Nick Brown July 4, 2021 In the game of search engine optimization, having informative, interesting content can help your website get recognized by the almighty search engine gods.
If you want to take your blog posts to the next level, collaboration with other writers is the way to go. We’re talking about guest posting and how your website traffic can skyrocket with the right strategy.
We’ll cover the main ways that guest posting can improve your web traffic, as well as the best possible strategy to achieve it.
What is guest posting?
As the name suggests, guest posting is the practice of posting content on websites other than your own/having other people post on your website.
Professional writers often offer to write blog posts for different websites, so you get some shiny new content for your site and they get published. It’s a win-win.
It’s not as simple as it sounds. You need to find the right writers, who know how to guest blog, and work closely with them to produce an excellent guest posting strategy that will cause your web traffic to skyrocket.
Here’s how the right guest posting strategy can help.
1. Tailor-made content can increase engagement
The most important aspect of your guest posting strategy is, funnily enough, the post. To get the most out of your strategy, you’ll need content that’s original, well-written, and relevant to your industry. Anything else just won’t have the impact you want it to.
Do plenty of research about your target audience. Whether you’re a small business or a larger one looking to improve your enterprise search engine optimization, information is key.
Research can take many forms. Any customer feedback is useful. Keeping an eye on industry innovations or transitions can also be fruitful and ensures your content is current. Similarly, the political landscape, as it pertains to your industry, can yield interesting discussions.
It’s about offering content your audience wants. What questions are they asking? What kind of answers will they find useful? If you consider retail vs wholesale, the information blog readers are seeking will vary widely between different types of businesses.
If you produce a steady stream of high-quality, interesting content, readers will be enticed and are far more likely to divert back to your site.
2. It can help you appeal to your target demographic
Different social media platforms cater to different demographics. Instagram is fun and fashionable, with an emphasis on aesthetics and culture, whereas LinkedIn is more professionally focused. Facebook and Twitter host a slightly older audience base, whereas TikTok’s users tend to be younger.
This is important to know to calibrate your customer engagement strategy because your content will usually be more useful to certain demographics than others. You don’t want to write a post about performance engineering management on Instagram and come across like some mad uncle who’s trying to be down with the kids.
If you decide to spread your content across multiple platforms, don’t use the same tagline or introduction in every post. One size does not fit all. You’ll have to reframe it so it doesn’t feel out of place on each platform, and you’ll need to be implementing processes to make it feel as natural as possible.
Successfully appealing to these different demographics will divert traffic to your site from all corners of the internet.
3. Specific objectives give your strategy direction
Once you know who you’re writing to, and where they are, you’ll need to figure out what you want them to do.
We’re not talking, necessarily, about a specific call to action, but there should be a point to the content you’ve produced. It should never just boil down to appearing more highly on search engines. This tactic is bad practice and will lead to lower quality content, which could hurt your brand in the long run. For this, you’ll need a QA strategy.
Obviously, increased traffic is a huge plus, but it shouldn’t be the only objective. It should be seen as a bonus and a sign your original objective is working. Before implementing your guest post strategy, outline specific goals you’d like to achieve.
These could be:
- Increasing social media engagement
- Generating new leads
- Increasing backlinking
Having clear objectives like these will give your strategy a focus and direction. Having a clear direction will in turn ensure consistency and high quality, and that’s what will increase traffic in the long run.
4. Relevant backlinks divert traffic to your site
Backlinks are the bread and butter of diverting web traffic. You want as many people as possible to enjoy the blog content and click on the links to your website as they’re reading. There’s an art to getting this right, though.
It depends partially on the skill of the writer; their use of backlinks should come across organically. It also relies on the host site. Don’t try to include links that are too tenuous or irrelevant. This is jarring for readers and can make the whole post seem cheap and sales-y.
That being said, a well-placed and relevant backlink is a surefire way to divert a substantial amount of web traffic. There’s nothing wrong with competitor SEO analysis to research other appropriate anchor texts and successful guest posting strategies so you can try to replicate them.
