A solid link-building strategy can bring valuable inbound links to your web pages, which will result in a better search engine ranking for your website. That’s because search engines have always considered inbound links as one of the critical factors when ranking a website.
Why Guest-Blog?
Guest blogging has long been an effective link-building strategy, and its effectiveness persisted even as social media ads became more common. Besides building links, it also helps you promote your blog and reach new audiences. Food blogging is considered the most effective and profitable niche, followed closely by travel, arts and crafts, and lifestyle.
Guest blogging is not necessarily easy, and doesn’t bring results overnight. That said, it’s more enjoyable than any other link-building strategy. It helps you interact with other bloggers, which will make it seem more like play than work.
How to Effectively Guest Blog for Inbound Links
• Choose a handful of keywords you’re interested in and do a search for them to see how many relevant blogs pop up. The keywords may be either those you already rank well for, or you can use new ones. Search among the results for those blogs you would like to guest-blog on, considering their relevancy and reputation. Stick to a handful.
• Get an idea of what kind of content those blogs want, and come up with ideas for guest posts. You don’t have to write the posts yet. Just come up with a few attractive titles.
• Contact the blogs you want to guest post on, tell them who you are and what you want (an inbound link), and suggest a few titles for your posts. Finding blog owners willing to publish your guest posts shouldn’t be too hard — most of them like free content. But you do have to offer them good-quality material.
• Don’t get upset over refusals. Sooner or later you will be refused. Instead of taking it personally, just consider that there are many people out there guest blogging, and that many high-quality blog owners receive an avalanche of post requests. They just can’t publish them all.
Tips for Better Guest Blogging
Follow these tips and your guest posts are more likely to be accepted.
• Stick to the format requirements of the blog you’re posting on. Some blog owners are very specific about file formats and attachments. As a rule, submit your blog post as .doc, .rtf, or .odt and send any images as separate files (don’t embed them in the post). Include your links as anchor text carrying the appropriate keywords.
• Offer to promote your guest post through your social media profiles.
• Measure your guest posting efforts at link building. Unless you have data, you cannot be certain that you’re guest blogging on the right blogs. Use an analytics tool such as Google Analytics to look at leads and visits.
• Make sure you get at least half of your key phrases in the post title, and sprinkle relevant phrases throughout the post. Don’t overdo it though. The best guest posts are written for people, not search engines.
• Follow up on any comments you receive on your guest post. Not only will this help you gain a better reputation, but may also lead to additional guest blogging opportunities.
As already pointed out, guest blogging for inbound links can take time. While it’s great if you can write guest posts yourself, you may want to hire professional article writing services to speed up the process