Guest blogging has become a common practice among those in the SEO industry. This is because guest blogging, at its purest, provides an opportunity for a mutually beneficial relationship between webmaster and guest blogger. The webmaster receives quality content for their site and its readers, and the guest blogger gains exposure and is typically allowed to link back to their own site which provides some SEO benefit. However, although this exchange seems simple enough, there are a variety of ways that people can fail at guest blogging; and if you are currently employing any of the practices listed here, it is most likely the reason your guest blogging efforts are unsuccessful.
Improper Outreach Techniques
Everything in guest blogging starts with outreach and needless to say, if you aren’t interacting properly you won’t be very successful. When contacting potential sites for guest blogging, you need to send personalized messages that demonstrate you are human being that has actually visited the site you are trying to guest blog on.
Standardized emails that sound robotic and void of personality will be ignored as webmasters have become jaded by the amount of spam that is prevalent in guest blogging. Address the person you are contacting by name and mention something about their site to show you are a real person that is looking to build a mutually beneficial relationship.
Giving Up Too Easily
As mentioned above, webmasters have become wary of guest blogging due to the amount of spam they receive daily. This combined with the fact that they are typically very busy, means that it might take more than one email to get a response. If you have tried emailing someone a couple times and heard nothing back; rather than getting offended and giving up, try reaching out to them through a different avenue of communication such as Twitter or Google Plus.
There are certainly going to be cases where you don’t get a response after multiple attempts at communication and it eventually becomes necessary to move on, but if you find a site worth guest blogging on, don’t sell yourself short by giving up hope after a couple of emails. Persistency is key; don’t be a nuisance by clogging their inboxes with emails every day, but do make sure to follow up on your messages after a few days to make sure they have actually been received.
Focusing on Links Rather than Quality Content
Although backlinks to your site are a major benefit of guest blogging, they should not be your primary concern. First and foremost you should focus on creating quality content that will provide value to the site you are targeting and encourage engagement from its readers as well as social sharing.
If you are placing a link within the content you are writing, it should add to the overall article and provide some usefulness to the readers–or it shouldn’t be there. Anything that doesn’t fit naturally within the context of the article and improve the experience of those reading it does not belong in the article. Not only do these types of links provide more SEO value, but also webmasters will be much more willing to publish articles that include relevant and helpful links rather than articles containing links solely for SEO purposes.
If you can identify any of the things listed here in your own guest blogging practices, then you are doing it wrong-that’s why your guest blogging efforts are unsuccessful. Avoiding simple mistakes like those listed here will go a long way towards successful guest blogging. When done correctly, guest blogging can be a very effective means of gaining exposure while also providing some SEO value for your site.
