know About Guest Posting

Guest blogging is riding high right now and the whole Internet Marketing sphere is buzzing with talk about it. Some people consider guest blogging to be one of the more powerful of available tactics, while others disparage this viewpoint, saying that guest blogging is highly misunderstood and that people are misusing it.

In my honest opinion, both mindsets are correct. I recently did a cartoon post on my blog discussing (in a humorous style)  how guest blogging is powerful and how it is misused by many who have failed to understand the scope of awesomeness in this practice we call guest blogging.

Guest blogging is, indeed, one of the powerful ways of building strong, high-quality relationships that may help you in multiple ways, including developing business opportunities and professional connections, setting brand value and, of course, acquisition of link juice.

But, there are many people in the industry who aren't grasping the real worth of guest blogging. They tend to view guest blogging as just another link building tactic. Because of this, they continue to build low quality content for submission to blogs that accept guest posting. Sadly, I estimate that one out of ten blogs actually publishes this junk, polluting the web with garbage.

Discussion about guest blogging as a relationship development tool vs. guest blogging as yet another vehicle for mere linkbuilding is all over the web.  What makes this post different from others is that I will provide case studies and success stories to back my opinion of the real potentials of this practice.

Let’s cut the theory part and talk about the real figures! Properly executed, guest blogging can help you:

Build Relationships

So many blogs state this, but I remember when I wrote my first ever guest post. Very few people tweeted it and I wasn’t able to make any good connections out of it. I was a newbie, and didn't play my part well.

There is another common industry phrase that states, ‘Building relationships takes time’. If I merge these two phrases, it reads something like this.

Guest blogging helps you build relationships, and as it takes time,  you should be consistent in your activities.

Let's hear what blogging and SEO expert, Kristi Hines, has to say about building relationships through guest blogging:

Words from Kristi Hines:

"I've built great blogging relationships through guest posting on other blogs as well as inviting others to guest post on my own. The strongest relationships you will build with other blogs are the ones on sites where you contribute regularly vs. submitting one-off posts."

Submitting a single guest post isn't enough. If you intend to forge a relationship, then your job doesn’t end with submitting your post. Plan to interact with the audience (usually through the comments) and follow up with the blog owner or editor to see how your guest post did. This will prove that you aren't just another link builder; you actually care about the community.  Who knows? This might open their doors for you to a future of more guest posting opportunities and even partnerships in other areas.

Social Media Examiner is one example from my own guest blogging experience of building relationships through guest blogging. They treat all of their writers as a part of their team. They organize meet-ups at blogging conferences like New Media Expo (formerly BlogWorld), they include you in their roundup posts when your expertise matches the roundup topic, and they always offer to help you in any way they can. I've met a lot of great people through their community and even gained some clients for my freelance writing business, which is always a plus.

Become An Expert

Guest blogging can act as your doorway to gaining status as an expert in your field. The more in-depth, well-researched posts you publish on authoritative blogs, the more chances you will get to communicate and interact with people. Over time, you can become an authority in eyes of your target audience.

That's advice you'll read everywhere, but let's gain deeper insight from the words of guest blogging queen, Ann Smarty, about her journey towards the respect she has earned in the industry:

Words from Ann Smarty

"It somehow happened without me trying too much. I started blogging and was invited to guest post at Search Engine Journal. I didn't even know what a guest post was and was too humble to even include an "About author" page. Then guest posting invites kept coming. I saw traffic and more people recognizing me as an expert. I saw the benefit! So I started guest blogging actively. Then the idea of MyBlogGuest was born and my name became associated with "guest blogging" because of it. I started to guest post even more promoting MyBlogGuest. It was promoted 100% with my guest posts: no paid reviews, no ads, just "free" guest posts. And it started growing! I guess that's the best evidence of the benefits of guest blogging."

Discover Business Opportunities

This is the most delicious bite in the whole meal. Yes! With proper implementation, guest blogging surfaces new business opportunities. Don't laugh. I know it works. Rather than quoting an expert here, I'll share my own personal experience.

