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As any savvy inbound marketer knows, blogging is an essential tool for attracting the right visitors to your website. If you’ve been blogging for a while, you may have also started toying with the idea of ​​guest blogging.

And if you’ve been hesitant about the idea, we’re here to let you know: You absolutely should.

What is guest blogging?

Guest blogging, also called “guest posting,” is the act of writing content for another company’s website. In general, guest bloggers write for similar blogs within their industry to:

Drive traffic back to their website

Increase their domain authority by using external links to high authority domains

Increase credibility and awareness of your brand a

Build relationships with colleagues in their field.

Guest blogging almost always offers mutual benefits to both the guest blogger and the website hosting the guest content. In other words, guest blogging is a two-way street – so if you decide to jump on the guest blogging bandwagon, you should consider including guest blogger posts on your own site as well.

Why is guest blogging important for your business?

Guest blogging offers a number of benefits for any business. By sharing your expertise on other companies’ websites, you can establish yourself as an authority in your market, build relationships with other thought leaders in your industry, and expose your brand to a whole new audience.

Additionally, guest posting on your own blog will help you provide new perspectives and content to your audience. We’re all guilty of falling victim to the routine and getting tired of the same old stuff, so guest posting is a great way to keep readers engaged—not to mention the promotional boost that comes when your guest bloggers share their blogs with your personal network.

Some blogs, like OpenView, get most of their content from other industry leaders. Even if you don’t have the resources to stick to a robust blogging cadence, guest bloggers can help you offer new content to your readers without requiring much time and effort from your team.

How do I get started with guest blogging?

Before you start guest blogging, make sure you are clear about what you want to get out of guest blogging. Look for industry blogs from non-competing companies where you can provide real insight to readers.

Guest blogging for your affiliates is a great place to start. At New Breed, we write guest blogs primarily for our partners as part of our joint marketing strategy. We also tend to use guest blogging as a way to develop relationships with companies we hope to work with in the future.

Regardless, research is essential to successful guest blogging.

It’s no secret that there is a lot of spam on the web. It is your responsibility to ensure that you do not post to these types of blogs – or publish any spammy content on your own blog.

Focus on finding authors within your niche, in your market, and from a respected business or environment. You should also agree with what they say in their post and ensure that the message is relevant to your person’s interests. If the content doesn’t match your business, personas, or brand voice, guest blogging can have a quick and negative impact on your company.

Here are some things to look for before offering to guest blog or vice versa:

Does this blog or blogger have a lot of followers who actively comment, share blogs with their networks, and otherwise engage with the content?

Do they have a Facebook or Twitter account where they regularly share their own blog posts?

Do they have a high domain authority that would boost my own SEO ranking?

Do their industry and expertise complement my own?

Pro tip: When looking for blogs to post on, search for relevant industry keyword + “guest post”, “email us” or something similar. For example, if you wanted to write about inbound marketing, you could go to SEO EXPERT:

This will help you find relevant industry blogs that are interested in the topic you are writing about and are currently accepting submissions from guest bloggers.

Download Introduction to Business Blogging and learn how to build a successful content strategy for your blog.

How does guest blogging affect SEO?

The short answer is: If you’re careful and thoughtful about creating high-value guest blogs for legitimate sites, guest blogging can be a great tool for building your domain authority and moving up the SEO rankings.

However, it is understandable why many wonder whether or not guest blogging will hurt their business. Due to the risk of “spam bloggers” trying to bribe blog owners to allow them to post low-quality content for their own link building and SEO benefits, many marketers choose to opt out altogether.

Ultimately, developing a guest blogging strategy for SEO is about providing real, useful, and relevant content to educate your readers—not low-quality content used as a mere container for links to your site.

So, if your content is of high quality, guest blogging is a great way to increase your site’s rankings. As Google sees it, if other people are linking back to your blog on their own websites, then your blog content must be relevant and interesting. When individuals comment, share, like or link to your blog, it moves up in Google PageRank – meaning it’s much more likely to appear first when someone Googles a similar topic.

But Google PageRank is just an algorithm, so it can’t tell the difference between dynamic content and spam! So while cramming guest blog posts with links and keywords will move you up the rankings, it probably won’t generate any new, highly relevant traffic, and it certainly won’t make you an authority in your field.

What does quality guest blogging look like?

The key to writing a high quality guest blog is to think of it as adding value to your audience – not advertising!

As with any type of inbound content, your guest blogs should be designed to educate your reader, not promote your own product or service. If the topic is relevant to your product or service, then of course there is no harm in presenting it on your blog. However, there is a big difference between selling yourself and offering useful and actionable information to your readers.

Instead, guest blog with the goal of establishing yourself as an authority in your field, introducing your name to a new audience, and building real relationships with other bloggers or businesses.