There are many ways you can get more blog content for your site, or getting your name out there with your own content on blogs other than your own. This technique is guest blogging. Not only is guest blogging a great way to link build, but it also helps to build a blogger’s credibility, community and customer base.
Of course, you can’t just blog willy nilly and expect nothing but good things to happen. You’ve got to be smart about it. You’ve got to be strategic. Quality effort has to be put into your work to make the guest blog work the way it should.
When you’re given the opportunity to place your work onto somebody else’s already established site, you need to remember that you should be giving some of your best work. Not only are you going to be putting yourself on the line because you’re branching out with your content on a different site, but you’re also putting the owner of the site on the line to because they’re allowing to you place your content on their site.
Think of this as you would if you were going to be speaking in front of a room full of people. Naturally, you’re not going to be going up to speak unprepared. You would prepare yourself. Make sure that what you were going to say was thought about carefully and written and spoken correctly.
Finally, if you’re going to work hard on a guest blog, you don’t want to put your content out on some blog that wouldn’t work very well for you or them. You want to make sure that your content and their site are a match for you, your values and your company. You’re utilizing guest blogging as a way to get customers to know your brand.
Finding A Match
You’ve made up your mind. You’re going to do some guest blogging for your business development. You want to build your community and have more people know you.
Here are five simple steps.
> What are your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs)?
The first thing you need to do to find success is to start identifying your goals. You need to know what you want to accomplish. Also, how are you measuring success?
There are three things that you would need to do when looking for blogging opportunities:
Build relationships with people outside of SEO, although finding relationships within SEO is fine too.
Attract business that would match that of Mack Web’s culture and values.
Locate some fresh new information sources. That means blogs. Here, you can learn, teach the team, and serve your clients better.
> Define your audience by developing personas
Identify the target audience you’re looking for if you want to find the right guest blogging opportunities. Developing personas is a way to get this done. By creating a persona, you will be able to define the type of person you want to attract to your community when it comes to your guest blogging efforts.
> Find some targets in your niche
Once you’ve figured out who you want to target, you will need to find some people, some specific people, that you will want to reach out to for the opportunity to guest blog. One way to do this is to find those people with influence. Once you’ve found them, you will need to determine if they have blogs that will allow you to contribute.
One way to do this is to use Followerwonk. By searching, you can begin with whatever phrase you are looking for, and then sort by Social Authority.
> Qualify the source
After you’ve located some potential targets in your niche, you will still need to be sure they’re the ones you’re looking for. Keeping track of them via a spreadsheet is a great way to organize and filter your results later.
There are ways to find out if these sites are good for you, but if you want to move quickly, you can try some of these:
1. Check for a blog
If the site doesn’t have a blog, that means you can’t blog for them. The existence of a blog is the first and most important thing when guest blogging for somebody.
2. Check for domain authority and link profile
Another important factor in finding the right place to guest blog is to find a blog that has strong credibility.
You are able to place the URL of the blog into the Open Site Explorer to check their domain authority and link profile. Even with a link coming from this blog, even if it’s a nofollow, you want to be sure that the site you’re associating with is a quality one. Even if the Domain Authority is low, it doesn’t mean that it’s a poor blog, it just mean that they are new hand haven’t yet built their authority. You’ll also want to check out their profile:
3. Check for engagement
So, you’ve found that quality opportunity for guest blogging. What sort of engagement is going on with the blog. What sort of community do they have? What’s its reach?
In this graphic, you’ll see that the engagement is high with 30 comments:
Also, you can look for engagement by searching for the site’s Twitter. You can investigate those who have actually tweeted the guest blogger’s post:
The ones who read your post will also probably be the ones to tweet your post.
> Check yes or no
Once you’ve gone through the steps mentioned above, you’re at that final leg of the decision making. Before you finally decide yes or no (and you’ve asked for the opportunity), you should ask yourself something.
Is this guest blogging opportunity going to fit your business’s value and culture?
Once you’ve placed your guest blog, and you find that the guest blog was a success, you will find that you are attracting customers from this blog to your own website and blog. This is why you want to be sure that you connect with the people of this community by being in alignment with your brand.
Guest blogging is a great way to build relationships with people, connect with them, and also find leads for your business. It will be time well spent if you take the time to find the correct blog to place your content.