A Guest Posting Starter Guide
When it comes to SEO, one of the most important things you can do is create organic, authentic backlinks off the back of a genuine audience relationship. Links to and from your website are a vital search ranking factor, with Google preferring inward- and outward-bound links that connect your site to other authoritative domains.
Of these, inward-bound links are probably much the harder to attain. The average number one search result page has over 35,000 backlinks. How many does your website have?
Of course, as Google shifts its orientation towards user value, quality matters as much as, if not more than, quantity. Search marketers leverage a range of different approaches in order to try and generate links, but one of the most longstanding and effective is guest posting.
What is guest posting?
Guest posting is the common practice of cross-posting content on another (preferably highly reputable) domain with inbound links pointing to your own site. There are three main stages to this process. First, you identify opportunities, searching for publishing outlets within your niche. Then you come up with and pitch content ideas based on what you find. Finally, you write and publish the posts, refreshing them from time to time.
If you think that sounds like a lot of work, you’re right. Guest posting at scale presents a serious challenge for any company, no matter how big. By outsourcing guest posting to the experts at www.clickintelligence.com, you could save yourself and your employees untold time, effort and resources.
How to identify guest posting opportunities
Whatever line you’re in, there’s probably at least a dozen websites posting regular content about that specific niche. Finding writing opportunities can be as simple as running a Google search e.g. “gardening” + “write for us” or sending a private message to that influencer that followed you on LinkedIn. Nowadays, with Twitter’s proliferation of #journorequests, you could try sifting through these (filtering results with an appropriate search operator in your industry).
In practice, it’s often more complicated than this. It’s a good idea to draw up a list of influential places that are accepting submissions. A good way of finding these is by looking at the “featured in” sections of competitors in your niche.
How to pitch guest posts
There’s a whole network of sites out there waiting for you. But it’s very rarely a case of one-size-fits-all. There are penalties that bear on duplicated content, so if you’re expecting to be able to just replicate an earlier blog post elsewhere, forget it. Most blog sites are looking for original content that will add user value for their target audience. It’s important that you don’t come up with the same tired article titles that already litter the internet. You’ll need to pitch widely if you want to get something published. Try all the high-quality sites in your niche.
If you’re looking to do guest posting at scale, an excellent approach would be to look for market overlap as well as trying to target less obvious sites in your industry. If you were a hiking boot supplier, you could reach out to a fitness blogger and supply them with an article about the health benefits of mountaineering. Small websites are often grateful for these kinds of content ideas and may even want to write the content themselves.
Publishing guest posts
If you’ve made it this far, well done! It takes time to get guest posts out there in the world. However, the finished product will be well worth the effort. Just make sure the blogger’s post contains the correct link to your site and always read over the copy. A final tip is to try and discourage the blogger from sharing any links to competitor sites. This can often happen (especially with product roundups and listicle pieces) and the last thing you want is for your competitors to gain a boost from your own efforts.