When you’re starting a new blog, the idea of gaining some decent traffic can be very appealing.
After all, a healthy amount of impressions can lead to higher search engine rankings, and more importantly, more opportunities for new readers to find your content.
While there’s no denying that guest posting is an effective way to gain new readers, it’s important to not jump in without careful consideration.
There are benefits to guest posting, but only if you do it right, and this article will outline a few of them.
Improved SEO By Guest Posting
One of the major benefits of guest blogging is that it can improve your SEO.
After all, a key component of SEO is ensuring that your content is relevant to readers and contains a high degree of quality content.
A study from SEO company Accuity Digital found that posts with high-quality content from trusted sources typically perform better than those with lower-quality content.
When you have a popular blog, it’s often hard to break into the top spot of Google search results without paying for sponsored posts or employing risky SEO tactics.
However, guest blogging for high-quality publications gives you the opportunity to improve your SEO without having to worry about reaching the top spot.
If you play your cards right, you can even become a regular contributor to a number of publications, which in turn, can improve your SEO even more.
As an SEO, you’ll need to make sure that your guest posts are relevant to your target audience and are of good quality.
Once you’ve established yourself as a reliable contributor, publishers are likely to want to work with you because you’ll be able to bring in traffic that usually purchases products or services that they offer.
More Visibility
Another great advantage of guest blogging is that it can put you in front of a wide audience that may not have heard of you before.
With billions of posts being published every day, the chances are that your content will reach a lot of people, even if it’s not directly related to your target audience.
A lot of blogs focus on becoming a go-to source for their industry, and many successful bloggers started out by guest posting on other blogs.
When you guest post on a reputable site, other bloggers will often notice your post and think of you as an authoritative voice in your industry.
If you’re fortunate enough to have a highly-performing blog, guest posting can help you get in front of an audience that may be interested in your content.
High-quality guest blogging can also lead to more opportunities.
If you become a contributor to a number of publications, your connections in the industry will open up new doors for you.
With so many platforms offering affiliate marketing, the opportunities for making money online through displaying ads are almost unlimited.
While the above two advantages of guest blogging are pretty self-explanatory, it’s important to not forget about the impact that this type of content can have on your business.
If you run a small business and want to gain some credibility with your customers, becoming a guest on a well-known blog can help you do that.
When you have an expert’s opinion that corroborates what you have to say, your customers may decide that you’re knowledgeable and trustworthy, which can translate to sales.
Boosting Creativity
One of the primary reasons why guest blogging can be so beneficial to a blog is that it encourages creativity.
When you have an expert’s opinion that corroborates what you have to say, it can be helpful for your readers to see your point of view, even if it’s not what they initially thought about the topic you’ve written about.
Studies have shown that having diversity in a blog’s content can help make it more engaging.
If you want to create a unique blog that stands out, try including different perspectives in your content.
Having a guest post from an expert in your industry can help add some variety to your blog’s content. You can also ask guest bloggers to give you feedback on your content so that you can make it better.
You might be thinking that including a variety of perspectives in your blog’s content, and asking guest bloggers for feedback, could lead to a lot of contradictory opinions.
While this might be true, it’s important to not be afraid of differing opinions.
After all, this is how humans progress — we learn from our mistakes and continue evolving.
Gaining Credibility
As a blogger, author, or speaker, credibility is an important asset to have.
When you have credibility, you can often command a higher-paying job or be viewed as an expert in your industry.
When you guest post on a reputable site, other bloggers will often think of you as an authoritative voice in your industry and will seek you out for advice or information on your topic.
Building up your credibility can be a challenge.
Having a blog can be a great way to start, as long as you promote yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
There are many tricks to doing this, and becoming a guest blogger for high-quality publications can be a great way to build your credibility.
Whether you’re an expert or just trying to give your opinion on a topic, other people will often want to hear what you have to say.
If you play your cards right, you can become an authoritative voice in your industry and gain credibility that will help you land higher-paying jobs and create more opportunities.
To give you a better understanding of the benefits of guest blogging, let’s have a quick look at the most popular uses of this technique.
Product Reviews
Many online stores and brands use reviews to gather feedback from customers about their products or services.
If you’ve been eyeing a product that you think might be useful for your blog, you might want to consider reviewing it.
Even if you don’t normally review products, you can use the information that you gain from doing so to help your readers make better decisions about the products and services that they purchase online.
If you want to write a review of a product and put it on your blog, make sure that you do so for legitimate reasons.
The review should be focused on the product itself and shouldn’t be a sales pitch for a particular brand or solution.
How-to Guides
A how-to guide is often considered to be the backbone of a blog.
This kind of content is often very popular because it’s useful and usually doesn’t require special expertise to understand or follow.
A lot of how-to guides are very generic and cover a range of topics, from setting up a blog to making money online to growing your own food.
Since these articles can be highly relevant to a range of audiences, many bloggers will write about them frequently, usually breaking them down into smaller chunks with in-depth guides within the sub-topics.
If you’re looking for an easy way to make money from home, consider looking into how to make a blog.
The above article should give you a good idea of how to get started with a WordPress blog in very little time.
From there, you can use the information to build out your own blog around a specific theme or industry.
Videos
Videos are often considered to be the future of content marketing.
With the rise of TikTok and other similar platforms, videos are becoming a major mode of social media communication.
In fact, according to HubSpot Blogs research, 41% of people now reach out to journalists via video rather than just text.
If you’re looking to take your content marketing strategy into the future and consider videos, be sure to look into what video platform is right for your needs.
You should also think about whether you want to use an established production company or go the DIY route and learn to edit videos yourself.
Special Reports
An important part of a journalist’s job is to investigate topics and come up with a special report on them.
For example, the New York Times may report on the most popular holiday destinations or Forbes magazine may do a special report on the wealthiest people in the world.
If you’re starting a blog, you may want to consider investigating a special topic and writing about it in-depth.
You don’t need to go overboard and do a whole investigative piece, but having some original content that explores an interesting topic can help drive traffic to your site and make it more sustainable.
If you’re looking for a topic that you think might be of interest to your audience, be sure to look into its profitability.
See if there are any existing podcasts, reports, or other pieces of content that you can pull information from to see if there’s a niche for you to dive into.
Once you’ve found it, simply put yourself in the shoes of a journalist and ask yourself: “What would I do if I weren’t hindered by the constraints of journalism?”
