SEO and Link building strategies have changed a lot over the years with some SEO professionals thinking link building isn’t worth the risk whilst others have created strategies to attract and build organic links. Currently guest blogging is a practice Google appears to encourage (when carried out correctly).
Guest blogging allows online business owners to write articles for other web publications, establish themselves as experts in their field, build Google author rank and obtain an organic link back to you website in the bio section at the bottom of your article.
For SEO and business purposes, web owners with a flair for writing can significantly improve your online business. And if you do not have the confidence to write your own articles hire a specialist copywriter to write specialist articles for your company.
To understand how you can benefit from guest blogging you need to understand how critical quality content is to your search engine rank. Basically, Google are looking for websites that offer value to the end-user, whether through products, shopping experience service or blog content. In short, an online business will not be able to compete without providing useful and relevant content for their users.
One of the tactics the Google uses to determine whether a website is worth following is whether their website is being maintained with excellent content, how many search engine users are visiting your site and how many visitors are referring your site to other people, either through an inbound link from an article or via a social media network.
Approaching Editors
Guest blogging is not as simple as it looks. You don’t have the flexibility to write anything you like and post it on the internet like you do your own blog. Most webmasters that accept guest posts are professionals themselves and will only accept content of high quality.
Your next step is to sell your article, or your idea for an article to a targeted publication. This involves pitching your idea to an editor. You should therefore read the websites contribution guidelines for writers and find out the editors name, contact details and how they want to be approached. Some prefer an article outline rather than the full article and vice versa.
When guest blogging, be mindful of the type of websites on which you are publishing content. Remember, Google frowns on poor quality links and will penalise you if you have too many incoming links from low authority sites. That’s not to say you should not approach low authority sites at all as they are more accommodating to new authors and can help build your profile to show to editors of more reputable websites. Guest blogging is a long process which requires time and quality.
Your ideal target however is a well ranking and therefore well respected industry magazine to which you contribute on a regular basis, but if you work in a competitive field you may have to earn the right to guest blog for the top industry magazines. Therefore build your profile of published articles sensibly and approach every well ranked website in your chosen field you find – you never know, you might just get invited to contribute on a regular basis.
