What Is Guest Posting and Why Should You Do It?

In case you haven't heard of guest posting or guest blogging, it's a great way to increase your visibility on the web. Whether you have a business, a blog, or any type of website that you're hoping to build more traffic on, guest posting is the way to go. Many times people don't know what exactly has to be done, what blogs to guest post on, and what's exactly involved in the process, so I'd like to explain a bit about what guest posting entails in this article.

What is guest posting?

Guest posting is when you write a blog post (an article), and instead of posting it on your own website, you give the content that you've written to the person that you're going to guest post for, and they publish it on their site. It's a way of expanding your audience, increasing your visibility towards new readers, and bringing in more exposure and traffic to your blog. 

It's a way of bringing in more traffic by the subject matter being different than what you or they might usually write about, or it could be similar. It all depends on the subject matter. But, either way, it's written differently than what people are used to reading on that blog, and that makes it enticing to read in itself. This is also one reason why guest posting is good for both people (the person that owns the blog and the person guest posting). Guest posting is also a way of helping your website, business, or blog get towards the top of Google Search, or towards the top of other search engines as well. 

How do you guest post?

Guest posting is pretty simple. First, you find a site that appeals to you in some way. Make sure it looks like a healthy site (I'll go into more detail on the specifics later), then you ask them how long it should be. A usual request for a guest post would be 500 words minimum, and all unique and original content (not something that has ever been posted yet). Give the person the link to your blog, make sure that they're giving you a do-follow back link to your website or blog, so that you get some good link juice (which is what you need to build more traffic to your site), and come up with a good and catchy title. Then find a few pictures or how ever many the person is okay with (after all, it will be posted on their blog), and remember to write your best work. 

Do you pay someone to guest post?

Yes, many times people have to pay to guest post, but not always. Many times people are in need of content, just want to build friendly relationships with other bloggers, or maybe they're simply trying to do you a favour. It's possible that they really like your blog or business, and it's worth it to them to give up some of their link juice and give you a do-follow link, just in order to have your business post on their site. You must be pretty cool if that's the reason, or at least your site must be. It's important to try and get as many do-follow links as you can, and from sites that have good rankings. 

Sometimes people pay to do a guest post when a person's site has a great PA (Page Authority), Great Alexa ranking, great MOZ ranking, has a great PR (Page Ranking), or maybe your site has an immense amount of potential to be great, and sometimes even though it may appear to be a new site, one can tell that it's gonna be big, and they're willing to pay to guest post. Either way, many sites are worth guest posting on even when you have to pay, because it's basically advertising on a site that gets a lot of visibility on the web, whether it's from their large social media following, their high profile name and blog, or perhaps they have a great ranking on the web.

Remember that search engines will be able to find your business, blog, or website when you do a lot of guest posts. Just remember that you shouldn't guest post on just any old blog or site. You should be cautious if a site has a high spam count and remember, spam in this regard is probably not going to help out your ranking, so be cautious that a person's blog is not hitting above a seven. You should download the Alexa toolbar to your desktop, and MOZ as well, in order to tell what a site's spam count is. MOZ will let you know a site's spam.

Guest posting should be quality content

Many times a person might think that they don't want to give away their best work and writings to another blog for them to post. Perhaps they get attached to it, and feel that it doesn't have to be the best writing, and that the sole purpose of guest posting is getting the other person's link juice. False! When you guest post on someone's site, you should put out your best possible work so that not only other people will see your writing, click on your link, and check you out, but you'll have more opportunities to guest post on other sites. Think of it this way, the better the blog post, the more likely you'll be to get a bigger following, and bigger, better, and more sites will likely see that you have experience guest posting, and they'll want you to post for them as well. Especially, when you write so well, and with so much heart, and effort.

Gratitude and common courtesy 

Being appreciative and kind to people is everything in life, and this includes when you're guest posting on someone's site or when someone is guest posting on your site. It's important to show your thanks, appreciation, and there are many ways in doing so. A great way to show gratitude and appreciation for the guest post is by saying thank you of course, but also by both people sharing the guest post on their social media accounts. The more sharing that one does, the more visibility that post gets, and it's a way of saying thank you, and I like your work.

If anyone is interested in doing a guest post or renting out a widget to advertise on the side of my blog, send me an Email at arcwrites@gmail.com.