Member Article

Guest posting for entrepreneurs

The internet has levelled the playing field for small and medium businesses. With a clever online strategy, even start-ups can punch well above their weight and get noticed by the right prospects. One of the most important strategies to be found online is guest posting. If you are not familiar with the concept, you can find an explanation of the concept here (http://www.enduranceseo.com/guest-posting-services-advice-to-blog-owners/).

However, many websites have seen a drop in search traffic after Google’s recent search algorithm updates. The search engine now penalises websites with spammy backlink profiles. To avoid this, links should come from a website with a high domain authority that is relevant to the industry. This is why guest posts are a natural way to boost your website’s ranking.

But be cautious, if done wrong, your link building activities could actually harm your website traffic. Unfortunately, many follow a ‘spray and pray’ approach and blindly send out articles everywhere hoping some may stick. Even if this would lead to having many links pointing to your page, they come from low quality bogs which are not relevant to your target audience.

It doesn’t make sense to write about kitchen design on a gaming blog. Avoid this by focusing on an audience you want to target and checking the domain authority of blogs you are likely to approach. Entrepreneurs who want to start out with guest blogging should follow the three tips below.

1. Focus on quality blogs

Instead of ‘spray and pray’ you should focus on quality over quantity and only approach blogs which have both high domain authority and regularly publish content relevant for your industry. Not only would it be a waste of time to publish a great article on IT software for businesses on a food blog, Google may also see this as a spamming tactic and penalise your search rankings.

Many industry specific blogs are more than open about publishing free, high quality content. You could even become a regular contributor for such blogs or industry publications. However, you need to make sure that your submission is information-rich and has something new to say or else it won’t be accepted by most quality blogs. It should be between 500 and 1,000 words long, engaging and have useful tips for its readers.

It may be worth investing in professional help getting an editor to use your ideas to ghost write an engaging article for you, because although every entrepreneur has a great story to tell, not all of us are great storytellers.

Guest blogs are a great way to start a discussion with other industry members and to establish yourself as a thought leader. Don’t be afraid to say something controversial if that is how you truly feel about it, and if you can back it up with sound arguments. To break through the noise of content, you sometimes need to take a risk.

2. Make sure your own website is worth linking to

Once you get many new visitors to your website thanks to guest blogging and other link building strategies, they should see content worth finding. Your landing pages need provide useful information that offers solutions to problems your target audience has. Only if they find this will they be willing to listen to what you have to offer. You also need to check if your website architecture makes sense and is easy to navigate for first time visitors.

Your guest blogging campaign should be part of a wider online marketing strategy, including regular blogs on your own website, how-to-guides or white papers on your website as well as a well-maintained presence on social networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter.

If you are buying banner ads on websites, you could ask to add a blog post to the same sites. They will most likely agree as you are their customer and they’ll be interested in keeping you happy. Make sure you tag any advert links as ‘no follow’ so that search engines don’t think you are just buying a link.

3. Be patient

If you start guest blogging, you won’t see results overnight. Manual link building takes much longer than I have expected initially, mirroring your real world business, where you have to slowly build up your reputation, too. After all, you are building a network of relationships not with websites, but with the people who read them. This is why you should be patient. After three to six months of working with the right blog partners, you will start to see not just more traffic, but more qualified visitors with a lower bounce rate coming to your website.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Billy Weller .