What is a guest post? These emails usually come in two varieties: guest posts and guest pitches: emails from other web admins, famous or newer, who wish to post their words onto your site. Sponsored posts: Emails requesting that you will support a product, an article change in the business, a new press release, or any other kind of content for their site. You may also receive these emails if you are a website owner. They are usually unsolicited, and it is possible to stop the solicitations. But many people enjoy the free advertising and the traffic gained by the sponsored posts so that you could find yourself with hundreds of emails like this.
So what is a guest post? It is essentially a blog post written by someone specializing in a specific area. For example, a blog post about a personal loan: the writer knows their subject well enough to write about it and often has excellent references and expertise that you may find helpful and make you Apply Now. Some websites even pay top dollar to guest posts – this is another good reason to avoid spamming.
If you don’t want to get banned by blocking all blogs, there are ways to give your site still a helping hand. One thing to remember is that what is a guest post? It’s an advertisement for something that you own. You could be writing about your own business, but instead, you could be writing about some new low-priced health and fitness product that you’re promoting – if your site is linked back to the sales page, then every time someone clicks through to buy that particular product they will gain a backlink to your site.
It’s not just blogs that benefit from guest posts – social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook also regularly have many high-quality backlinks, many of which come from guest posts. So what is a guest post? Well, any blog post that is in some way related to your own content marketing business, and is written by someone who already knows your business well.
It’s important to do a bit of background research on any guest blogger you choose – as they will be coming with a brand new audience and already know lots of your industry. That means that they will be relatively unfamiliar with your site or products, and it will be up to you to set the mood and tone for the post. Try not to turn your guest down straight away; in fact, if you think they’ll be useful to your website, why not ask them to contribute an article for free, and see if that works? Just make sure that you are praising their efforts and not dismissing them as useless.
If you need a little bit more of a push, consider offering them a product to promote, either via a thank you link in their original post, or a coupon or link in their next one. There are also quite a few sites where you can add a ‘referral’ box to your sponsored posts – simply click ‘Nest’ and put in a few details about your target audience, and how you could help them. Then, select a few prospects and offer them either a free gift a discount voucher or even a promotion code to enter into their next promotional offer. This works particularly well if your audience are bloggers, since those individuals are likely to have an interest in local events, and would therefore be receptive to a local business advertising on their blog. Of course, this only really works if the reader has taken the time to investigate your company before visiting your site – but if you’ve written a good article, chances are they’ll trust you.
Guest blogging can also be a great way to get backlinks for your website – since you’re introducing another source of’referrals’, your SEO efforts will become more prominent. But you should be careful not to overdo it. You don’t necessarily want to just give your contacts detailed information about your company – after all, they’re just looking for a little more guidance in their search engine optimization! If you’ve gone to great lengths to explain your niche in an informative way, perhaps describe some of your key marketing strategies as well, then your audience will trust you more and will be more likely to click through to your website to find out more. However, if you send your readers away from your site with a link to your own website, you could be running the risk of Google penalising your site, which isn’t a good thing!
So is guest blogging a great way to attract more attention for your website? Certainly, it can work – and has worked for thousands of blogs. But it can also backfire, if you go over the limit and give away too much information. And it’s important to remember that guest blogging for SEO purposes is just one of many ways you could use to increase traffic to your site; it’s not a replacement for organic search engine optimization!