Blogging should be an essential component of your overall content and digital marketing strategy. And guess blogging provides you ample chances to expand your customer outreach by publishing on a third-party platform. It’ll help you boost your online traffic and improve your brand’s marketing ROI. Moreover, you can attract new customers and also refurbish your social media presence. Since a well-established website hosts your articles, it builds trust. People consider your company or business a reliable source of information, and your digital perception automatically gets enhanced. So, here are some suggestions for you to revamp your guest-blogging expertise and become a successful blogger:
Suggestions for improved guest blogging
- Set actionable goals
First thing’s first, determine the objective of your guest-blogging endeavors. Why do you want to publish your content on another website? What do you wish to achieve from this attempt? Your publishing opportunities must align with these objectives. Here are some goals you may adopt:
- Find more email subscribers.
- Get some high-quality backlinks.
- Generate more leads and expand brand awareness.
- Grow your social media presence and reach a better audience.
- Build your networks
Suppose you have an excellent article to publish. How would you convince someone to consider this piece of writing? It isn’t easy to become a guest blogger without connections and associations. Attending events, participating in webinars, appearing in digital meet-ups secure your position as a trustworthy fellow. So, never stop networking if you wish to become a published author. You can leverage these bonds to find better opportunities and become a part of the blogging community.
- Know what your audience likes
Understand what your target audience wants you to write about! Always keep your niche in mind whenever you’re contemplating an idea for your article. So, it’s appreciated to visit the website you’re writing for and read some of their posts. This practice will help you determine what sort of content these readers like. Don’t try writing for everyone. Your target audience consists of a specific group of people who are most likely to purchase from you. So, write just for these particular people.
- Use software tools
You can’t produce an excellent article without accepting some digital assistance. Grammarly helps you remove any grammatical mistake from your guest post. Similarly, Canva allows you to create unique pictures that furnish your writing. Moreover, you can learn SEO basics online and maximize your potential to appear higher in SERPs. Remember that search engine optimization is crucial for your objectives. It enhances your search visibility and helps you outshine your competitors.
- Find the right website
Expand your research while looking for the most profitable publishing platforms. You can discover valuable platforms by searching for your keywords. First, find a website that accepts guest post submissions. Then carefully read their guidelines to ensure the following:
- It gives you access to your target audience.
- It talks about relevant topics and issues related to your niche.
- Avoid plagiarism
Now, let’s talk about one common mistake guest bloggers often commit. Don’t submit a single article to multiple platforms. Submit it to one website and, if they refuse to publish it, only then should you send it to another for consideration. Plagiarism is something that can ruin your online reputation. And, contrary to a weirdly-held belief, repurposing your content is still considered (self-) plagiarism since every website requires unique content that hasn’t been published before.
- Write something valuable
How many bloggers do you think there are in the world right now? In the United States alone, 31 million active bloggers update at least every single month. What makes your blog attractive to the audience and readable for consumers? That’s why you must create valuable content.
Look for some commonly-faced problems and generally-asked questions among your niche. Produce content that solves this massively-encountered issue, and authenticate your findings with solid facts. Put some powerful calls-to-action, and there you have an article people would love to study.
- Curb your links
The primary reason for guest blogging is to link back to the website you own through an authority platform. But there’s something we like to call the “backlinking ethics” you must follow. Cluttering your guest post with an annoying number of hyperlinks doesn’t seem like a good practice.
- Don’t link to a sales/product page from your website.
- One article shouldn’t contain more than two self-promotional hyperlinks.
- Add branded images
What else can you add besides hyperlinks to promote your brand? Try including some branded images in your guest post. These are just pictures with your brand’s name typed neatly over them. You can also put your brand font and brand colors to make a connection with the target audience. If these images start ranking higher in image search, you now haveanother source of online traffic to your website. These pictures add value to your blog and liven up simple content.
- Publishing tactics
Writing excellent content isn’t sufficient when it isn’t accompanied by an enticing heading. A survey found that 43% of people just browse guest blogs instead of properly reading them.What are the editor’s chances of reading your guest blog if it’s even difficult for the audience to study? So make your article easy to edit and publish for the host platform. Don’t make your content sound like an advertisement. Focus more on the educational side of the post. Moreover:
- Make an attention-grabbing heading.
- Use recent statistics (not a-decade-old facts).
- Make sure that the Meta description is SEO-focused.
- Don’t forget to add some internal links from the host platform.
- Work with infographics
So, what’s something valuable you can submit? It should be something unique to your article only and unavailable from other sources. Infographics, surveys, white papers, case studies, and similar research add enormous value to your guest blog. Statistics show that, in 2020, some 67% of B2B marketers were creating infographics for advertisement campaigns. Since your article also acquires exceptional consideration if you’ve submitted helpful infographics.
- Make your pitch
In the end, it’s time to submit your piece for a reputable website’s consideration. And learn to be patient since editors are swamped with different writers pitching them several ideas. Work on your pitching ethics so editors would take you seriously. Therefore, we’re reminding you again to go through the potential host platform’s guest-blogging guidelines carefully. Introduce yourself in the email addressed to the editor/s. And make sure to act upon the following suggestions:
- Avoid using the exclamation mark (!) too much.
- Write a meta description (150+ words long) with a subject line.
Conclusion
You might’ve heard about how guest blogging is dead and doesn’t remain effective anymore. You might’ve heard the same about email marketing. Both rumors are factually wrong. Do you know that some 60% of blogs accept 1-5 guest contributions every month? Since around 63% of readers believe that blogs that have multiple authors are more reliable. Benefits of guest blogging include acquiring quality backlinks and establishing your brand as an authority. It also allows you to reach a previously-untapped audience and access a fresh range of customers. Since you’re getting authoritative hyperlinks, it automatically improves your SEO strategy and makes your website rank higher than before.