Growing an online business takes time and effort. However, many strategies help website owners increase traffic and grow their audiences, customers, or clients. Guest blogging is one of the bloggers’ widely used strategies across all niches. Writing on someone else’s site might feel purposeless initially, but it is undoubtedly one of the most successful strategies for growing your business.

In this article, I will cover major aspects of guest blogging.

Benefits of Guest Blogging for Bloggers

A few of the key benefits you can gain from guest blogging are:

Backlink Building

You all must know the significance of quality backlinks for SEO. However, search engines do not consider all links equal. Therefore, backlinks from high-quality niche-specific websites benefit domain authority and search engine ranking the most. Guest blogging helps build high-quality niche-specific backlinks and is an ideal choice for those new to blogging.

More Traffic

You get exposure to a broad base of readers in your niche as a guest blogger. High-quality, authoritative content will tempt readers to visit your site or blog. As a result, niche-specific traffic to your site will increase. The readers are also likely to share your content as well.

Brand Awareness

Writing as a guest blogger for different sites will give you a golden opportunity to build your brand awareness. Each site has a loyal audience to which you will have access through your content. Therefore, the more you write as a guest blogger, the more audience will remember your brand.

Increased Subscribers

Subscribers are critical for increasing click-through rates and converting your traffic into leads. As a guest blogger, you will not only attract traffic to your site, but your subscribers will also increase.

Relationship Building

Once you begin writing as a guest blogger, you will know about other authors and bloggers in your niche. Good relationships with reputable bloggers in your niche will benefit you. You will not only learn from their valuable experiences, but opportunities will also come your way.

Authority Building

Guest blogging is proven to build your authority as a writer. Audiences trust high-quality, engaging, and authoritative content. Other reputable websites will also approach you to write for them.

Improved Writing and Content Marketing Skills

Your writing skills will improve if you will write often. As a guest blogger, writing more vigilantly will add value to your work. You will also receive comments from other guest bloggers that can be extremely helpful in improving your content and marketing strategy. The practical experience of guest blogging will teach you how to promote your brand and build a reputation.

Money

Many sites pay to write guest posts for them. I know many people who are making good money from guest blogging.

Benefits of Guest Blogging for Host

Guest blogging is beneficial not only for bloggers but also for the host.

New Content

Keeping content fresh is one of the most challenging tasks leading websites face. Sites that accept guest posts have more content that is always fresh. More authors mean more topics to share with your audience that captivate them. Allowing guest posts helps host sites to have new and engaging content consistently.

Boosts Ranking

The more search engines index your content, the more likely you will rank higher. Guest blog posts make it easier to regularly create content that includes various keywords to rank for search engines.

Brand Awareness

Websites that accept guest blog posts are valuable and of high quality. Each guest blogger brings in his followers that become familiar with the host site. Therefore, the more guest bloggers the site has, the higher the brand awareness.

How to Find the Right Sites That Accept Guest Blogs

The first step toward writing guest blog posts is finding sites that accept guest posts. However, it is even more important to research which sites will help you reach your goals. You may come across sites that accept guest blog posts, but their guest posts attract little traffic compared to the posts by the site owner. Therefore, checking how guest blog posts are doing regarding social shares and traffic is essential.

Consider the following things when finding the right site for guest blog posts:

• It belongs to the same niche as yours.
• It is credible and reputable.
• The guest post will help you reach a new but relevant audience.
• The audience of the guest blogging site is interested in other businesses in the niche.
• Existing guest blog posts on the site attract a good amount of traffic and often get shared by the audience.
• The site is active in sharing guest posts on social media platforms.

An effective way to find guest blogging sites is to track your competitors’ backlinks. The sites linking to your competitors will likely accept your guest blogs. Most importantly, those sites are relevant to your niche.

SEMrush, Serpstat, and SpyFu are popular SEO tools to track your competitors’ backlinks. Linkody is another tool for monitoring competitors’ backlinks. It notifies you every time your competitor gains a new link.

Factors to Consider When Pitching a Guest Blog Post To a Website Owner

Keeping in mind the immense amount of guest bloggers, you must pitch your guest post in a manner that gets it accepted. The following key factors will help you create a successful pitch with higher chances of approval.

1. Actively Comment on Posts before Seeking Approval for Guest Posts

Owners of the sites that accept guest posts receive emails daily from people seeking approval. However, one thing that can make you stand out from the rest is their familiarity with your name. The best way to familiarize yourself is to comment on their blog posts. You can appreciate their content or become part of a discussion.

2. Know About Other Guest Bloggers on the Site

You must know about the other guest bloggers on the site to know their level of expertise, background, and current status. It would help you understand what kinds of guest bloggers are popular. Moreover, you will be in a better position to pitch your introduction.

