Guest Blogging – a Silver Bullet for Your Link Building Strategy in 2020

1. SEO conditions for success
2. Guest posting is the best way of gaining backlinks
3. How to guest blog for your benefit
   1. Step 1. Find relevant blogs
   2. Web design related blogs that accept guest posts
   3. Step 2. Contact the blog owner
   4. Step 3. The last step in the posting procedure is writing the actual post
4. What makes a quality guest post
   1. Your bio is important too
5. Wrapping up

It is quite obvious that the best traffic for your website is organic traffic. If the user can find you right on the first page of the search results list, you will be able to spend a lesser part of the budget for advertising. Besides, people produce people. The more visitors come to your website – the better it will be for your search engine rate and the more users will have the chance to find your website. What is the importance of guest blogging in that chain? Oh, that’s simple – it directly affects your website’s SEO.

So, first of all, let’s take a look at the things that affect SEO.

SEO conditions for success

I won’t be annoying you with the description of what SEO is and why is it important for your website. Come on, I’m sure you know it already. I won’t be listing the steps you have to do to make your website more visible for search engines either – there are lots of articles about it. So, let’s talk about not-so-obvious facts. There are two elephants the efficient SEO stands on.

Those are:

• Content
• And backlinks.

Yep, that’s completely enough to be ranked really high by search engines. Let me dig a little dipper.

Saying “content” I mean interesting and informative blogs. Some original (unique will be better, of course) data, offered in an easy and understandable way. Once more – not only interesting but also well-written. And sure, there have to be enough keywords, so the search engine mechanisms will be able to find those texts. It sounds difficult and yes, it is. However, this topic needs a separate article and we will not focus on it here.

Backlinks are the links to your website that other site owners insert to their own posts. According to the results of the research the Ahrefs company CMO, Tim Soulo revealed on the HubSpot GROW conference (2019), the more backlinks your website has – the higher its position in the Google search will be.

If you’ve heard or read that the “era of backlinks” is over – that’s not true. Furthermore, you won’t be able to win the competition for a position in the search results list, unless your page has more backlinks than the competitor’s. So, as you can see, backlinks are some kind of a McGuffin for SEO, the thing every blog owner wants and is eager to get.

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Guest posting is the best way of gaining backlinks

Firstly, I will list all the ways of gaining backlinks and then explain why guest posting is the best one by showing the disadvantages of other methods. There are three main strategies that can bring your website backlinks:

• Write engaging content and simply wait;
• Buy the backlinks:
• Or do the guest posts.

Of course, each of these ways has not only cons but pros too. Here, let me show you.

Writing posts that visitors will not only love to read but also share is great for your website anyway. If you also promote the page and do the advertising – after some time the backlinks will appear naturally. The person who finds your article fully comprehensive will mention it in their materials about a related topic. However, without a direct request, the number of backlinks will be rather poor.

If you choose to buy backlinks it means that from the good/cheap/fast triangle you decided to ignore the “cheap” point. This method demands almost no efforts from you. Just money. The more you give for every backlink – the more qualitative it will be. I guess you understand that paid content is not always as good as the one people create by their own volition. On the other hand, if your budget is enormous – you can ignore that.

The quality of backlinks you gain via quality guest posts is much higher than the one from the “buying method”. The amount of effort you will have to apply is the same or similar to that of the “promotion way”. However, the number of backlinks will be sufficiently higher. Actually, if you do guestblogging right, it will be even bigger than the number you can achieve by purchasing links.

How to guest blog for your benefit

What is, actually, guest posting? I would say that it is a nice result of mutually-profitable communication. You, from the one side, want a link to your page to be mentioned in some blog posting site. The blog owner, on the other hand, wants to post some interesting and relevant content. The article with the link to your website naturally included into it – is the point where the interests of both sides meet. If you want the high-quality backlink as a result – there are a few steps you have to do correctly.

Step 1. Find relevant blogs

That is, probably, the most complicated task in the whole chain. Of course, you can find relevant blogs by just typing the necessary keywords to the search bar. However, some of them have huge traffic and their owners won’t be looking for guest bloggers. Those blogs are “too big” for you. Some of the blogs will be, using the same metaphor, “too small”. Here are a few ways of looking for guest blogging opportunities:

• Use specialized search engines like BlogSearchEngine or BlogSpot Blog Search
• Use specialized tools, like Ahrefs Content Explorer
• Search the social media – people often post links to the blog articles in the specialized groups on Facebook. Go through such groups and check those blogs

Web design related blogs that accept guest posts

As you probably already know, a backlink can be considered qualitative if the website that is hosting it has an audience relevant to your niche or topic. In this case that link will not only improve your SEO but also provide some additional direct traffic. Don’t expect it to be huge. The traffic from the guest posts will be, probably, much lower than you expect. However, that is not why you should do guest posting.

Do you have a blog about web design or business somehow connected with website templates? Here are a few of the surefire guest blog opportunities for you:

• https://www.webdesign.org/
• https://www.templates.com/
• https://www.freetemplatesonline.com/blog
• https://www.websitetemplates.org/blog
• https://www.adesdesign.net/
• https://blog.websitetemplatesonline.com/

Placing a guest post on each of these blogs is a paid service but it will be a good start. All of them have nice traffic that could transform into your profit.

Why should you go for paid guest posts if there is an option to place it for free on some other (smaller) blog? Well, first of all, it probably won’t have an equally big audience. Secondly - to find free guest posting sites you will have to spend some time seeking. And while you do - the links on the relevant blogs could start working for you. To achieve maximum efficiency, it is wise to combine approaches.

Step 2. Contact the blog owner

It could be amusing and disappointing but bloggers don’t always mention their email on the website. It’s great, if there are at least social media contacts. One way or another, you have to be ready to contact that person via the messenger or even make a phone call. When reaching out to the blogger – be simple and sincere. And, what’s important, don’t be shy. You are not asking for something that is profitable only to you. Both your website and the person’s blog could gain profit from that guest article.

Step 3. The last step in the posting procedure is writing the actual post

Certainly, it is better if you write the article yourself. Who knows your topic better than you? However, if your writing skills are not really brilliant – you can ask the blogger (or some independent author) to write it for you.
Either you write the article yourself or ask someone else  – discuss the topic and size with the blog owner. Make sure to check if they have guest post guidelines and follow them if they are in place. That text has to fit both you and the guest posting blog, so don’t hesitate to write down all the ideas you come up with while brainstorming.

What makes a quality guest post

If you follow the guest posting guidelines provided by the publishing website itself you are almost guaranteed to be at least allowed to submit guest post. However, to be actually published you’ll have to provide a real quality to the blog, not simply a post that was written according to the guidelines. So, what does a quality guest post look like?

• It provides only credible and verified facts, practical value to the readers
• It is well structured (titles and subtitles etc.)
• It has relevant images and other media. Don’t forget about alt tags!
• It refers to quality resources
• It links to other relevant posts on the blog. Preferably, it expands on those posts and provides additional, valuable information.

Your bio is important too

Even if you can not insert your own link into the guest post text you can always add it to your author’s bio. And it is a good way to have more guest post opportunities find you themselves. The best blog bios have:

• Short info on the author that shows they are an expert in their field.
• Professional achievements.
• Links to their social media profiles.
• Links to their own blog.

Wrapping up

That’s all for now, I hope that this article gave you a necessary insight about the benefits of guest blogging. I’ll also be very glad if thanks to it you will be able to make your website more visible and popular. Good luck with gaining a huge bunch of backlinks!

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