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Guest posting is the digital marketing practice of being a contributor to another individual or entity’s blog. This way, you connect with people who have established a following and provide exposure for your brand. Moreover, being associated with key leaders in your industry or niche boosts your authority and credibility on a particular subject. Keep in mind that the success of an SEO strategy can’t be determined by looking at the performance of one single metric and you’ll need to track a variety of important marketing KPIs.
Here are a few tips on how you can maximize your guest post for SEO success:
1. Know Your Target Audience
It’s imperative that you spot the people who are most likely to be interested in your content and, ultimately, your products and services. With this information, you can ensure that you create compelling blog posts that will attract more and more customers to visit your site. You can pinpoint your target market by looking at your current customer base and identifying their demographics.
Other ways to know your target audience include:
- Checking Your Competitors – Try to get an idea of who they’re targeting and who their current customers are. However, don’t aim for the same market. Instead, examine the niche that your rivals may be overlooking and go for them.
- Scrutinizing Your Product or Service – Take note of the features of your product or service and list the benefits that customers will get beside each characteristic. Afterward, write down the people who would gain from each one. If you’re selling an electric hand mixer, you can target mothers, bakers, and even school cafeterias.
- Understanding Your Customers’ Preferences – Aside from identifying the demographics of your target audience such as gender, age, and location, you must consider their values, hobbies, and lifestyles. This way, you can create meaningful content that caters to their interests.
2. Know Where to Post
You must find a blog that has an engaged following. It’s not mainly about how many people visit the site, but more on the number of subscribers who comment and like the posts as this shows engagement. The blog owner should also be active in replying to the comments because this is a sign that they care about interacting with their audience and in keeping the community connected.
These are the things that you can do to find guest post targets:
- Google Search – Type your keyword plus the phrase “write for us” on Google’s search bar, and you’ll get several sites that accept guest contributors. Other common phrases you can use include “guest post,” “contributing writer,” “submit blog post,” “become a guest blogger,” and “contribute to our site.”
- Twitter Search – If you’re looking to start at a smaller or more unique niche, you can go to Twitter and use the same formula above. You can find high-quality sites that accept guest posts on the microblogging platform.
- Reverse Engineering Backlinks – A more technical approach is looking at where your competitors get their backlinks. Take their homepage URL and have it analyzed using backlink research tools like Ahrefs. This is ideal in discovering sites that don’t openly promote their guest posting feature.
3. Read the Blog First
After finding target sites for guest blogging, you must allocate time to read their content first and familiarize yourself with the topics that the readers enjoy. Plus, being a blog reader first also gives you an idea of the style and tone of writing that works for that particular audience.
4. Know What to Post
Never submit an old article on your blog as a guest post somewhere. This practice won’t help the SEO campaign for your website. Always create original content that follows the blog’s posting guidelines and standards. Moreover, come up with a fresh, relevant concept that provides value to your partner site’s readership and write it well.
5. Incorporate Links in Moderation
One of the primary purposes of guest posting is link building, which is the practice of having another site direct visitors to your website. It’s an integral part of any business’ SEO campaign as it informs Google that your domain is a credible source of a particular topic, which can increase your ranking on the search engine results page (SERP).
However, you should be careful of the number of hyperlinks you place in a guest post. Limit it to one or two links, and even then, these should send visitors to a landing page with content that’s relevant to what you were talking about in the article they came from.
Conclusion
Guest posting allows you to establish significant relationships with key people in a particular industry or niche. Being associated with them boosts your credibility and authority. Link building also benefits your website greatly as being a quality contributor to another site ensures that you get a backlink to your domain.