My last post on SEOmoz was about writing an email in a way that gets a better rate of response and it went very well. I danced twice; once when my post got promoted to the main blog and again when I received this message in my SEOmoz private message box:

While I can't reveal all the details of this message, I think it proves my point. In fact, I have received several emails like this after guest blogging elsewhere.

If you've tried guest posting without achieving this kind of success, keep the following tips in mind:

When attempting to attract business, nothing matters more than the quality of your offering. Your submission must accurately showcase your level of expertise in your field.  

If you want to see traffic flowing towards your website from your efforts, you must produce the best post ever (I really mean this) on your topic and submit it to a high quality blog. Be sure your website is ready to welcome the new traffic. Make sure it's as awesome as your guest post!

Capture A Wider Audience

It's generally accepted that the more targeted traffic your website captures, the greater the chance of a high conversion rate.

The formula for a blogger is pretty much the same, but the question becomes one of how to reach that target audience. Again, enter guest blogging!

Thanks to SEOmoz for coming up with this post analytics feature on their blog. I am again highlighting a previous guest posts on SEOmoz and showing you my stats.

Around 3,016 people actually visited my post’s page and average time of their stay on the page is around 4 minutes and 20 seconds (enough time to read and comment on the post).

I am sure that if I had published my post on my own blog, I would not have gotten the same amount of traffic. My limited audience and smaller circle of influence cannot compare to that of SEOmoz (obviously).  Through guest blogging, I had the chance capture a wider audience and make an impression on new people.

Moreover, a good guest post can win more blog and Twitter followers. I've noticed how my followers have quickly increased whenever I've had a post published on one of the major SEO blogs.

Retaining these followers is a completely different story, but as far as the increase in followers is concerned, I consider this one of the best gifts guest blogging offers.

...And Get The Link!

Let's not forget linkbuilding. The highest quality links will come from submitting your best content to the best blogs publishing in your niche.

My blog is in its infancy - only two months old. I currently have a Google PR of 3 and DA of almost 35. Most of my incoming links are the result of guest blogging.

I should add that I've been guest blogging for more than a year now, long before I launched my personal blog, so I haven’t been doing it for the purpose of linkbuilding, nor do I recommend this approach.

Within a few months, I achieved a reasonably good DA and Google PR score because I was getting links from valuable sites. Check out this screenshot of my link profile in OSE to see what I mean:

For me, guest blogging is fun and it provides a chance to enhance communication as well as my interpersonal skills. It also pushes me to read more and think outside-the-box to come up with something really amazing for guest post content.

If you want to enjoy all the benefits of guest blogging mentioned above, then just think creatively and put together the best (BEST ever) article for guest posting.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-real-benefits-of-guest-blogging

Promote Own Website Like A Brand

Branding at the individual, small or even medium level is a difficult endeavor. However, there are little excuses for inadequacies these days as Google makes it more difficult to rank with content marketing that isn’t “brand friendly” – that is, tactics that are one-off gray or black hat link building techniques.

Today, we must function as brands, and the reality is that although we imagine companies like Kellogg’s and SeaWorld as the behemoths of brand marketing – companies with lackluster websites but still the ability to generate links eight times quicker than us – we are very capable of reflecting a similar identity online due to benefits of miniature scale we can create for ourselves through the proper marketing channels that brands often experience and build on offline.

Link Building with Momentum in Mind

We’ve left behind the term “link building” and must instead focus on identities like “link development” through content marketing. If we build our businesses and link development competencies with the idea that we must build scale, we’ll be a lot more successful with our efforts because we will develop competencies.
What does this mean?

No more one off guest posting for links. Yes I am guest posting here, but I am doing so with the intention of building authority and referrals, and actually, the link matters little to me because I don’t do much SEO for my own blog. Hopefully some of you follow my blog or follow me on Twitter, which will create an audience that will multiply my future efforts online.

