If you want to grow your platform and your blog readership, then it is my firm belief that guest posting is the one thing more essential than any other strategy. Let me explain why this is the case…
What Is Guest Posting?
First of all, we should define what guest posting even is. It generally means writing an article to be published on somebody’s else blog or website. On occasion, I let others do this on my site, and I also guest post myself on many other blogs who have audiences that I would like to speak to. It’s a good way to reach out and connect with new readers while getting my name out. However, for a long time, I turned my nose up at this crucial strategy for growing a blog into something popular. Now, looking back on it, I regret that I didn’t start it sooner. I hope you don’t make the same mistake that I did.
There are many reasons why doing guest posting can be successful for a blogger looking to build up their online influence, although three, in particular, stand out.
Guest Posting Can Establish Relationships
Bloggers have to have great content. If you want to be a great guest blogger, and you add value to somebody else’s blog, then you’re going to establish relationships with many other bloggers. Bloggers are the community that make up quite a few conversations that are going on online, particularly on Twitter and Facebook. They can be really influential. That means they’re great friends to have. If you make friends with many other bloggers by doing guest posting, then you’re going to spread your influence throughout the social media world, and that will eventually lead to you having more subscribers to your own blog.
Guest Posting Does Wonders For SEO
If you ever do guest posting, then there is one thing that you should never negotiate. Whoever the host blogger is has to include at least one link pointing back to your blog, somewhere in the post. This is typically at the end or beginning. In time, these backlinks can enhance the value of your own blog to search engines, which makes your content a lot easier for people to find through Bing, Yahoo, Google, and others.
Guest Posting Will Introduces You To New People
One thing that’s great about doing guest posting is that it lets you enter a community that is already established and then add your own message to it. You can form connections with others, and if you do things right, that ultimately benefits you. When you add value to any discussion, then you’re going to convert many of these relationships into new readers, then fans, and ultimately followers. On the other hand, if the only things you ever do are ask or sell, then you might still get famous, but not with the kind of reputation that does you any good. You never want to be the person always pushing their own agenda. Add value when you can. Help others. Have patience. You’ll win in the end.
What About Other Guest Posting On Your Site?
On occasion, I let others do guest posting on my site too. If you’re not already doing it, think about offering others the chance to do guest posting through your own blog. It only makes sense if you’re looking for chances to guest post on the blogs of others. When you do this with a host blogger, you create a mutually beneficial relationship. A number of bloggers might even blog about their own guest post and provide links to it right from their very own blog, which gives you some really tremendous link juice. I’m personally a huge fan of this particular practice.
One Rule About Being A Great Guest
Whenever I do a guest post for somebody else, there’s one thing that I always do, and that’s linking to that post from my own blog. Then, promote it several times through Twitter. Share this on Facebook. Always thank the person, but be sure to stay around long enough to respond to post comments. This isn’t something that everyone does, but it’s a great idea if you can. There is one crucial thing, though, and that is if you must choose between guest posting on other sites or getting people to do guest posting on yours, it’s always better to do guest posting yourself since it will introduce your name and message to new communities.
In terms of search engine optimization, guest posting on someone else’s site can be as much as five times as powerful as putting new content on your own site. That doesn’t mean you don’t do your own new content first and foremost, but it also means that if you don’t like how much blog traffic you have, then you need to start doing guest posting. You’ll see how much your influence grows.