Guest posts are a great way to expand your digital footprint and your brand by sharing content you’ve created on other websites. Most importantly, guest posting allows you to seed your guest posts with links back to your own website so you can bring readers back to your own site organically.
However, the occasional guest post won’t be enough to scale your link building in a way that will significantly increase traffic over the long term. Instead, you will need to think big picture by developing ways to seed your content far and wide.
There are a few key strategies that will help you turn guest posting into an effective part of a scalable link-building strategy.
Identify website to target
The first step in any guest posting strategy is to make a list of websites and blogs that accept guest posts and also share your target audience.
You will want to try to place your guest posts in places where your audience is likely to see them—and also where the blog or website is on a similar theme and will help to support your content. This will also make sure that the websites and blogs will be more likely to accept your guest posts.
Brainstorm effective topics for posts
Websites and blogs tend to follow trends, so it’s a fair guess that if some blogs are writing about a particular topic, others will want to follow suit.
There are many ways to track trend as you work on the list of topics you want to target with your guest posts. Google Trends and BuzzSumo can help you to identify current trends related to keywords and topics associated with your content, and you can use these trends to develop topics.
However, it’s not enough to simply pitch what others have already written. You should look for unique angles and fresh perspectives: What can you bring that no one else can?
Write compelling content
The guest posts that you produce need to be of high quality. They need to be the kind of writing that readers feel is worth their time and attention.
You can’t simply take up space with filler and expect to engage readers. Your goal with these posts might be simply to get readers to click the links you’ve embedded in the post to your own website, but they won’t do that unless they feel that the content is compelling and beneficial.
After all, who would click a link if they weren’t interested in the content containing that link? Invest time and energy in making great content in order to capture reader attention.
Reach out and pitch your pieces
Reach out the owners of the website and blogs you’ve targeted and sell them on your guest post.
To increase your chances of the owners to the sites and blogs agreeing to publish your piece, you’ll need to do more than simply send a form letter. Show the owners that you have done some work researching them and make the case that your piece not only fits with the content they publish but will be of value to their readers.
If you don’t hear back, follow up about a week later, but keep in mind that even the best writers receive more rejections than acceptances.
Keep trying new sites until you’ve spread your writing far and wide.
