Have you ever gone to a website, read a great article, and taken a closer look at the author’s bio to learn more about them?
Maybe you loved what they said and wanted to know more about them.
Or maybe you were skeptical of a position they took and you want to check on their credentials, so you head on over to their website.
Now they have a visitor at their website they might never have gotten if they hadn’t written that blog post. You might end up buying something from them or hiring them for one of their services, but even if you don’t, chances are good you signed up for their newsletter or started following them on social media. If the content on their website was any good, it should have been able to convince you to take the next step in the buyer journey and made it easy for you to do so.
Not only does guest blogging get you in front of an entirely new audience, it also establishes you as an authority in a way you can’t really achieve on your own website. There are websites publishing all kinds of crazy theories with absolutely no basis in reality, so while publishing great content on your website is a great place to start, it’s just the beginning of what you need to truly establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
By contrast, when you manage to write a guest article that gets accepted to go on the website of a major company in your industry (or a related industry), that enhances your credibility because you had to get their approval before they would publish your content on their website. If they believe your content is good enough for them, why wouldn’t it be good enough for anyone reading your guest blog post?
Guest blogging is also a great way to boost your own website’s SEO, although it’s not the SEO golden ticket it once was. I’ve mentioned before the importance of backlinks for your SEO, and while getting a guest blog post published on another website does get you an automatic backlink to your website, Google no longer gives those links the same weight it once did, so they won’t boost your SEO the way they used to. That said, those backlinks can still drive organic traffic to your website, and since the people clicking on that link have already seen some of the great content you can provide and were interested enough to click through to your website, all you need after that point is great content on your website to lead them through the rest of the buyer journey.
If you’ve been thinking about guest blogging to improve your authority and SEO, but weren’t sure how to get started, here’s what you need to do.
Table of Contents
- Start Commenting
- Build Relationships
- Choose Wisely
- How to Ask to Write a Guest Blog Post
- Write Your Guest Blog Post for Them, Not for You
- Distribute Your Guest Blog Posts
- Asking for Guest Blog Posts
1) Start Commenting
Commenting on the blog posts of other websites in your industry and in related industries is a great way to start getting your name out there, but it’s not enough to just say, “Hey, thanks for the great tips.”
Instead, be thoughtful and intentional with your comments. If you agree with a position they took, explain why you agree. If you disagree, explain your reasoning (but always be polite and respectful). Taking a position and explaining that position is what will establish you as an authority in your industry, so if you’re looking to start making a name for yourself in any given industry, start by identifying some of the heavy hitters in your industry (and related industries), read their blog posts carefully, and comment thoughtfully on each one you read.
2) Build Relationships
There’s an old saying that, when it comes to success in business, “it’s not what you know, it’s whom you know.” It might seem like those days vanished with the advent of the internet, but I assure you they are alive and well, it’s just that “whom we know” has expanded beyond our geographical circle. Many of us now have people in our networks we have never met in person, but have gotten to know online to the point where we are perfectly able and willing to recommend them for certain jobs or introduce them to someone else in our network who could use their products/services.
Use the tools the internet has given you to build and maintain relationships with influencers in your industry. Follow them on social media. Like, comment on, and share their posts on social media as well as their blog posts. It takes time, but eventually they will come to recognize your name (and/or profile picture) and associate it with all the lovely and intelligent things you’ve said to and about them online. That way, when it’s time to ask them if they’d like to publish one of your guest posts on their blog, they’ll be much more likely to say yes.
I’ve had people invite me to write guest posts for their blog based on the comments I’ve made on their existing blog posts on their website, so trust me when I say it works.
That said, once we all get out of quarantine and large events start happening again, it never hurts to try to solidify some of those online relationships with in-person interactions. Don’t stalk your influencers, but if you know they’ll be attending an industry event that you’ll also be attending, message them and see if they’d be interested in meeting up at the event. Offer to take them out for a cup of coffee or lunch, because while online relationships are valuable, it’s true that nothing beats that in-person connection.
3) Choose Wisely
Remember that guest blogging should be a win/win for everyone involved. You get the added exposure and status associated with a published article on their blog, while they get free content to put up on their website to drive traffic to their site (as well as extra exposure, since you should also be sharing your guest blog with your audience). So be careful which sites you choose for your guest blogging efforts because you don’t want to send traffic to a competitor.
Instead of choosing sites that provide the same products/services you provide, choose sites in related industries that would be good referral partners for you. This can be another benefit of guest blogging, because as you write content for their website and prove you really know what you’re talking about, they’ll come to see you as a trusted expert, which will make them more likely to send prospects your way.
4) How to Ask to Write a Guest Blog Post
Most websites that host guest blog posts on a regular basis have a system by which writers can submit their guest blog posts for approval to go up on the website, but you’re much better off reaching out directly to an editor of the website. Remember when I said you should be following those editors on social media and engaging with their posts? This is where that comes in handy. Once you’ve built a relationship with them, ask if they’d be interested in publishing one of your guest blog posts. Tell them what the topic would be and give them a quick outline to get them excited about it, because if you just ask to write a guest blog post for them without telling them what you’ll write, chances are good they’ll ignore the request.
Submitting your guest blog post for approval through their website is a great way to make sure all your hard work gets lost, never to be seen again. It’s what people in the publishing industry would call the slush pile (where manuscripts go that are submitted to publishing houses without an agent, most of which never get read). It has a slim chance of getting published, whereas reaching out to an editor directly gets their attention and significantly increases the chances of at least getting a response, even if they end up not publishing your guest blog post.
5) Write Your Guest Blog Post for Them, Not for You
Just because you don’t want to submit your guest blog posts through their online guest blog post submission system does not mean you can ignore their standards for guest blog posts. Hopefully, you’re already reading their blog on a regular basis, so you should have a good idea of the topics they tend to cover, the tone of voice they tend to use, the average length of their blog posts, etc. So, when you write a guest blog post for them, make sure it’s a blog post you would normally find on their website, not on your website. That means making sure it’s a topic they have not already covered, that it uses their one of voice, falls within the range of their normal blog post length, and answers questions their target audience would ask. If it doesn’t fit all those standards, it doesn’t stand a very good chance of getting published.
6) Distribute Your Guest Blog Posts
Once your guest blog post has been published, go ahead and share it with your audience. Talk it up on social media and in your newsletter. As I mentioned above, not only does the fact you wrote a guest blog post for an influencer make you look good, but by sharing it with your audience, you also improve the visibility of the other website, so everybody wins.
7) Asking for Guest Blog Posts
It can be hard enough for entrepreneurs and small business owners just to write their own blog posts on a regular basis, much less write guest blog posts for other websites, on top of their own blog posts and all of the other things that go into running a business. To take the edge off (and get some added exposure for your website), you can accept guest blog posts for your website and even reach out to other people in your industry and related industries to ask if they’d be interested in writing a guest blog post for you.
Keep in mind that guest blogging should be a win/win for everyone. Meaning, if you’re just starting out and you don’t have a large audience yet, it doesn’t make much sense to invite a huge influencer with millions of followers to write a guest blog post for your website because there’s nothing in it for them. Instead, try reaching out to some people who currently have an audience approximately the size of your audience. That way, the added exposure you both get will make it more likely that guest blogging will be a win/win for both of you. You can even make it a win/win/win/win by offering to write a guest blog post for their website in exchange for having them write a guest blog post for your website.
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