What is Guest Posting and Why is it Good for SEO?

Search engine optimization, SEO is a very broad marketing area that consists of many different components and a multitude of strategies and methods whose purpose and goal is to improve your ranking in search engines and thereby increase your visibility and traffic.

An SEO strategy that you’ve probably heard of before is guest blogging, also known as guest posting.

This is a method that has grown in popularity in recent years due to its effectiveness in increasing your online visibility and contributing to SEO benefits.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at guest blogging, what it is, how it works, and the benefits of guest blogging for SEO.

Why Guest posting?

Guest blogging is exactly what it sounds like: blogging as a guest on someone else’s website. In other words, writing articles (blog) for a site other than your own.

An important benefit of course is that with your blogging you reach a larger audience but above all it has a direct impact on your website SEO by generating valuable backlinks and establishing your authority within your industry.

First and foremost, guest blogging opens doors to new audiences that you might not reach on your own platform. By sharing your expertise and insights on other websites, you create opportunities to engage and attract a wider audience and build your brand. This can lead to increased awareness, traffic and potentially new customers or followers. By sharing valuable and high-quality articles, whether it’s advice, guides, or information, you can build your brand and establish yourself as a leader in your industry.

For example, imagine you sell shoes. You can then identify different blogs or information pages that are related to shoes. Through a guest article, you get the opportunity to reach out to a new target group that you otherwise wouldn’t have reached – and at the same time get a valuable backlink (more on this later) that gives you important SEO benefits.

By establishing a presence on authoritative platforms within your industry, you build trust and credibility among your audience and can strengthen your own brand and reputation.

Backlinks and guest blogging

The main goal many people have with guest blogging is to build backlinks to their own websites. As you probably know, backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors when it comes to SEO. With that said, you want to work actively to build more links to your website.

For this reason, guest blogging remains one of the most popular methods of building backlinks.

By including links to your website in your guest posts, you generate valuable backlinks that can increase your website’s visibility in search results. Guest blogging thus provides an opportunity to create relevant and high-quality backlinks.

About guest blogging

What many people do when they want to guest blog is to identify and then contact relevant websites/blogs/news sites in their industry and then contact them to ask for the opportunity to guest blog.

Many blogs and the like allow guest bloggers but it is important to know that a large percentage of sites charge for this opportunity, especially the larger and more established the site. It’s easy to think that the reward of contributing valuable and high-quality content and getting a backlink in return is enough, but that’s often not the case. This is because news sites and other established websites often receive an endless amount of requests from people who want to guest blog. Also, guest blogging is technically a form of advertising (albeit a more organic form of it) so it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll probably have to pay to publish a guest article.

Contacting pages and hoping to do it for free will have a very low rate of success and there is a high risk that the only ones who say yes are low quality pages that won’t provide much in the way of link power.

Having said that, our advice is to be prepared to have a budget ready for your guest blogging to make the most of the opportunities and make the process considerably easier and more efficient.

How to Guest Blog Effectively

To truly maximize the benefits of guest blogging, you should have a well-thought-out and effective plan. Here are the key elements to consider for guest blogging success:

Identify appropriate platforms

The first step to starting guest blogging is to identify the platforms that are most relevant to your industry and target audience. By focusing on websites with high authority and an engaged audience, you increase the chances of reaching the desired visibility and attention. Keep in mind, however, that the larger and more established the site is, the higher the cost is generally. As you probably know, relevance is important in SEO and with that said, it’s important to focus on guest blogging on pages that are relevant to your industry and target audience. If you sell running shoes, for example, it is appropriate to guest blog on news sites and other platforms connected to running and training.

Be sure to adapt your content to the specific target group and industry that the platform is targeting. By creating posts that resonate with the target audience, you increase the likelihood that your message will be appreciated and shared.

Create High-quality and Relevant Content

High-quality content is the basis of all successful SEO, and of course, the same applies when you guest blog. Many people make the mistake of writing guest articles as press releases or marketing messages. People don’t come to a blog or news site to read this. Instead, they want to be inspired, read something, or get tips and advice. That being said, you should focus on creating content that provides value to the reader. In this way, you can increase engagement, reach more readers, and also strengthen your image as an expert and leader in your industry. In addition to getting you a link, focusing on high-quality content can increase the chance that readers will find value in your content and explore your own site.

Optimization for Search Engines

Just like when you create content for your own site, you should focus on optimizing the guest article for SEO. Integrate and focus on relevant keywords and make sure to incorporate these naturally. By understanding the search terms your target audience uses, you can optimize your content to rank higher and attract more traffic.

Consider search engine optimization not only in terms of content but also in terms of structure and formatting. Use sections, headings and images to make your content easy to read and search engine friendly. A well-optimized article increases the chance that it will rank high on relevant searches. If your guest article ranks better in search engines, this means that you will get even more readers of your content – even if it is not on your site.

Tips and advice

Guest blogging can be a very effective strategy to improve your digital visibility and SEO. At the same time, it is important to have an eye on the details in order to succeed in your commitments and maximize your results.

Here are some important aspects to consider:

Avoidance of Overoptimization

Just like when creating content for your own site, you want to avoid over-optimizing your content with too many links, keywords, or marketing messages. This can be perceived as unnatural and seen as spam by the search engines. You want to avoid making your guest article too focused on selling or promoting yourself. Instead of it being just like any other article that primarily focuses on providing value to the reader.

When you include links to your own website, you should make sure that they are relevant to the topic and appear naturally in the context. Google and other search engines value organic links more highly than artificial or exaggerated attempts to manipulate search results.

Choosing the Right Platforms and Avoiding Overuse

The choice of platforms to guest blog on is very important to get good results. As mentioned earlier, the choice of platforms to guest blog on is central. Relevance is everything, which is why it’s important to focus on relevant and high-quality platforms that are in the same industry as yourself.

Be sure to vary the pages you guest blog on and use different anchor texts to create a natural and diverse link profile.