How To Use Guest Posts In An SEO Campaign
While guest blogging or guest posting is often a part of a website or business’s content marketing plan, there is no reason why it can’t also be used for SEO. In fact, a well-placed blog post in a related niche on a high-authority website can do a great deal of SEO good. That’s why your guest blogging strategy should be part of your off-page SEO strategy.
If you haven’t focused much of your attention on guest blogging, now would be a good time to start. Over the years, there has been a great deal of speculation surrounding the death of guest posts. However, it is a tactic that is alive and well, not to mention thriving. The trick is knowing how to correctly leverage the power of guest posts to bring in more traffic or build a brand and SEO.
While you can do guest posting outreach yourself for your own blog, it is time-consuming and highly frustrating. It is easier to find someone on Legiit to help you find guest blogging opportunities. Though we will go over how guest post providers get posts published so that you know the type of work involved.
Again if you want to get a guest blog post(s) published, several providers on Legiit can handle that for you. That way, you can oversee the SEO aspect of the post, something we’ll discuss in this article.
The Benefit of Guest Blogging
One of the most significant benefits of guest posts, in general, is that it helps establish you and, consequently, your website as an authoritative resource. If you can get guest blog posts published on high authority sites, a lot of that authority is also going to rub off on your site, at least in terms of SEO.
The other major benefit of guest posts for SEO is that it helps build links from high authority websites to yours. Backlinks, as most people reading this will already know, are a significant ranking factor. So, the more relevant and authoritative the linking website is, the more of an SEO boost your website will get.
We have seen instances where a single link from an authoritative source helped a website jump up several positions within days.
How Does Guest Blog Posting Work?
Every guest post service provider or guest bloggers pretty much goes through the same steps to get a guest blog post published. However, if you decide that this is something you have the time to do or even learn, we’ve outlined the steps below.
Finding Guest Post Opportunities
You will need to find high-authority websites in your niche. To find guest post opportunities you can Google, make a list of all the authority websites you think will accept a guest post.
To check the domain authority rating of a website you can use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. That said, we’d like to emphasize that it is important not to get too hung over figures like Doman Authority or Page Authority, etc. The important thing is that the website is relevant, receives good traffic, especially from the people you’re targeting, and has been around for a while.
The other way to find guest posting opportunities is to check competitors. Check the high authority backlinks your competitors have pointing back at them. Again, you can use a tool like Ahrefs, which will speed up the process. Then make a list of all the high-authority sites and get ready to pitch.
It is also possible to reach out to webmasters via social media which in our experience translates to a quicker response. To generate more guest post ideas, use a tool like "drop my link".
Guest Post Pitch
Most websites that accept guest blog posts charge for it. The charges are usually not mentioned on their website. These websites often require that you email them to find out what it will cost to get a blog post published.
Some websites that accept guest posts for free have very high editorial standards, which means you’ll need to probably revise your guest post submission a few dozen times and wait possibly weeks before it is accepted and published.
Paying to get a post published is easier, and it also means you can insert an anchor text backlink the way you want for maximum SEO benefit.
Websites that charge don’t have very high editorial standards. However, the articles you draft for submission need to be fact-checked and grammatically correct to be accepted. You can check their other guest posts to get ideas. You can hire one of the writers on Legiit to draft a slick guest blog post if writing isn’t your thing.
Write A Guest Post They Will Publish
If you decide to draft your own guest post, make sure that your guest article is following these best practices:
Follows the site’s guest posting guidelines – Always ask the person responsible for guest posts on the website for editorial standards or guidelines. Then make sure that you follow them.
Don’t be promotional – Even if the goal of your keyword/guest post is to promote a product or your service, overly promotional guest posts aren’t accepted by most websites. So, the goal should be to make the post subtly promotional.
Add lots of value – Think about why people will want to read your guest post? You need to give readers something of value they can walk away with, like the secret sauce to ranking on Google or how to make your first million-selling crypto.
Proof your work – Make sure to proofread your work multiple times. Make sure to put your guest post through multiple rounds of proofreading and editing, ensuring that it reads well, gets to the point, and offers value.
Add a backlink to your website – Many websites have guidelines on adding links to guest posts. You will want to follow those guidelines. If permitted, link back to another related and helpful piece of content on your website. If anything, it will help to drive relevant traffic to your site. For instance, if your guest post is about building a master node for under $500, you can link back to a page on your website that has a list of all the master nodes that cost under $500 to set up. Doing this will also help Google search see the relationship between that guest post and the article on your website it is linking back to.
