10 Benefits Of Guest Posting That Will Make You Start Today

1. Guest Blogging Lets You Build Natural, High-Quality Backlinks

One of the most important benefits of guest posting is that it helps you build high-quality backlinks to your website.

When you publish guest blog posts for other sites, you can tactfully insert links to your content, earning you much-coveted backlinks to your website from other sites.

Backlinks are like votes from other websites, telling search engines that your website is authoritative and trustworthy.

Back in the day, Google set itself apart from other search engines by utilizing backlinks from other sites as a measure of the authority of any site.

Of course, once people realized this, they went overboard with building all sorts of links to game the system. Google responded by cracking down on low-quality links and penalizing sites with too many low-quality or over-optimized links.

This is why all backlinks are not created equal; some are worth more than others. For example, a link from a high-quality website like the Huffington Post is worth a lot more than a link from a low-quality website.

Another factor to be mindful of is relevance. Getting a backlink from a site that's relevant to your niche and where you can find your target audience amplifies the value of a link.

Even today, guest posting sites could be considered guest post farms rather than genuine sites.

These factors have led some to declare that going through the trouble of publishing guest posts should be separate from a content marketing strategy since guest blogging is all but dead.

However, quality and relevance remain the key differentiating factors between high-quality guest posts and useless drivel.

Brands and businesses still utilize guest posting on high-quality and relevant websites as an excellent way to build natural, high-quality backlinks to their website, and you should too.

2. Boost Your Rankings

Another one of the benefits of guest blogging is increased organic traffic and rankings.

After you submit guest posts to high-quality sites and they publish them, search engines will pick up the backlinks and count those as votes of authority and confidence for your site.

This will help improve your rankings and eventually land you on the first page of Google for your target keywords.

Of course, backlinks aren't the only factor. Your site must have high-quality content worthy of receiving the incoming link.

It's not fair to say that a few simple guest posts and backlinks alone will get you organic traffic. But when coupled with qualiy content on your site that matches search intent, it's a winning combination.

3. Increase Referral Traffic

In addition to improving your rankings in search engines, guest posting can also help increase referral traffic to your website.

Referral traffic is the traffic that comes to your site from other websites, typically through links.

When you write a blog post for another website and include a link back to your own site, you're allowing readers to click through and visit your site.

The potential for referral traffic is a great way to judge whether contributing a guest blog post to a particular site is a good idea.

If your link genuinely adds value and is click-worthy, that automatically means it is relevant, too!

Additionally, if your referral traffic visitors like what they see, they may share your post on social media, increasing referral traffic.

The likelihood of receiving mountains of referral traffic is low, but as long as the link is relevant, whatever traffic you get will be very targeted.

4. Assert Yourself As A Thought Leader

Guest posting is also an excellent way to assert yourself as a thought leader in your industry or niche.

When you share your expert knowledge and insights by contributing guest blogs to another site, readers will begin to see you as an expert in your field—someone whose opinion they can trust.

This can go a long way in helping you build credibility and trust with potential customers or clients, especially if they see your name everywhere.

In many niches, you and other businesses will have shared clients. If they see your name on many sites that are relevant to what they do, they may reach out to you the next time they need help.

The online influence you build by guest blogging can also help you establish EAT, where search engines recognize that you are a well-known person in your niche and that what you say is reliable and trustworthy.

5. Guest blogging helps in building brand awareness

Another great benefit of guest posting is that it can help increase exposure for your brand. When you post on another site, you're effectively reaching out to new audiences who may have yet to hear of you.

If they like what they read, they'll be more likely to visit your site and learn more about what you offer—which could lead to new customers or clients.

You'll see with most prolific guest bloggers.

Because they create valuable content for their blog and others, they're able to reach a new and broader audience than they could have otherwise.

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6. Build Your Network

Posting content on other websites is also an excellent way to build relationships within your industry or niche.

When you reach out to other bloggers or websites to guest post, you're effectively networking with them and opening up the possibility for future collaboration.

High-quality relationships are everything in a business. As the saying goes, it's not what you know but who you know.

Suppose you're creating content that's genuinely valuable and insightful. What starts as getting a favor from another site(them accepting your guest post) to owing a favor from another site(you contributing an over-the-top awesome piece of content).

Once your foot is in the door, you can become a regular guest blogger for a site, allowing you to build even more links and brand value.

7. Grow Your Social Following

Guest posting can also be an effective tool for growing your social following.

When you include social media buttons on your guest posts—such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn —readers have the opportunity to follow you on those platforms.

The caveat, of course, is that your content has to be good enough for people to want to follow you.

If it is, then including social media buttons is an easy way to encourage new readers to connect with you on social media, which can help you build a stronger relationship with them and grow your following over time.

8. Generate Leads

In addition to growing your social following, guest posting can also be used as an effective lead-generation tool.

