Guest Blogging Done Right – Essential Tactics you Must Adhere to if you want to Succeed

A great number of people opt for guest blogging as their primary link building technique, and there is nothing wrong with the premise itself. The problem emerges when they opt for low quality guest blogging, or link juice. In other words, they tackle the issue using a guest blogging posts galore, with generic anchor texts, and a minimal requirement of words for a piece of written content. This kind of approach is classified as spam, along with building links via newsletters, all the while posting something that should not be considered as news at all. Not only is this ineffective, it can also harm the rankings of one’s website.

This does not imply that guest blogging is dying out – it only means that you are more likely to succeed if you focus on quality rather than quantity. After all, it is in your interest to be regarded as a quality website by Google, and why would Google or any other search engine for that matter, rank you high if you rely on spamming and spinning existing content. If that was the case, no one would rely on these search engines to provide them with quality results, since spammers would be located at the very top. Now, let us delve further into the matter of content and quality guest blogging and explain the right way to do it.

Content Marketing – Does Your Content Have Relevance and Value

Let us address one of the most common concerns when it comes to quality content, or quality products. Why invest so much in quality and novelty if websites with huge traffic and lower quality products are generating higher traffic due to their rank and perpetually generating rank due to higher traffic?  Well, is that entirely true first? Sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook – they all started small. Would they really be so popular today, if they offered a poor user experience? Google+ on the other hand, did not bring anything new to the table, which is why it does not have as many users as the previously mentioned social networks.

As long as content brings something new and valuable to the community, or to a particular audience, if it is a good read, or a good product, all you need to do is focus on how to properly advertise it. Trying to be omnipresent and posting on every available site that is not related to your niche in any way only makes you look unprofessional. Furthermore, if you are trying to advertise low quality content while making such a big social buzz about it, you only look like a boy who cried wolf, and you lose your credibility. Consumers are not just a gullible lot that waits to hand over their money, and the community as a whole would really benefit if we would stop trying to exploit some of these basic weaknesses.

The basic things you can do to make your website and its content more qualified for some higher rankings are the following:

• Make your site available to Google crawlers so that Google can actually find it and inspect its content quality. Additionally, make sure there are no broken links via regular website maintenance.
• Optimize your site for mobile platforms – you’ll make it more accessible this way, since a lot of online audiences browse the World Wide Web via smartphones nowadays.
• Watch out for keyword density – once again, spamming keywords only hurts your website’s ranking.
• Make sure that the written content on your site offers valuable insight and the text’s length should be approximately 1500 words. This way, you create good linkable material that will not be regarded as spam.  Short content is still good, due to the previously mentioned mobile browsers, but never focus solely on short content.
• When writing on your website, write something people would type in a search engine, something that is related to your niche. If you have a restaurant, include the menu in your website, which is not a downloadable PDF, since people are more likely to google the name of the meal rather than the name of the restaurant.

Go after Relevant, High Quality Blogs

The main purpose of guest blogging is to present yourself as someone of authority in a particular field, to create a number of backlinks leading to your site and gain exposure and traffic in the process.  As long as you use the before mentioned type of content and target the right blogs, you can successfully archive these goals. Bear in mind that some blogs could have a more engaging audience whereas there are blogs with stronger root domains where your backlinks can easily flourish, but there are rarely those that cover all three aspects. For the purposes of successful marketing, you should do a thorough research and target both types of blogs.

Here’s what you should inspect in terms of blog searching:

• Content on the blogs needs to be related to your own niche, so that the audience will actually be interested in your services.
• Blogs also need to have a high readership engagement, otherwise a post is worthless if no one bothers to read it.
• A blog needs to have its social media profiles, where it promotes posts – this, in a way, secures the reader’s’ engagement.

Use keywords like “guest post”, “accepting guest post” or “guest post guidelines” when you try to find blogs for guest posting. Use the mozbar extension to check those sites authorities, and go through the site’s content to check for engagement.

The next thing you need is a guest blogger with an account on these sites who has some sort of authority, or see if you can create your own accounts and start building your blogging career from scratch. A lot of people look for ways to cut back their expenses, so they outsource their writing to freelancers, who do not charge their writing too much, and as a result, you end up with poor content done with low quality research, and something that good blogs might not even agree to post. Even if some lower authority blog approves the post, it would have no influence.