5. Increased authority improves your search engine rankings
Search engine optimization relies heavily on domain authority. Sites with high authority appear higher in search engine rankings than those with lower authority, so increasing your authority leads to greater visibility and more traffic.
Domain authority depends on several factors:
- How recent your content is
- How frequently you produce content
- How much duplicate content is on your site
- User engagement (how long users stayed on your site, used links, and posted comments)
Developing authority online is a great way to ensure your site’s visibility in search engine rankings. It also improves your reputation in general, making you a household name in your industry. Increasing your domain authority with guest posts takes time, but it’s achievable with good practice.
To foster it, make sure you:
- Publish regular, research-oriented content
- Encourage user engagement
- Include internal links (these help search engines index your content)
Don’t:
- Change the dates on old guest posts to trick search engines
- Stuff articles with keywords to appear higher on rankings
It’ll take time, but increasing your authority will make search engines work in your favor. Featuring higher in their rankings will vastly increase your web traffic.
6. Cross-platform sharing boosts visibility
The beauty of a guest post is that it won’t just appear on your channel. The writer will want to focus attention on it also, meaning they’ll post it on their platform and divert their audience toward your site.
This is great because it gives you access to a whole new audience of users who might have otherwise been unaware of you. The nature of social media is about sharing and resharing, so there’s a lot of potential here for exponential growth in traffic.
Social media posting allows you to utilize RPA tools to boost your marketing potential, by auto-scheduling posts for certain times. When you use it, you’ll receive analytics about the performance of those posts too.
An optimized web posting strategy will boost your visibility over multiple platforms, meaning vital backlinks to your site and increased traffic.
7. Continuous collaboration encourages continuous traffic
A solid guest posting strategy will nurture connections within the blogging world. Successful collaboration with guest posters opens the door to more guest posters. You’ll build a reputation within the industry, producing more opportunities with more bloggers and their respective audiences.
Nurture those relationships, and soon you’ll have your pick of talented bloggers. Long term, this will equate to a continuous stream of high-quality content leading traffic back to your site.
Here are a few simple but crucial steps to building positive connections with guest posters:
i. Give a clear and detailed brief
Set expectations about what they should be writing. This ought to cover content, tone, word count, and formatting guidelines. Try not to be too restrictive, but don’t worry about offering clear guidance. Most writers prefer having solid direction.
ii. Encourage questions and discussion
Ambiguity is hazardous for guest posters, and any queries left unattended could result in miscommunication. Encourage your guest posters to ask as many questions as they need to, and offer them relevant materials to help them get on the same page.
iii. Pay promptly
As cynical as it might sound, guest posters aren’t writing about a small business phone system for the love of it; they’re doing it for the cash. Offer them a fair rate with clear invoice instructions, and pay them promptly. It sounds simple because it is, but not doing this can quickly give you a bad reputation, dissuading future collaboration.
iv. Share the spotlight
Give your guest poster plenty of credit for the great work they’ve done. Allow them space for a quick bio and picture, offer backlinks to some of their other works, and give them a nod when you announce your new post.
8. Generating email subscribers creates new leads
Finally, let’s talk about emails. Email marketing is its own beast and has loads of potential to generate leads. But how do you get people to sign up for your mailing list in the first place? With astounding and interesting content, of course!
Offer email signup buttons in your guest blogs for users to press, and then use intelligent automation to manage email blasts. (Asking yourself “what is process improvement?” Then check out the article we’ve linked to.)
This is a great way to boost web traffic as it’s a direct line to the viewer. It’s much more reliable than waiting for them to Google you or haphazardly scroll past you on social media.
Once the reader has subscribed to your mailing list, you can offer promotions and offers to use on your website or incentives to recommend your site to a friend.
Conclusion
Your main marketing goal should always be to create high-quality content for specific users. It’s an ongoing process that can be difficult to master, but luckily there are plenty of great SaaS SEO agencies out there if you need more direction.
Remember, you’re not trying to divert everybody to your site – only your target audience – so find out what sort of guest posting content would be most helpful for them and run with this.
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