Write an author bio that encourages readers to learn more – Your bio shouldn’t be an afterthought because it can be an excellent way to drive people back to your website. Include a link to your site, and a call to action, for readers to find out more. The bio can also promote a freebie like a free guide or an eBook, closed Facebook group, etc.
You will also want to make sure that the text is formatted properly before you submit guest posts.
Guest Anchor Text Guidelines For SEO
Most authority websites that accept guest blog posts don’t necessarily like having overly promotional links. Even if your content is entirely informational and not promotional, a branded anchor text makes the post look promotional. That’s why the website you’re posting on may ask that you change the link or remove it.
The other backlink option is generic anchors. However, these are best used in moderation. You don’t want a website’s entire backlink profile to consist of generic anchors because that takes the focus off branding. Google wants anchors to have an aggregate value or at least an indication of what the person clicking on them can expect.
Technically speaking, semantic, compound and partial referential anchors tend to perform better. Your anchor text should be a natural part of the guest post. It can be part of the sentence but not all of it. For instance, you can have a backlink to a page on your website that explains an aspect of the article in more detail. “Written guide to setting up your own server for cryptocurrency explains this in more detail”. The reader in this instance automatically knows what to expect when they click on the link which translates to more referral traffic.
Many experts believe that as time goes on, Google is going to focus a lot on semantic-type keywords. The increasing number of people using Voice Search on their phones or using devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo is one of the driving forces behind the gradual switch to semantic keywords.
A guest blogger posting to improve SEO should use as few exact match keywords as they can. Exact match keywords coupled with exact match domains can end up getting your website penalized; that is, after all, what Google’s Penguin update was all about.
Google’s AI is pretty smart and can tell what your site is about without you making it explicit via anchor text(s). Plus, they appear spammy and aren’t fun for readers when they encounter the keywords.
Ideally, you will want to vary the anchors you’re using. Use a unique anchor for every guest blog post you draft. Doing this will help you avoid potential over-optimization penalties.
Things To Consider When Guest Posting
There are a few things that you should consider when guest posting.
First, make sure that your article is high quality and well researched. This will help you build trust with the site and ensure that they are willing to publish your work.
Secondly, be sure to stick to the topic of the blog post. Don't write an article about something unrelated to the topic of the blog post.
Thirdly, make sure that your article is original. If it is not, then the site may not be interested in publishing it.
Fourthly, make sure that your article is well written and easy to read. It should be short but dense enough so that readers can understand what you are saying without having to struggle through difficult grammar or syntax.
Finally, make sure that you include links to your own website and other relevant resources in your article so readers can learn more about what you have written.
Create Do-Follow and No-Follow Links
Back in the day, everyone wanted lots of do-follow links pointing back at their website. The reason for this was do-follow links pass on link juice. However, if all you have is do-follow links pointing back at your site, it does not look natural.
It is important to maintain a healthy mix and do-follow and no-follow links. While most websites that allow guest posts may allow a single do-follow link, others may only allow no-follow. But don’t be put off if the website is only accepting guest posts with no-follow because that too is an important part of link building.
Direct authority and traffic – No-follow links from a high-quality, high-traffic website will still mean that there is a lot of referral traffic coming to your website.
Safe for your website – No-follow links are also the safest for any website. You don’t have to worry about Google penalizing you for the “unnatural link building practices.”
Easier to get – No follow links are also easier to acquire but they still put you in front of your target audience.
Finally – Diversify Your Backlink Profile
While guest blogging is an excellent way to increase the amount of targeted traffic, expose your brand to new people and improve search engine rankings, it isn’t the only technique. In fact, we encourage people to diversify their backlink profile
Think of building backlinks like investing. Every savvy investor knows better than to put all their money into a single industry or company. To lower risk, they often invest across dozens of industries. The same goes for building backlinks.
You will want to include niche edits, foundation links, press releases, and some HARO as part of your backlinking strategy. Doing this will effectively mean that all the links pointing back at your website will look natural to search engines like Google that are looking for patterns.
Even the best guest posts, from high-authority sites, will mean nothing if all your links are coming from that one site. That’s why link diversity i.e., from multiple sites and of multiple types is important.
Ideally, you will want to mimic the link diversity of your top-ranking competitor at least till you get to the top 5 of SERPs for the keywords you’re trying to target.
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