Companies and content creators are working hard to spread their brand’s message and build the trust of their target audience. Guest blogging is one of the best digital marketing strategies brands should invest in to achieve these and more objectives.

Brands and bloggers spread their message by publishing content on reputable websites in their niche and market. Does this mean I should work hard to generate content, not for my blog but instead for someone else’s site?

pexels canva studio 3194523 large | Blog | blog, guest blogging

Yes, it means contributing to another site because guest blogging is important and offers numerous benefits for you and your business. It helps brands to reach a broader target audience, improve search engine optimization (SEO), move up the search engine results pages (SERP), and much more.

The post will tell you how this act of uploading content to someone else’s website can bolster your marketing efforts.

Guest Post Explained

Guest posting or guest blogging involves writing content and publishing it on another person’s or company’s website. Indeed guest bloggers generate content for blogs within their niche and industry.

The following are reasons why content creators contribute to other sites.

Get referral traffic
Increase brand awareness and credibility
Position yourself or your brand as an authority in the niche and industry
Establish relationships with other guest speakers in the industry
Build backlinks to your own website (This should be your last goal because Google doesn’t like it.)

The following are two key things that you should do as your content appears on another site or blog.

Find a site or blog with a broader and more engaged audience.
Work with blogs or sites with a strong root domain authority.

Understanding your goals first will help you find the best site to submit your guest posts.

Why Should I Publish Guest Posts?

There are several benefits of sharing your expertise on another site. They include:

Exposure to Targeted Traffic

Guest blogging piques your target audience’s interest even when you don’t get a link to your personal blog or site. You will get a lot of referral traffic when clients click on your content, read your high-quality article, and eventually visit your site.

Blogs and businesses survive online because of traffic. That’s why brands and users are interested in targeted traffic that they can generate through guest blogging. The traffic can translate to sales when properly done. In fact, you can boost your chances of converting more leads into customers by optimizing the landing pages of your sites, the CTAs as well as other elements.

Grows Your Personal Network

Guest posting allows you to connect with various influencers in your industry or target niche. Actually, some sites foster a community of guest bloggers, influencers, and other contributors. These content creators have the opportunity of brainstorming certain topics on email or social media.

You can boost your chances of connecting with influencers in your industry by being active. In other words, send cold emails or share posts with your prospects, leave comments, commend them, invite them to contribute to your personal blog, etc.

It’s these interactions that enable you to co-author posts and seek partnership with other contributors such as expert interviews, cross-promotion, etc.

Encourage Social Networks Shares

Getting a lot of social media shares can help you grow your online reach. Preparing unique and high-quality content can amplify your social shares and, in return, increase your follower base. You can work with sites or blogs with a lot of social media activity because social sharing of your content comes naturally.

Alternatively, you can include highly shareable content in your articles, such as infographics, because they can magnify the engagement on the social media platforms compared to content without them.

Strengthen Your Backlink Profile

Most guest posts hosting sites allow their bloggers to retain at least one link back to their own site on the content. Since some of these sites don’t compensate their contributors for their hard work, they permit them to leave a keyword-optimized link or a brief brand mention. This can be rewarding when done properly.

Further, a single backlink originating from an authoritative blog can be beneficial in terms of SEO because it helps users discover your content and Google index it. Therefore, it’s advantageous to publish your content on sites in your niche or industry in order to build relevancy.

Boost Your Online Authority

It’s easy to convert a site visitor to a paying customer or loyal subscriber when they trust your brand. Contributing top-quality blogs helps content creators prove their credibility and demonstrate to their target audience that trustworthy brands recognize them as an authority in the niche or industry.

As a result, the audience becomes more receptive to any advice or tips you present on your content or site. This is vital because authority is everything in modern digital marketing.

Build Brand Awareness

You can establish authority in your niche and industry by sharing unique practical tips not available in another place. Instilling your brand’s voice in each post that you submit to another site makes it recognizable wherever you publish your content.

You can also engage with your readers using a humorous and conversational approach. Internet users prefer short and easy-to-read sentences. Such tricks can help you grow your brand awareness.

Refine Your Content Marketing Skills

To be a successful guest blogger, you must understand every aspect of content marketing. For instance, you must be conversant with content research, use up-to-date writing skills, reach out to influencers in your industry or niche, etc. Thus guest posting sharpens your content marketing skills and grows your brand.

How and Where Can I Find Guest Blogging Opportunities?

By now, you already know the benefits of guest posting. So then, how can you discover guest post opportunities? The best place to search for guest post opportunities are sites in your niche and industry.

The following is what you should consider when writing for relevant sites:

The content should be fully dedicated to your niche and industry
The audience is interested in your industry
The blog or the site is active on social media, and its followers are engaged with its posts
The site is also active on socials (This shows that they know what is trending and is ready to promote your articles online.)

Here are tips for finding guest post opportunities:

Search Online

The first place to look for excellent guest posting opportunities is on Google. You can search for them using keywords such as “guest post,” “submit a guest post,” “guest post guidelines,” etc.

Such searches can lead you to guest post submission pages or sites that accept guest posts, such as Socialnewsdaily.com, Applegazette.com, Startup.com, etc.

Connect with Established Guest Bloggers

Every industry has successful content creators. Your niche and industry have prolific guest bloggers that you know by name and enjoy reading their blogs. You can pitch them or ask them to introduce you to blogs or site owners in your industry accepting guest posts. Still, you can also use the Google search engine to look for sites in your niche accepting guest bloggers.

Run a Search on Social Media

Bloggers tend to share their guest posts on social media platforms. You can run a search on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn using keywords such as “guest post .”These will give you recently posted guest posts in your industry or niche. You can pitch the sites’ owners or contact the contributors requesting for recommendation or referral.

Why is Guest Posting Important for SEO?

Guest posting is a great tool as long as you generate high-value content and post it on legitimate websites. It can help you build your domain authority and move up the SEO rankings.

On the other hand, spam bloggers who post low-quality posts or stuff them with spammy or keyword-rich links for the sake of their own SEO and link-building benefit are pushing reputable sites away from guest posting.

Therefore it’s important to develop and implement an SEO-boosting guest blogging strategy by generating genuine and helpful. In other words, your content should not be a container for links to your site but should be relevant content and educate your target readers.

Indeed, guest blogging is an excellent way to increase your site rankings. Google rewards you when readers interact well with your high-quality content and link back to your site or blog. Further, the search engine pushes your content up the PageRank when your followers like, comment, share or link to your blog. Because of that, your content pops up first when internet users search for a similar topic on Google. Therefore guest posting is important for SEO.

How Much Does One Earn from Guest Posting?

Some guest post hosting sites don’t pay bloggers for contributing their content. Instead, they allow them to retain at least one keyword-rich backlink or give a brief introduction about their brand.

On the other hand, some sites accept third-party content and pay them for their contribution. The pay ranges from $75 to $150 per post.

The payment depends on factors such as:

The length of the content
Niche markets
Writer’s experience or credibility
Market price
Metrics

Alternatively, a blogger might use a guest posting service. On this option, the writer pays a guest posting service fee for being linked to a host site that publishes third-party content. In this case, the blogger charges more for their content in order to recover the extra cost resulting from using an agency.

You can also search on Google or other search engines for sites in your niche or industry accepting guest posts, as well as the price range for guest posts. The following guest posting services can help you find host sites for your content.