If I simply blog for a link, that effort is reduced. If you want to create scale (as you should), you’ll do similar. Yes, the link is valuable, and you should aim for a combinatory effect with your guest posting, but your sole intention should never be the link itself. In the new world of content marketing, it’s no longer a valid excuse.

Creating A Snowball Promotion Strategy

Many brands have the benefit of content that serves itself, and only need to release it into the wild to see the benefits it can create online. Us small peons don’t, right? Well, the reality is that we do. We can’t ever be Kellogg’s or SeaWorld, but we can have the “publish” button that sites like SEOmoz enjoy – when thousands of eyeballs view their content all at once.

This comes from deliberate, long practice of developing audience through mechanisms like guest posting in the target markets our audience operates in. Constantly releasing great content online and then creating introductory “sticky” promotion elements will create the brand mechanisms others enjoy. What are these introductory sticky elements?

• Twitter accounts – getting potential customers to follow us
• Facebook accounts – getting potential customers to like us
• YouTube accounts – getting potential customers to subscribe to us
• RSS feeds – getting potential customers to subscribe to us
• E-mail marketing – getting potential customers to subscribe to us

I say “introductory” because these allow you to remarket to your consumers for free – and are a few steps to the secondary, more powerful sticky element, SEO. If we guest post or do PPC advertising, if we never capture audience intent through one or more of these sticky elements, we lose the potential to scale, because our cost per acquisition continually rises.

This creates a negative brand efficiency if they do not, as customers, follow/like/subscribe to content they enjoy – as such an engagement is an introductory buy-in to your brand identity.

So this means your job, as a marketer, is not to initially think about how you might get thousands of sales, but how you will create the snowball promotion effect every time you release something online. Because if you do not generate that snowball, even if you create a viral sale effect, it will eventually become nothing.

Brands have that snowball effect – which is why every Apple event is covered and talked about once one word is leaked out – and why Six Flags can immediately touch thousands of eyeballs on their brand when a press release is opened up. They built it, but they had it bad compared us – they didn’t have the benefit of online, free promotion mechanisms to do it. They had to do it through high cost per acquisition activities like billboard, display and television advertising.

Build the brand snowball by:

• Leveraging the maximum amount calls to action to social accounts on your sidebar, after blog posts, and occasionally, within blog posts, without appearing spammy
• Most often releasing content to interested markets asymmetrical to your own, such that they might have interest in future relevant content of yours
• Promoting content through all social channels relevant to your own and not to channels where there isn’t much application (such as Pinterest for Daily Blog Tips)
• Creating memorable and brand-identifiable social accounts that are easy to type in, easy to find, and match the company sales mission across all available properties

Creating A Brand Effect in SERP Results

As you build those accounts, you will begin to effect a real change in the search results, depending on your vertical. For example, SEOmoz, a now established “brand” in SEO, has the benefit not just of ranking well that being a brand provides, but also getting a higher clickthrough rate because of it.
It is likely a higher clickthrough rate is a positive signal to Google to actually rank you higher, which then gets you even more clicks – and more links, and so it goes. But that’s not where it stops to create a “snowball effect”. Obviously, hopefully you’ve now established some search result rankings, and some sales. From here, build on that efficiency and “snowball effect” by multiplying effort.
Do this by:

• Signing up customers immediately for e-mail newsletters such that they can serve as content promoters even if they can no longer be upsold
• Immediately leverage a secondary call to action such as “follow us on Twitter/like us on Facebook!” after they’ve completed a conversion event
• Creating content that is good enough to be talked about through word of mouth, bringing new customers back to your website to then be pulled into future promotion efforts through social and email campaigns
• Using rel=author where applicable to create brand identity/quick identification when potential customers use your services online

Hopefully posts like this can help push you to start creating your own mini-brand online. SEO isn’t dead, but I believe winning a competitive vertical by sustaining a business on one-off linking strategies truly is.