Let me start saying guest blogging is one of the most important tools of blogging to serve for different purposes. If you have a blog, you must have come across with articles explaining how guest blogging helps your blog’s SEO. However, many of these articles provide you a certain pattern which turns this important process into a useless practice. I will try to explain what guest blogging is and how to make guest posts beneficial for your SEO practices. Additionally, I’ll also provide my insights in this article for bloggers considering hosting guest posts. Because, it’s also important what information you host in your platform. So, let’s dig into guest blogging and make sure your guest posts actually help your search engine optimization.
What is Guest Blogging? What Does a Guest Post Mean?
I’m sure you have heard about guest blogging and conducted a research about the topic. So, I’ll just briefly go over it and provide a different perspectives and details to specific questions. This way, you will able to benefit from this article.
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Here is my simple definition. Guest blogging is using someone else’s platform to introduce yourself to their audience and direct them to your content. Considering this definition, you should understand how important writing a killer guest post. Because you’ll most likely to have a single shot to attract these people to be interested in your content. In addition, you should also narrow down guest blogging websites carefully to meet with the right audience.
Moreover, you should realize the importance of guest post meaning in order to make use of your guest blogging strategy. Think about the news you read every day, some of them are highly focused on specifics of a company. Sometimes, they are about the company culture, work environment, new policies, or technologies they will come up with. Do you really think that these articles are the results of hard-working journalists found out about these companies? Then, you are wrong! Many companies have marketing divisions working hard to have articles published on news platforms. Therefore, they make sure it looks natural, so people don’t consider them as advertisings. Guest posts work the same way for your guest blogging campaigns. You should make sure you truly show them what you do the best in your platform.
In the following sections, we will go over more specifics of the guest blogging process. However, let’s start with its importance to search engine optimization.
How Does Guest Blogging Help SEO? Is Guest Blogging Dead?
SEO is the point where it gets confusing for blogger who are looking to guest blog in other platforms. So, they just want to follow a certain pattern which turns their campaign into useless effort. Moreover, I started to see a lot of question online asking if guest blogging is dead. Let me tell you, guest blogging is not dead, and it will never be if you do it right. However, you should change your priorities while building up your guest blogging strategies.
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Yes, guest blogging helps SEO, but this shouldn’t be your main target because Google will see it. Yet, you know what happens when Google sees if something is not natural with your actions. If not, let me tell you: You will be PUNISHED. Your reckless strategy could cause you lose your years of efforts. So, make sure you take this process seriously.
From the technical perspective, guest post submission to another platform is highly beneficial for your platform to rank higher. Because, search engines see your guest posts as referral from other trusted sources. So, you should carefully select the keywords to link to your platform and limit the number of links to few. Although there are no specific guidelines, the number of links should be limited to 2 or 3 per article. Therefore, the article should be well written and thoroughly covering the topic.
How to Find Guest Blogging Websites?
Before I start explaining, I would like to mention that PlatoPost also accepts guest blogs. If you have knowledge on a topic thinking it’d bring value to our platform, proceed to submit a guest post. You can submit your guest post via email.
Let me surprise you! Almost every blog and news platform are a guest blogging website as long as you know how to approach them. You have unlimited options to borrow a place that will help you to promote your work and help your SEO.
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You can also conduct a search on “write for us” or “guest bloggers wanted” keywords on search engines. This will give you an option to meet the demand that already exists. However, remember that creating content is one of the most difficult tasks, so that hosting someone to publish a guest post is always a nice opportunity for bloggers. Because they will also have diversification for their audience. Yet, your guest post should bring value to their content. Otherwise, it will not mean anything for them except causing to lose visitors.
If you want to have a solid guest blogging strategy, you need to have a plan. You should identify your strengths and how to use them for hooking up the audience you’ll have access to. Of course, you cannot post on all at the same time, so you need to make every guest post valuable. Among all the guest blogging platforms, you should find the ones whose audience that might have interest in your topic. Let’s find out how to narrow down these guest post websites.
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How to Choose the Best Platform to Submit a Guest Post?
As I mentioned earlier, if you consider guest blogging only for SEO, you will fail. If you want actual results, you must eliminate your options and make sure you choose the best guest blogging websites. Of course, you might be wondering what the best blogging websites means. Let me briefly explain for you to create a solid road map.
In my opinion, “the best” means that these websites will provide you actual and royal audiences. Therefore, if you want to have actual visitors, you should choose websites to submit a guest post accordingly. Many people make mistakes of falling for the technical details, so they are easily fooled. This is why most of the time guest blogging campaigns fail.
There are tools to identify a website/platform’s authority on the internet such as PR, PA, and DA. Yet, they could easily be manipulated which is a huge risk for your own platform in the long run. Let me tell you how. The website you’ll submit a guest post could be identified as a spam by the search engines in the past. This will cause more harm than what will bring you in return. You will put your own platform in danger. So, narrow down your options manually in a natural way.
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Look at their platform and see the recent posts to see how often they have a guest post. Check their design, ad placements, comments, article dates, etc. Imagine if you were visiting that website, what would you think? See the content flow and identify their potential visitors and their interests. Once you’re okay with the website, pick few titles and google them to see their rankings. Check out their social media if they have any.
In my opinion, I prefer running a guest blogging campaign with a new-starter blog than a spammy one. Because new bloggers have more determination to assure the best work and create interaction with their visitors. Finally, let’s find out how guest blog submission process work and things you need to before submitting a guest pos.
How Does Guest Blog Submission Process Work? What Should I Do Before Submitting a Guest Post?
Usually, you just write you content and submit it under the “write for us” page. However, sometimes platforms do not have this page. So, you can just email it to their attention. Yet, it’s always better to contact them first and introduce yourself. Start building a relationship with the person in charge of the content. This way, they will direct you to the right direction. They will be much more eager to host you as a guest blogger if you meet their needs. Think of your guest blogging as a long-time business deal and make the best of it every change you get.
Don’t rush into submitting your guest post. Take your time and proofread it as many times as you can. Even if you have knowledge on the subject, conduct a deep research before putting the information out there. Make sure every information you provide is up to date and will provide useful information to readers.
In my future articles about guest blogging, I will provide more information about the technical specifications that matters. Make sure you follow us!