Why Guest Blogging Can Drastically Improve Your Website’s SEO

Why Guest Blogging Can Drastically Improve Your Website’s SEO

One of the easiest ways to earn backlinks from authoritative websites across the internet is through guest blogging.  In fact, this is the reason jobs like mine exist. In the past, most blog owners had to pay for great content, but now they can receive great content for nothing but a backlink in return. It is the companies who want the backlink that pay the writers. 

In the end, everyone wins because the company is improving its SEO, writers are getting paid to write and improve their personal brand, and editors get great content for nothing but a link on their blog or website’s page in return. 

For those who are unfamiliar, there are two main types of SEO techniques:

  • Internal SEO deals with the optimization of a company’s site. This means unique, quality content, easy navigation for readers, and internal linking from webpage to webpage. It is entirely in a company’s control to improve this aspect of SEO. 
  • External SEO is all about getting links to your website on other websites. Google assumes that if lots of other websites across the Internet are linking to your website; your website must have a lot of value to readers. Well, the rationale makes sense, this is difficult for a new company to accomplish. It is hard for other websites to know your website exists if you’re not at the top of a search engine, so how will they ever link back to your site? 

The answer to that last question: Guest posting. Guest posting is great because it allows a new company to be able to compete with larger, more established companies. It allows you to get those backlinks from those authoritative sites. If you can offer them a great piece of content, why wouldn’t they give you credit by including a link back to your site? 

How to Utilize Guest Posting in Three Easy Steps

If you’re a company looking to take advantage of guest posting, there are a few steps you will want to take: 

Step #1: Hire a great writer who feels comfortable speaking with editors. 

It’s extremely important that you hire a great writer. Because guest blogging is becoming so popular, editors have their pick of “free” articles. In other words, there is a good chance that a writer could get turned down when trying to contribute an article; therefore it is very important that they are a great writer. Many companies give writers a quick “write on this topic for 30 minutes” test before hiring to see if they have what it takes to write large volumes of content each day. It’s also important that you hire a writer who feels comfortable talking with editors so that your company can create a good reputation. If the writer doesn’t know much about SEO that is OK, but it is your job to teach them!

Step #2: Complete keyword research so you know where you should be linking with each guest article, and communicate this with your writer. 

SEO is really just a way to help your company website rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). Once you start ranking well on SERPs, companies will be able to find you and link to your website on their own (although many still utilize guest posting for that extra push). You will want to research which keywords will give you the best chance to rank highly on a specific SERP, and then have your writers link back to these keywords when writing. You can use Google Ads to complete keyword research to learn more. 

Step #3: Have your writers find sites that accept guest posts, and then ask them to link back to the keywords and links you have provided. 

It is usually the job of the writers to look around the Internet for sites that accept guest posts. In general, it’s best if your writers write for sites that work with a similar niche as your company because your links will be more relevant. Writers can typically go to a blog and look for a “write for us” or a “guest post” tab on the blog, read the requirements, write a piece of content, and then send it to the editor. Make sure that the writers are either putting links within the copy of the article or in an author box. Most editors only want links within the copy if they are completely relevant to the story and can add value for a reader. Links back to your website within the copyhold a little bit more weight with good, but a link in an author box is still great. Links in an author box work well because you can write about anything and your links do not have to be overly relevant to the story. 

Overall, guest posting is one of the easiest ways to improve your SEO. Writers can usually produce quite a few articles in one day and get links on authoritative websites, so you aren’t going to find a much faster way to improve your SEO.