The best thing to do is find moderately influenced bloggers who write content related to your niche, allow them to ascertain if your website offers viable linking martials and pay them to include you in their next post. It is more expensive yes, but it is a scenario in which everybody wins. It is always better to pay more for quality links and allow them to gradually increase your website’s traffic, then to post tons of links on low authority blogs. This will be seen as spam. It’s just wasting your money.

Finally, find out what type of articles are the most engaging on a particular blog, so that you can properly instruct the writer what he or she should write (infographics, motivational articles, articles with videos, etc.).

Create Evergreen Content

Evergreen content has far greater marketing power, but the question is what makes content evergreen. As its name suggests, the main point of evergreen content is to be timeless. In other words, something, people would read for years to come, something that does not become obsolete.  Try to make sure the posts on your websites and guest posts are under the evergreen category, which includes:

• Tutorials – Good and dummy proof “How to” articles or videos, in other words tutorials, are always a good topic choice. These types of articles greatly contribute to the community, since they help us counterbalance our incompetence. Even if there is an existing tutorial, you can go through it, see if there is room for improvement, and create your own which will be better.
• Reviews – Honest product reviews are always appreciated, and one of the best forms of marketing. Remember, focus on the word honest – your product cannot be perfect, but a good review will highlight its strengths, its advantages over competitors, and say what it does to compensate for its weaknesses. A review that only says “Amazing” is very likely a fake review.
• Tips and Tricks – similar to tutorials, but these articles usually offer insight into how to pull of something with less resources or energy, and yet get satisfying results. As long as they are legit, offer good hacks for difficult matters, they will be evergreen as long as something better does not come along.
• Trends – They are called trends because they come and go usually, but that is not always the case, some of these trends are here to stay, and become evergreen – it takes a little intuition, perhaps some calculation, and sometimes good fortune, but a lot of trends bear long term potential. Google Trends can help you quite a lot if you use specific key words and are willing to spend a little time researching.

With enough evergreen content, you can ensure that your links will end up on blogs, as parts of posts, even without you paying – once again proving that focusing on quality is more budget friendly in the long run. All it takes is creatively implementing your niche into the previously mentioned types of articles.

Writing Style

Finally, when you are writing or paying someone else to ghost write for you or give instructions to your hired guest blogger, always pay attention to the writing style. The topic itself will dictate whether the article is to be written in more a formal tone, or colloquial, whether it is going to be in the third or first person. Also, remember to have shorter paragraphs, meaning do not write in big walls of text, simply because it looks tiring, thus people may not even bother to read it.

Another thing. When you write, highlight all the important parts of your text, and make sure you segment the topic in at least 3 to 4 paragraphs by using subheadings. It allows you to get some crucial points across via these subheadings, and needless to say, they are supposed to be highlighted as well and capitalized.

When you want to convey some particular details that delve deeper into a particular topics, which are connected to your own, always do this via hyperlinks. First of all, the whole point of blogging is to share relevant topics, to get your message across, and creating texts that are more engaging for the reader. You are more likely to incite engagement if there are less technical facts in your article, if you avoid the previously mentioned walls of text, and use headlines and topics that are evergreen. When you are coming up with a headline, just ask yourself do you find it completing enough, and as you read your own writing, stop to consider or give it to someone neutral to supply you with their honest opinion considering the text’s engagement.

It would be wise to go through some good and viral blog posts, as well as those that are relatively unnoticed or poorly written. Compare them, see what the flaws of the latter article are and try to avoid those. It is always easier to notice if something is missing than to pinpoint all the present elements within the well written piece. Never write something simply because you need to blog, always write with the intention to share insight. Spinning one sentence or one point over and over again will only appear as a spam article.

Lastly, remember to supply photos for your articles. Once again, photos that are connected to headlines and subheadings. You can make them yourself, you can find free photos online, and you can also find posters with quotes that sum up your points – these are really popular nowadays. The pictures you select should be high quality, and if they are “pinnable”, there is a good chance your article will generate a lot of shares simply because people are using photos on Pinterest, and higher numbers draw more attention and add relevance.

To sum up, quality writing, evergreen content, good photos, good blogs, related insightful links and patients, these are the traits of a lucrative guest blogging campaign. I hope the article has given you enough guidelines and reasons why to opt for such an approach. If you want the easy way out, Google updates, Penguin and Panda, will get in your way, because we are all trying to become a more responsible and decent community.