9 Benefits of Guest Blogging You NEED to Know for SEO

Anyone who works in digital marketing knows how much of a mixed message there is about guest blogging.

You will hear about both the benefits of guest blogging and some cautionary tales.

You only have to browse other blogs for a short while before you see how popular they are.

Many blogs accept contributions from tons of unique guest authors. Clearly, there must be a reason why guest blogging is such a common practice.

The answer lies in this question: what is guest blogging in SEO? In short, guest blogging presents one of the best opportunities to get high quality backlinks. There aren’t many other ways to get links from relevant and high authority domains.

Want to know more? Here are the nine benefits of guest blogging for SEO that you should know.

9 Benefits of Guest Blogging

There are numerous reasons to make guest blogging a part of your standard digital marketing strategy.

Whether you want to increase traffic to your blog, your rankings on search engines, or something else, there are benefits for everyone.

1. Get (REAL) traffic to your site

The most common reason why people want to use guest blogging is to get more real traffic to their website.

This is true both for people submitting guest posts to other sites, and for people who accept them to publish on their own site.

For guest authors, some people who read your guest posts will wind up clicking on the link to your website you include in the content.

Some of those will become regular visitors of your website. Each time you have a new guest post, you get more real traffic from a real audience to your site.

But how much traffic can you get from guest posts? 

A survey by Ahrefs showed that websites receive an average of 50 referral traffic per guest article.

Around 15% of posts gained more than 100 referral sessions, with the highest for one post generating more than 500 sessions. All for a single guest post not even published on your own site.

Source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/guest-blogging-study.png 

2. Build your authority (DA, DR etc)

The next most common reason people use guest blogging is to increase the authority of their own domain. When you have an article published on another website that is viewed as an authority on the topic, you get a boost by that association. People will think that you are considered an authority as well.

One of the best ways to track the effectiveness of your guest post campaign is through metrics that measure your domain’s authority.

You can use Moz, Ahrefs, and so on. This is because research has shown how domain link authority has a strong correlation with Google rankings.

Source: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ceblog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/31173135/domain-authority-rankings.png 

The more links from high quality domains you get from your guest posts, the more your own website’s authority increases. You don’t even have to do any other SEO, guest posting can have a big impact by itself.

3. Build quality backlinks to your site

Backlinks are very important to Google when it comes to rank factors, especially links from high authority websites.

But getting a lot of good quality backlinks can be very difficult, that’s why guest blogging is so valuable.

It is one of the easier ways to get links. Giving another site good content that they can use on their blog gives them a benefit to include a link back to yours.

Guest blogging is arguably one of the best opportunity to earn a large number of links from high quality and relevant websites. Guest posts also give you more of an opportunity to control what anchor text is used, helping you better optimize your backlink profile.

Using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool, you can check new referring domains to track the success of your guest blogging campaign. Plus, you should see the number of domains increasing over time.

You can also check the domain rating score of your referring domains to make sure you’re getting good quality links.

4. Grow your network (+ online influence)

Guest blogging also gives you a good opportunity to grow your network within your niche. You can wind up forming strong relationships with websites that accept your posts.

These relationships can help you get more regular guest posts from their website, but it can also go beyond that.

You can start following each other on social media, and promote each other’s content even when you’re not involved.

You can share advice and insights, set up valuable connections at conferences you both attend, and so on. There are many benefits of networking, and guest blogging can be a means to that end.

It also helps you increase your own online influence. Being associated with other influences in your field will give you a big boost to your followers, and how they view you as an authority.

5. Build a portfolio of credibility

The more guest posts you successfully have published on other websites, the easier it will be to convert new opportunities. Each post you can add to your online portfolio to use as a source of credibility to new websites.

For example, some sites that accept guest posts will ask for some samples of your writing.

They might even specifically ask for samples of other guest posts. Even if they don’t ask for any samples, you can include links to other guest posts that you wrote.

Being able to point to an established history of successful guest posting is one of the best ways to establish your credibility. It really does act like a portfolio, as well as something of a reference letter from the other websites.

6. Get more social media followers & shares

Social media is a valuable tool to generate more traffic, grow your network, showcase your portfolio of work, and more.

Just look at numbers of active users:

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ 

If you want to get more social media followers and shares of your content, guest blogging is a great opportunity.

Whenever you have a guest post published, you promote it on social media as if it were published on your site.

Tag the website’s account when you do so, and thank them for the opportunity to write for them. They will usually like and share your post in a reciprocal manner.

When their followers see this, you have a chance to get more shares from them. You might also gain some new followers from their circles.

Every new guest post you publish, and every new website you write for gives you a chance to get more followers. It will all come in handy in the future when you want to promote your own content.

7. Get more exposure & brand awareness

Brand awareness is a high level marketing strategy. But that doesn’t mean should should neglect it.

Source: https://d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net/marketing/blogs/press/25-branding-stats-facts/Page-014.jpg 

It may be more difficult to measure compared to the above benefits, but is no less valuable. Your guest posts help you get your business or website exposed to a new audience.

Your guest posts, bylines and links are put in front of everyone who reads them. People who would never have found your business otherwise will come to know your name, or your business name.

Think back to the data from the #1 benefit on this list: every guest post gets an average of 50 referral sessions. But you will have gained awareness from the people who only read the article and never clicked on the link.

Having one guest post published every month could earn tens of thousands of people learning about your brand for the first time.

8. Get more email subscribers

People who are interested in quality content in your field are more likely to want to subscribe to email newsletters.

If you have an active blog, you can include a form for new readers to sign up for your regular email newsletter. You can send new articles and content to them via email.

Source: https://cdn.optinmonster.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/email-usage-in-the-us-by-age.png 

How does this tie in to guest blogging?

Well, do you remember the 50 referral sessions per guest post that you can receive? If they’re interested enough to click to your website, some of them will be willing to become subscribers if they like your content.

Email marketing software makes newsletters easier than ever to manage subscribers and design great looking email content. Emails are also more commonly used than all social media, and get better engagement.

More subscribers means a larger audience and more traffic to your own posts, guest blogs or your own.

They may also opt in to receive marketing emails to receive any future offers from your business. Regardless of their reason, guest posts are a great way to increase the number of email subscribers you generate.

9. Improve your writing & marketing skills

The best way to improve any skill is with practice.

See: SEO for Copywriters

Guest blogging is a great way to improve your writing and your online marketing. It gives you plenty of practice in researching, pitching, emailing, and writing good quality content.

Some websites, such as those with whom you develop relationships, may give you some feedback on how you can improve.

Over time you will learn more about what works and what doesn’t. The improvements will only help the quality of writing and marketing for your own website.

Summary

Guest blogging has undeniable benefits to those who use it in their marketing strategy.

Don’t be scared off by people telling you it’s too time consuming for not enough payoff. There are so many tactics that aren’t really good or bad, by themselves.

They’re bad because people take a low-value approach.

If you want to get more backlinks, you won’t get as good quality links without paying for them.

If you want more traffic, just writing more content on your own site won’t get it in front of a new audience.

In the end, there are simply too many benefits to guest blogging that you can’t get elsewhere, or not as easily.