Thinking of guest blogging? Well let me give you some advice. Give it a go and you won’t be disappointed as long as you make a few wise choices.

Many people have said to me lately why do I rate guest blogging so much and why do I offer a lot of the posts I write to other blogs. Well I can see why many people would ask this question as it seems quite strange why I would want to give away some of my best work to other peoples sites. Well when you think about it it’s not really a bad idea at all, especially if you are just creating a new blog. When you create a new blog or website you may be posting some of the best articles ever written but what is the point if nobody knows that they exist. Well by posting them on more popular blogs you are displaying your content to a greater audience and the reader will still know that it is yourself who has written it.

Guest blogging benefits everyone!!! It benefits your own reputation, it benefits your own website, it benefits your readers and visitors (as they get to read your wonderful posts), it benefits your hosts website and it will also develop you many professional contacts which are probably the best benefits of them all.

1. More traffic

Ultimately this is what every blog owner wants to achieve. It’s the reason that we all blog in the first place because we want to get visitors to our site and read what we have written. Guest blogging exposes your site to a new audience and new visitors can turn into regular visitors. Massive increases in traffic won’t occur over night but over time as you develop a following guest blogging can really boost your sites popularity.

2. Develop Quality Links

Quality of links is the fundamental basis of how well your site will perform in terms of SEO. Backlinks and quality ones in particular are what will lead to your site gaining better ranking within search engines again leading to more traffic. By guest blogging you will develop high quality, topic related links that will not only help your search engine performance but will also drive direct traffic to your site if readers appreciate your guest posts.

3. Improved reputation

In the world of blogging and web design reputation can count for everything. If you have a poor reputation then this can get around and your overall success can be damaged because of it. When starting out you are looking to develop relationships and good ones at that. By offering out your best work to other successful sites you are developing a good relationship between not only yourself and that website owner but between yourself and the whole of that websites users as well. The better your reputation, the better your conversion rates and the more likely people are going to be to link to your own website and work.

4. More Subscribers

Returning visitors and subscribers are the best type of online traffic. Traffic from the search engines and other sites is most important in the early stages of site development but in the long term converting those visitors into regular, committed readers is what we are all looking to achieve. Guest blogging targets the type of visitors you are looking for and by having a relationship with the host blog (many of the visitors being host subscribers) will increase the chance of those visitors being converted into your own subscribers as well.

5. Search Engine Improvements

As I mentioned earlier guest blogging can develop you some of the best content related, keyword rich, one way links that you can possibly gain. Backlinks are the most important aspect of modern SEO. Forget about the direct traffic from these links for the moment as we have already spoke about these. If you target the correct blogs, many of which will be high page rank blogs, then some of this page rank will be passed on to yourself improving your own visibility and this is really important in the early days of site promotion. The higher the ranking of your site the more visitors you will receive. One thing to remember is to make sure you create your host author information box wisely and use the related keywords as your own site links. The search engines have algorithms that place surprising emphasis on links from websites that are considered trusted and relevant. Therefore you’re not just getting any old link, you’re getting a link that has potential to really influence your search engine rankings.

6. Great content exposure

With many of today’s SEO strategies being barred by Google, guest blogging is one of the most highly looked upon and respected SEO strategies out there today. As a result of the it’s not easy developing a popular website where all of your great content is visible to the world. Rather than having your content and hard work being hidden in the dark corners of the internet offer it out to highly popular sites, they will appreciate your work and give you great exposure to the masses.

7. Relevancy

Promotion of any product or service is no good if you aren’t targeting the correct market. The same applies to your website or blog. By guest blogging you are targeting an audience that wants to learn more about you and the services you offer. When the user clicks through to your site they are already interested in what you have to say and are much more likely to become a regular returning visitor. It’s even been said that 20% of users that click through to a site from a guest blog post will become an RSS Subscriber to your own feed.

8. Long term effects

What we are all looking for when it comes to site promotion is the long term effects that any of our techniques have. Eventually there is going to become a time when we would like to think that our site becomes so popular that constant SEO and promotion isn’t needed as much. Guest blogging has many benefits in the long term. Bloggers that you write for will remember you and will be likely to link back to your site further down the line. They may also talk about your site via social media participation and in their own posts. However the most important point to remember is that if you have done a great job for them they are always likely to help you out in the future in many other ways. By putting your name out there you open up numerous opportunities for yourself by developing these relationships, whether that be via business opportunities, bloggers writing posts for you or even just a simple referral to your work.

9. Company Branding

Every time you mention your blog name at the end of a guest article, you’re imprinting your blog name (or business name, or your name) on the reader. Studies show that the more familiar a person is with a brand, the more they trust that brand.
With that trust, a visitor is more likely to refer you to their friends, subscribe to your blog, or buy something from you.

10. Improved social media visibility

Social media has become massive in recent years. With the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon becoming goldmines for blog and website owners. Highly popular bloggers are also usually social media power users and when you guest post for these bloggers they are more likely to visit your own site and check your work out. They may even submit your work via social media. When this happens you really will notice the difference as your work will potentially be submitted to the thousands.

The Benefits – Conclusion

Up until now, I’ve mainly focused on the benefits of being a guest writer. However, as a blog owner, guest blogging is a great opportunity for you to get some free content and give your regular readers a little diversity in what articles they can read on your blog.

Author Bio: Adie is the head designer at AdRiCe Design creating smart custom built websites and user interfaces for the web and web apps.

Category: Internet
Keywords: blogging, design, internet, guest