If you include a call-to-action ( CTA ) at the end of each guest post, such as subscribing to your email list or signing up for a free trial, you'll be able to generate leads from each post.

This leads to business opportunities as well as a boost in rankings.

9. Shorten The Sales Cycle

Guest posting can also help shorten the sales cycle by building trust and credibility with potential customers.

If potential customers or clients see that you're an expert in your field, they'll be more likely to do business with you when they need your services.

For example, I want to learn about online business and find lots of great content by Mark Webster and Gäel Breton from Authority Hacker on multiple websites.

I would automatically be more trusting of them if I ended up on a sales page for their course.

10. Improve Your Writing Skills

Last but not least, guest posting can help improve your writing skills!

When you guest post regularly, you'll better craft compelling, interesting articles that engage readers.

You'll also need to be at the top of your game because you must meet other people's standards for quality content.

If you can consistently produce high-quality guest posts, they will reflect well on your blog and website.

Over time, you'll become a better writer, which can only help you grow your business.

You'll also get invaluable feedback from editors and readers that can help you fine-tune your writing skills.

How to get guest post links

After all this talk about the benefits of guest posts, we'd be remiss if we didn't walk you through how to get guest posts!

Find blogs in your niche that accept guest posts

The first step is to identify blogs with similar topics to your website and offer guest posting opportunities.

A quick Google search should do the trick. For example, if you want to write a guest post about SEO, you could try searching for "SEO + guest post."

This would bring up a list of websites that talk about SEO and accept guest posts.

There are plenty of other modifiers you can use as well:

• Write for us
• submit content
• This is a post by
• guest contribution
• guest blogger

Sites you find using these modifiers are easy wins because you know that they accept guest posts.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't approach other sites as well. After all, you only miss the shots you don't take!

Once you have a list of sites, you must vet them to ensure they're worth posting on.

In the 2020s, a guest post on an irrelevant or spammy website will probably hurt your site(instead of just not moving the needle), so you must be very careful about which sites you approach.

I like to ask myself three questions about any site before considering it a prospect:

• Is this site authoritative, and does it have a high DR?
• Is this site relevant to my niche?
• Does this site receive a decent amount of traffic?

The answers to these questions will help you determine whether to pursue it or not.

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Shadow prolific guest bloggers

Another cheat code for finding easy guest posting opportunities is to shadow prolific guest bloggers in your niche.

Find out which individuals do a lot of guest posting, and pop their name into Google to find a list of all the sites with their byline!

Contact the blog owner or editor

Once you've found a few potential websites, it's time to reach out and introduce yourself.

Send an email or fill out a contact form expressing your interest in writing a guest post and be sure to include links to some of your previous work.

Also, suggest a topic for your guest post.

The key here is to personalize your approach. These guys are most likely very busy and receive hundreds of low-quality guest posting requests every single day.

Ensure you show that you've done your homework and made some effort to contact them; the likelihood of receiving a reply increases manifold!

Also, remember to send follow-up emails. Since most people are very busy, the first email will often slip their notice.

In my experience, two follow-up emails hit the sweet spot.

You should send the first follow-up email 3-5 days after you send the initial email.

If they still don't reply, shoot them another email a few days later. This is usually enough to get a response!

Write an amazing article

Now it's time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write an informative, well-written, relevant article for the blog's audience.

This is where you have to go overboard. Put more effort into creating guest blog posts than you do for your blog.

You've gotten this far - you found a site, convinced them to let them write for you, and now you have to deliver the goods.

The article you write will reflect your brand, so make sure it's something you're proud of!

Where relevant, include 1-2 links back to your website in the body of the article—that's what you're here for, after all!

Just be sure to stay moderate with the self-promotion; too many(or even forced links will come across as spammy and will likely get removed before your post is published.

Include a bio with your submission

Most blogs will allow you to include a brief author bio along with your guest post.

Use this space wisely! Include a link to your website and ensure your bio accurately reflects who you are and what you do.

This is also an opportunity to promote any social media accounts you have, so be sure to include those as well!

In some cases, you may prefer to leave a guest blog ghostwritten.

Otherwise, the self-promotion can become quite obvious - if all of your backlinks come from pieces of content with your name, then you've not earned the backlink!

Follow up but don't be annoying 

Once you've submitted your guest post, it's perfectly acceptable (and even encouraged) to follow up with the blog owner or editor after a week to ensure they received everything and that there aren't any questions they need answered before publishing your article.

However, don't overdo it—sending too many emails creates irritation and will probably result in your guest post being ignored altogether.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of good reasons to start writing guest posts for other blogs in your industry.

Creating guest posts is an integral part of a content strategy.

If you've been on the fence about whether or not guest posting is right for you, we hope this post has helped convince you to give it a try!