Ultimate Guest Posting Guide Pt I: 5 Reasons Why You Should Guest Post

This is Part I of a series. Read the other articles: Part I | Part II | Part III

If you are into WordPress, you’re into blogging. And if you’re into blogging, you’ve heard of guest posting. Depending on who you speak to, it is not worth your precious time, or it is still a very worthwhile strategy for increasing your blog’s exposure.

Since I am writing this article, you can probably guess that I am in the second camp. I strongly believe that guest posting should have a big part to play in anyone’s blog marketing strategy. And there are five reasons for this.

1. Direct Traffic

The most immediate and obvious benefit of guest posting is the traffic it drives to your blog. If you guest post on blogs with a large readership and write your guest post with that audience in mind (more on that later in this series of articles), you can attract a significant amount of traffic. Moreover, your guest post is likely to be hosted on the blog for the foreseeable future, and will continue to drip feed traffic to your blog.

One argument against guest posting is that it does not bring in a particularly high number of visitors. However, if all you care about is the quantity of visitors to your blog, you are missing something. The quality of your visitors is just as important. Would you rather have 1,000,000 visitors to your blog, all of whom bounce straight off the site, or 10 people who stick around and subscribe? It may sound crazy to you, but option 2 is by far the better one.

And this is where guest posting comes in. In my experience, the bounce rate of visitors from guest post links is around 1/3rd the rate of all visitors. They also stick around for longer, and are more likely to subscribe. Which brings me onto my next reason…

2. Subscribers

If guest posting can bring you direct traffic, by logical extension, it should bring you subscribers. Subscribers are the lifeblood of a blog, and guest posting is an ideal way of driving highly targeted potential subscribers to your blog.

As mentioned above, readers who visit your blog via a guest post link are far more likely to become subscribers. They are about as highly targeted a visitor as you could possibly wish for. How so? If they have read your article on one of their favorite blogs and felt compelled to click through to your site, they are interested in what you have to offer. It is then only the quality of your site in converting interested visitors into subscribers that defines your marketing success.

3. Links

For all of you SEO nuts, guest posting is one of the best possible ways of getting genuine, high quality backlinks to your blog.

If you were trying to rank your blog for certain keywords, and I said that there was a way in which you could create legitimate backlinks from high-authority sites with custom anchor text, you’d bite my hand off. Well, that is exactly the opportunity that guest posting offers you.

Many people guest post with the primary aim of creating backlinks. Remember, when it comes to backlinks, quality is far more effective than quantity. The power of a backlink in raising the profile of your site is hugely relevant in terms of SEO, and high profile guest posting opportunities provide you with those links.

4. Branding

This is less tangible than the above points, but no less relevant. If you want to increase your blog’s exposure, you want people to recognize your brand. And if your blog’s name is everywhere they turn in your niche, after repeated exposure, they won’t be able to ignore you.

For instance, Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing is an absolute guest posting whore (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Almost everywhere I looked, this guy’s name popped up. After repeated exposure, I couldn’t help but to click through to his site, out of curiosity if nothing else. Now I am a RSS and email subscriber, and he’s getting a link and positive exposure from WPMU. It’s amazing how these things come together, isn’t it?

5. Relationship Building

Last but certainly not least, guest posting gives you an ideal opportunity to build a relationship with a blogger. Whilst you can of course attempt to build relationships by simply contacting bloggers and hoping to strike up a rapport, guest posting gives you a great excuse. Not only that, bloggers will be far more receptive to your advances if you have already done something for them – i.e. written a guest post for their blog.

Make no mistake – relationship building can be the most important part of your blog’s marketing strategy. It can indirectly lead to all of the other things we care about – backlinks, SEO, brand exposure, and so on. Whilst you can try to build up those pillars yourself, getting someone in a far more influential position to do it for you can be a far better option.

A Golden Opportunity

Guest posting is a rare win/win situation for both parties. You get increased exposure, and they get quality content. Don’t miss out on such a golden opportunity.

Creative commons images courtesy of Spectacles, null0, Aha-Soft, McDonalds and Ipanpun

Tags:

• blogging
• SEO