Guest Posting as a link-building strategy: How to do it right

One of the things people tend to struggle with when starting out in SEO is building links. There are several ways to build high-quality links to your website, but one of the most effective ways to do so, especially if you’re a beginner, is through guest posting. But there’s a whole lot more to guest posting than finding blogs that you like and submitting articles to them. In order to devise an effective guest posting strategy, you need to outline the goals you hope to achieve, define the purpose of each and every blog post you submit, and measure the results of your guest posting campaigns.

Define Your Target Audience

Who buys your products/services? What types of blogs do those people read? Find the most popular blogs that your target audience reads and submit posts to them.

Secure Guest Posting Opportunities

Once you decide which blogs you want to target, find out if they accept guest posts. If there are no clear instructions for guest writers on their websites, email them to ask if they accept guest posts. Prior to contacting blogs to pitch guest posts, make sure that you have some writing samples to show them, as well as a tentative title and description of the article you’d like to submit. Keep in mind that some bloggers don’t accept pitches and require you to submit completed posts for their consideration. Just make sure to follow each blogger’s instructions carefully because not following directions when submitting a guest post is a surefire way to get your work rejected.

Steer Clear of Sales Talk

It’s common for people who are new to guest posting to assume that they can submit thinly-veiled sales pitches as guest posts. But if you want your articles to get accepted and achieve optimal results once published, you need to remember that the point of your articles is not to sell your products/services, but to provide solutions to your readers. Make an effort to write the most helpful posts possible for your target audience. Sure, you want to get your business mentioned and get a link back to your site, but the article itself should educate readers. Besides, if you position yourself as a knowledgeable, helpful authority, people who read your article are far more likely to click on your link. On the other hand, if you try to sell, sell, sell in your guest articles, you will turn off readers and make them stop reading.

Measure the Results of your guest posting Campaigns

Whatever it is you hope to achieve through guest posting, make sure you measure the results of your campaign. Building links is obviously one of the most important benefits that come with guest posting, but guest posts can also help you in several other ways, such as by building your authority, driving traffic to your website, attracting new blog subscribers, and growing your audience on social media networks.

Running out of blogs to post on? Find blogs about Indirectly related topics

If your company sells shoes and you run out of shoe blogs to submit guest posts to, don’t fret. You can find many new blogs to submit guest articles to if you consider blogs about indirectly related topics. For example, you can write articles about shoes for fashion blogs, mommy blogs, sports blogs, or travel blogs. Obviously, your writing voice and angle will be different, depending on which type of site you write for.

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