-publishing articles
If you’re thinking of publishing the same content and spinning the article a little for more backlinks, don’t. You cannot compromise quality for the sake of getting extra backlinks to your site. Driving traffic to your website and building a strong following is only possible if your content is helpful and top-notch. So aim for high quality original content that will get noticed and ranked organically.
Guest posting on low-authority sites.
Getting backlinks is great but it can hurt your domain authority if low-authority sites are linking to your website. Backlinks basically tell Google how credible your site is so posting on high-authority websites is crucial to executing your guest blogging strategy. The more high authority domains link to your page, the higher your domain authority will be.
Getting Started With Guest Blogging
Guest blogging can be a very effective link-building strategy when you do it right. In fact, according to a study by SEMRush, 53% of digital marketing specialists say that guest blogging is the most effective way to build a backlink profile.
If you post high-quality content and link it to good websites, you’re capturing a new audience and driving more traffic to your website. Here are some things to consider when guest blogging.
Write Authentic, High-Quality Content
Popular blogs are popular because they grab attention and provide answers to their target audience. The qualities readers look for in a blog do not go away just because you’re guest posting. Every great marketer knows that there is no substitute for authentic, high-quality content. So the key here is to write for your target audience, not for backlinks.
Filter Guest Posting Sites
You’ll want to post your content to websites with good domain authority scores. The higher the domain authority (DA) score is, the higher the quality of backlinks you’ll get. So before using a website to get backlinks, check its backlink domain first.
Ideally, you should try to get guest blogging opportunities from widely read and followed blogs in your niche. Most authority sites would have a 60+ DA so they would obviously require high-quality content.
It can be difficult to guest blog in authority sites so you should try to guest post in mid-tier blogs as well. These blogs are mostly run by individual bloggers with DA scores between 50-60. These sites still require good content but not necessarily your best work.
Track Your Results
It’s important to track your guest blogging results to know if you’re meeting your goals. Key metrics to track for your guest posts include:
- referral traffic
- social shares
- Comments
- new website visitors
- new leads
- brand mentions or links
- Changes in SERP placement
Tracking these metrics will help you identify what articles work best for your goals and relevant guest posting platforms to focus your efforts on them.