3. Investigate Which Posts Are Doing Well

In your pitch, propose topic ideas that are likely to get accepted. However, for good topic ideas, it is critical to investigate the existing posts on the site and identify ones that attract more social shares and traffic. After identifying the popular posts, brainstorm and suggest similar brilliant topic ideas. Remember that your topic idea must be unique and engaging.

4. Good Subject Line

Remember to add a good subject line when writing a guest blog pitch. It catches the receiver’s attention and influences them to open and read the email. A wrong subject line may increase the risk of your pitch being deleted without being read. Do not use generic subject lines such as “Guest Blog Post Request” or “Guest Blog Post Approval.” To make your pitch stand out, write a subject line that is unique and interesting.

Following are a few ideas for creating a good subject line:

• Include an interesting statistic related to the topic you are suggesting for a guest post.
• Raise a question regarding the proposed topic.
• Write the proposed topic.
• Write something common between you and the author of the website.

5. Keep the Pitch Short

As I discussed earlier, the owners of guest blogging sites receive several requests every day, making it difficult for them to read long pitches. Long pitches are often ignored, and shorter pitches take preference over them. Only write short emails with the necessary information. A great pitch includes the following:

• Your introduction.
• Description of how your content can be valuable for the site and its audience.
• Few topic ideas.

A draft is usually optional at this initial stage. You should only provide a list of topic ideas with a brief description. However, some sites may require you to submit the full post. Therefore, read the guidelines carefully to know if the site requires you to submit an entire post.

6. No Grammatical Mistakes

Pitches that contain grammatical and spelling mistakes are mostly rejected, as they need more attention. If a writer does not use the correct grammar in the pitch, his content will likely have grammatical mistakes. You create your first impression through your pitch. To make it long-lasting, you need to put in the extra effort. I always recommend using a suitable tool to check and fix grammatical mistakes. Grammarly is a popular tool that checks for grammatical errors and fixes them. It also checks the content for plagiarism.

Guest Blogging Strategies

1. Know About the Contents of the Site

Following are a few things to investigate before writing a guest blog post:

• What type of content does the site have? Is it generic or more specific?
• Is the content on the site beginner’s level, intermediate, or advanced?
• What kind of audience does the site have? Are they here for general information, business, or buying?

2. Follow the Same Format as Other Posts

Your content should have the same format as other guest blog posts. Sometimes the formatting guidelines are provided by the hosting site, while most times, you will have to figure it out yourself. Find out what font size, subheadings, list styles, and other blog posts have. Owners of the hosting sites dislike bloggers who leave the formatting work for them. Therefore, leave the minimum work for site owners to build a long-term relationship.

3. Prioritize Information Over Promotion

One of guest bloggers’ most common mistakes is pursuing guest blogging to promote their business. In contrast, guest blogging provides quality information and builds authority. Therefore, your post should feel like something other than an advertisement but serve as a valuable source of information.

Your bio is the best place to include information related to your business.

4. Include Images and Infographics

Guest blogging sites prefer posts having rich images and infographics. The same is true for audiences as well. Therefore, you should include images and infographics in your posts to become a successful guest blogger. Canva and Visme are the two most popular tools for creating eye-catching images and infographics for greater user engagement.

5. Include Internal and External links

Ideally, a guest blog post must link internally to other posts on the guest blog and external sources. Site owners prefer guest posts rich in links, as these posts are helpful for SEO and building authority. However, remember to follow the guidelines the hosting site provides regarding links.

6. Perfect Bio for Lead Generation

Most guest blogs do not allow adding a link to your site within the content. However, you can provide a link to your site in your bio. Sometimes, there may be no restriction on the number of links you can include in your bio. But most times, you will be allowed to have only one site link and one social link. Social links are valuable if you want to grow your social media followers.

You can either link to your homepage or any other page on your site. You can also direct all the traffic to a custom landing page created based on the goal of your guest post.

For example, here is what I include in my bio:

About the Author: Faiza Parwez is the founder of LinkClickGrow. She is determined to help people make passive income through their blogs. Do you also want to make money online? Check out the guide that will help you reach your goal.

7. Include a Call to Action

Including a call to action for comments at the end of your guest post is the recipe for increasing the reader’s engagement. Posts generating useful discussion are better than those not attracting any comments. Therefore, reply to all the comments, regardless of whether they are unfavorable.

8. Share Your Post

I always recommend sharing your guest blog posts, which will give your already engaged audience another quality piece of work. However, do not restrict your audience to those on the guest blog hosting site.

Conclusion

Guest blogging is equally beneficial for the host site and the blogger. It is a unique way to market your business, product, or brand. By understanding how to write guest blog posts effectively, you can gain maximum benefits and establish your brand in the least amount of time.