Ayodeji Onibalusi
Many will agree with me that the blog post by Matt Cutts announcing the “death” of guest posting is one of the biggest news to ever affect the internet marketing industry.
For weeks, experts deliberated over how harsh the decision was, why guest posting had quickly become a namesake for cheap link building, and what guest posting really is and shouldn’t have been.
Unfortunately a method forged out of mutual benefit to share audience, views and relationships between bloggers (even before search engines) quickly took a different turn.
Before the announcement, many SEO companies relied on guest posting as a tactic to build links and increase search engine rankings. With this idea came the inherent risk of abuse.
However, after the announcement, many people decided that guest blogging was already dead. And looking at the graph below, captured from Google trends on the term “guest blogging”, there’s no telling that interest in guest blogging once took a plunge.
To clear things up a bit, I called on some of the best blogging and marketing experts on the internet and asked them a very crucial question that will serve as a guide on guest blogging in 2015.
Surprising enough, all the experts who answered my question believed guest blogging is still very important. Guest posting may not serve the SEO or link building purpose it used to serve in the past, but if we take a look at the responses, it’s in line with the current content marketing trend of today. And it will be foolhardy to totally rule out guest blogging because Matt Cutts said to “stick a fork in it”.
Let’s quickly look at 3 out of the many important roles guest posting still serves and will continue to serve in 2015 and beyond according to 30 content experts.
Branding and Recognition
Sujan Patel, VP of Marketing at When I Work puts it simply as “Guest posting will be used for traffic and brand awareness rather than SEO.” When it comes to online marketing, building a brand for yourself and your business is more important than anything. You might be getting a lot of traffic to your website, but it’s the trust that your visitors have for your brand that will make converting them into customers easy.
To build your brand and create awareness for your business in 2015, guest posting will play a very important role. To make this possible, you not only need to create high quality content but you also have to get your posts published on authoritative sites.
Larry Kim, founder of top PPC company WordStream, says “We do quite a bit of guest posting and in 2015, I hope to double down on those efforts. While no longer a SEO tactic per se, I’ve found that being a columnist for various well known publications has dramatically increased metrics like social media following and visibility”
This statement goes further to emphasize how much attention should be paid to the authority of the site that will be hosting your content in order to see returns from it.
Email List Building
According to Peter Sandeen, guest blogging is going to work as a means to build relationship and grow your email list.
Building an email list has always been the focal point of every content marketer. Since your guest post will not be aimed at just snagging a link from the hosting website, you want to have a good reason to make the readers subscribe to your newsletter. This means you have to offer something of value, something they won’t find just anywhere.
This is the same thought shared by link building expert Eric Ward in his prediction: “I write articles for two specific reasons; 1) to share my thoughts and beliefs about linking strategies so that…
2) people might visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter…”
If you’re looking to increase your email list in 2015, definitely consider increasing your guest posting efforts as guest posting will now serve as an important way to increase your email subscribers.
Build Authority
Guest blogging will help you build authority and become a respected voice in your industry. When you write for authoritative publications in your industry people will become more familiar with you and will have trust in your views.
Gabriella Sannino, founder at Level343 a marketing company, says “when we discuss guest posting with our clients most of the time the intent and goal boils down to creating and achieving three things: Authority, Reputation, Relationships”.
This stresses the importance of incorporating guest blogging into your branding campaign tools in 2015, not as a link building or SEO tactic, but to create awareness and establish a brand for your business.
Are you going to take guest posting more seriously in 2015? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to go over to see the full round up at the Effective Inbound Marketing Blog and learn the other roles top experts think guest blogging will play in 2015.
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