Stay away from analysts who feel that guest blogging, as a link-building concept, has lived out its life expectancy. Firstly, the concept is still a miraculous proposition for most start-ups and businesses that aren’t willing to invest a fortune for getting their off-page SEO on track.
But then, guest blogging isn’t as straightforward as it used to be, say, 10 years back. In the subsequent sections, we shall talk about certain aspects leading to guest blogging, opportunities in hand, best strategies, and finally conclude by telling why it is still one of the most effective link-building strategies in play.
Let’s Bust the Guest Blogging Misnomer!
The idea behind creating rewarding links from guest blogging is to stop drafting posts with links in mind. Confused?
Well, the statement isn’t as counterintuitive as it sounds, as trying to fit in a link and then get the article published on a reputed website might make you cut creative corners. For those who plan on creating their own links via guest blogging, a cursory glance or two concerning the actual keyword is fine, but the focus should still be on drafting enriching posts.
Therefore, if you seriously want to pursue guest blogging as a link-building strategy, it is necessary to stay away from a backlink-centric approach. Instead, the idea should be on offering excellent value to the readers by putting forth encouraging insights and personal inferences.
Also Read: Content Marketing Strategies that Startups Should Focus On
Lastly, content quality continues to be the focus of every link-building strategy. Therefore, as a business, you should only hire experienced writers for getting the job done. Only top-shelf writers would understand that a guest post isn’t only about stuffing anchor links but about offering value.
Why is Guest Blogging still relevant in 2021?
Before we jump into the best strategies for implementing an out-and-out guest blogging strategy, here are the reasons and validations that you might be interested in:
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Sustainability and Affordability
Firstly, link building via guest blogging is one of the more affordable options to consider. While you need to spend a considerable amount on hiring a writer or a competitive copywriting agency, the residual overheads and other lingering costs are next to nil.
Not just that, quality links are capable of standing the test of time. As Google regularly indexes the websites for the quality of links, creative and resourceful guest posts are expected to be around for a longer period of time.
It is true that certain users prefer relying on PBNs for creating links. However, guest posting is sustainable and doesn’t require you to spend exorbitantly on purchasing PBN websites of higher authority.
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The ‘EAT’ Approach
For businesses, brand presence is one factor that often trounces the overall SEO-based analytics. This is where EAT or ‘Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness’ comes into the mix as the determining factors.
Although building links helps generate credibility for the website, it eventually amplifies the brand’s overall presence and even influences the traffic generating signals. Believe it or not, Google brings forth certain Quality Raters, which are more like intangible factors but way more reliable than the technical elements.
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Increased Relevance
Unlike some of the other link-building strategies, guest blogging brings forth the highest possible levels of relevance. Moreover, if you are planning to target product and service relevance, it is necessary to focus the blogs around the same.
This way, it becomes easier for Google to identify the quality of links and rank the origin websites accordingly. Furthermore, once relevant links are established, guest posting can be a good way to minimize competition, especially in the concerned domain.
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Control in your hands
Another reason to rely on guest posting is its ability to give control right to the user. This means, unlike the non-targeted off-page SEO campaigns, you can pinpoint the websites that you need a link from. Once you zero in on the websites, it becomes easier to take a closer look at the exact matches, partial matches, generic options, other forms of keyword arrangements that are hogging the limelight.
Once the website segregation and link-building sources are planned out, you can slowly create a backlink profile by offering guest blogs that are both relevant and enriching. Also, as per Google’s new algorithm, the annotations and surrounding bits of content also help the search engine determine the relevance of the content and offer control right in your hands by putting your business and clients in the driver’s seat.
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Effective, but Google won’t accept the same.
Let us take a simple example before we set forth the mandate concerning backlinks acquired via guest posts. Despite its blinding spread, Google doesn’t have the requisite bandwidth to weed out every artificial link there is. Therefore, as per Google, guest posting will continue to be a bad link-building strategy, which it preaches to hide indolent behaviour in plain sight.
While these are some of the best reasons for relying on guest blogging, this strategy needs to be perfected if you want to make the most of the hidden potential of guest blogging:
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Pitch wisely
You cannot make an impression if your product deals in tech and you start pitching to websites that talk about spirituality unless the product facilitates the same, in a direct or indirect way!
Regardless of the offerings, relevance is the most important factor to consider. So while you might be tempted to reach out to almost 100 authoritative websites for getting the link published, one high-end and niche-specific website is expected to yield better results and value.
In addition to that, you should also need to review the performance and stats of the concerned website before proceeding. The focus should be on selecting websites with domain authority higher than 50, followed by a social media reach of over 10,000.
If these stats sound overwhelming, you should rely on a credible guest blogging service provider and outreach firm that can help you search and reach out to prospects. Also, a reliable outreach brand ensures that your brand gets a preferred headshot and byline upon publishing the blog.
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Craft a Stellar Pitch
Once you have identified the perfect website for the cause, it becomes all the more important to draft a pitch that editors won’t be able to ignore. But then, you would still need to invest in a stellar copywriter for this job who is willing to go the extra mile in terms of research. Not just that, once you connect with a credible outreach firm, it becomes their headache to find the person to pitch whilst digging deeper into the guidelines.
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Write a Great Blog
Despite finding the right website and pitching perfectly, you can only get the required traction if the blog’s quality is top-shelf. Regardless of the aligned services and outreach pointers, nothing works if your blog’s impact doesn’t.
Therefore, you should carefully gauge the diverse requirements of the website, the quality of its audience base, and even the depth of the existing pieces of content before taking a call.
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Offer Value
While writing a good or rather great blog can be tricky in itself, it’s trickier to draft something that offers real value to the clients. The post should target a specific pain point and ensure that it gets mitigated by the end of the discussion.
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Comment and Interact
If you are connecting with a website and getting a guest post published on it with your name on the byline, it becomes your responsibility to address queries relevant to the same. Again, this would showcase your activity levels and the willingness to offer some value to the users.
Guest blogging, as a productive link-building approach, has been around for a while. However, with Google changing preferences and priorities with each passing day, most companies and independent businesses fail to best results by adhering simply to guest blogging.
This is the reason it becomes important to reach out to a firm that offers reliable outreach services followed by credible guest blogging and impactful copywriting services. Once you have these resources at your disposal, getting the links you desire becomes easier than ever.