What is Guest Blogging? How To Start: The Ultimate Guide

For a beginner, the whole concept of Guest Blogging may be new. Through this guide, you not only will get familiarised with what Guest Blogging is all about but also realize strategies to make it work for you.

What is Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging is the act of writing a post for another blogger. This is also sometimes referred to a Guest Posting.

Why would anyone extend such cooperation in terms of spending time and writing content for some other person, instead of writing for one’s own blog?

Such an investment of time and content definitely has got to do with furthering your own prospects as a blogger when you are a novice in this field. Let us look at the advantages of Guest Blogging.

Guest Blogging Advantages

• Helps in establishing yourself and relationships and getting the right exposure

To establish yourself as an expert in your unique niche, you should aim to guest post to reputed sites which cater to similar niche so as to attain visibility and build relationships in the online world.

• Helps routing traffic to your website

This benefit can be realized only if you guest blog for popular reputed sites. Various sites help you to identify the high traffic sites.

• Helps build backlinks to your website.

A backlink is a hyperlink that a website provides to link to another website.

Backlinks received from credible websites can improve domain authority and popularity of your website

• You can build influence

To become influential in the field, participate in other people’s blogs.

This opportunity gives you the chance of reaching a broader audience.

You can, therefore, leave a positive impact on them making it hard for them to forget you.

• Develop authority

Every new blogger yearns to be respected in their niche.

You can achieve this by guest blogging.

The avenue allows you to associate with big names in your field if you guest blog strategically.

When a large audience starts seeing your name frequently on different sites, it can help you develop authority and garner the respect you yearn for.

• The activity can help you build credibility

Readers take time to trust different bloggers. Participating in different sites gives you an opportunity to develop your portfolio.

When other authors accept you to leave a post on their website, readers start trusting you because the blog owner believes in you.

Regular guest blogging, therefore, makes it easy for the audience to trust you.

• It helps you boost your writing skill

New bloggers have a lot to learn from other site owners.

Before you even submit a blog post on another blogger’s site, you have to read their blog posts and find out what they blog about.

This helps you compare your work from theirs, and you can become a better writer through such benchmarking.

The blog owner can also help you edit some of the mistakes before publishing your post on their site.

• Guest blogging expands your subscriber base

Apart from generating more traffic to your site, guest blogging can help you get more subscribers to your email list.

After coming up with great content, you can add links to direct the readers to your site and also encourage them to subscribe to your email list.

The larger the audience, the easier it is to get more email subscribers.

• You can get honest feedback through guest blogging

When readers are used to your content on your site, sometimes, it is hard for them to give you honest feedback because they may like your overall writing style.

It may be hard for you to know which areas need correction out of not receiving a lot of criticism on your site.

This can change when you post content on another person’s blog due to massive exposure

From guest blogging, you can get honest feedback from people who are not used to your writing style.

People who have not yet developed a connection with you can be more honest than loyal readers.

Use this chance to learn the areas that need improvement.

Locating Guest Blogging prospects

Perform dedicated searches by using properly worded search strings in quotation marks along with some keywords indicating your niche, to search Google for guest blogging targets.

For example Keyword + “write for us”, Keyword + “submit blog post”

From the results obtained, prepare a list of websites that are your potential targets.

You can check the domain authority of any website by downloading the MozBar from Moz.

Zeroing down on Blog Targets

Once your list is ready, zero-in on the blogs where you would want to pitch your guest post.

Quality metrics help you determine the overall quality of blogs.

Some of the quality metrics include Domain Authority, Alexa Score etc.

Those websites having higher Domain Authority (DA) rank greater than your blog and having minimum DA of 40, should be targeted.

Outreach Strategy

Next step is to try some outreach methods to establish effective communication with these websites.

Try commenting on their blogs on social media by providing insightful feedbacks.

In this way, you can get noticed by the blog owner.

After that engage in email communication with the owner to build a rapport.

Connecting with the site owner

Before you talk to the site owner, you should look for ways to connect with them.

A lot of site owners admit that they are tired of blog owners leaving poor quality content on their sites.

This means that not every site owner you try to approach may accept your request.

You can, however, establish a connection with them if you try to understand their work.

Go through their blog and remain updated with their posts.

You can subscribe to their website through Feedly so that you follow their blog posts consistently.

When you create a genuine connection with the owner of the targeted site, you can easily work with them without issues such as conflict of interest.

Pitching your Guest Post

Later you can pitch in with your guest post idea and check if they would be interested.

While writing an outreach email for your guest blogging pitch, ensure that the essential mail etiquettes are followed and their website guidelines are adhered to.

Ensure that your pitch has a professional touch.

The pitch that you make for the different sites has to be unique, concise and unless specifically mentioned should not contain your guest blog post.

Provide multiple ideas for a guest post with a focus on the impact your post will have on the readers.

Writing the Guest Post

The Guest Post that you intend to send should be unique, relevant and also should relate to a niche similar to that of yours.

The title of the Guest post has to be unique, attention-grabbing, if possible have numerical characters and some standard keywords.

You may even make use of Headline templates or blog title generator tools like Hubspot, Potent etc.

Your guest post should be well researched and have a liberal usage of expressive images that would help convey the message effectively.

The credibility of your post would get a boost if it is supported by relevant case studies.

If permitted, include a call to action for inviting comments and insert backlinks to your website.

Work on the bio

After working hard on creating great content, the bio rewards you by providing you with a platform to market your blog to the audience.

This is the section when you add links to your website to help you generate leads.

Use this section to add relevant details that can make the readers interested in your site. You can link to a home page to introduce visitors to your website.

Do not forget to incorporate a compelling call to action for your readers to know the next step. For instance, you can request them to visit your website or follow you on certain social media platforms.

Use the bio to introduce yourself to the audience and tell them how your site can help solve their problems.

Feel free to add a passport photo on the bio if the site owner allows it.

Make the bio precise and appealing to the audience.

Conclusion:

So finally, if your guest post gets published, it is indeed a big achievement for a beginner. Continue engaging with readers by responding to their comments. Provide visibility to your post on social media platforms.

Hope with this beginner’s guide, you take the plunge into Guest Blogging!