Business

Is Guest Posting Effective for SEO in 2022?

Published

2 years ago

December 18, 2021

Guest Posting: SEO is still going strong. A survey of over two thousand companies in 2021 by Search Engine Journal showed 64.6% of companies experienced more success with SEO in 2021 than in previous years.

To date, guest posting has formed a key part of digital marketing strategies. It offers huge potential to be a highly effective – and inexpensive – way of building authority and boosting brand visibility. Thanks to those all-important backlinks, guests posting can also impact greatly on where your site appears in Google rankings; indeed ultimately, most people would agree that its main benefit lies in its potential to bolster your search engine ranking position. The burning question is, though, can guest posting still form part of an effective strategy in 2022? And if so, how can you make sure you maximise its success?

Define a clear strategy

Every other aspect of your business is carefully orchestrated, with a well-thought-out strategy, usually implemented by a team of experienced individuals. Whether it’s your CRM strategy or your approach to on-site conversion, these key aspects demand a lot of consideration.

Guest blogging requires the same principle; without a detailed strategy, you could easily waste valuable time posting ineffective blogs on sites that will ultimately do little to improve your search engine ranking. At the start of your guest posting campaign, identity:

The areas of growth you want to focus on in 2022.
The landing pages are most relevant to each area.
Keywords for both those landing pages and your home page.
If you want to manage your own guest blogging campaign rather than use an SEO company – topics for guest posts, who will write them, who will approach the bloggers and a standard email template.

Guest posting

Reach out to high-profile blogs

Guest posts are most effective if you place a single guest post on each site. For large guest posting campaigns, you can place one guest post on lower authority sites and two or three guest posts on the highest quality ones (those with very high authority and traffic).

It’s, therefore, more important to build connections with many bloggers, rather than having a single blog that you publish guest posts on again and again and again. This is the most challenging aspect of this form of SEO, as having your first blog post accepted is the hardest part.

When you approach each blog, start by researching them and seeing if you can make a sincere personalised compliment. Write a lengthy post (at least 1,000 words) and ensure it’s your best work – research and proofread it carefully. It should be informative or entertaining, depending on the industry, not simply a sales pitch for your company. Repeat the process for each blog. If you don’t get a response within a week, send a chaser. If there’s no response after two weeks, contact another blog with the same article.

This can be labour-intensive and time-consuming. Often, it is worth using an agency that can provide a guest posting service, particularly – though not exclusively – if you are attempting to branch out into a less familiar country. An agency can save you hours of time by knowing the right, high-authority websites to contact and be able to organise writers and topic ideas, too.

Ensure your guest posts are high quality

Audiences and search engines know what to look for when it comes to so-called ‘spammy links, and Google has been on the alert for them since as far back as 2012 when it launched the Penguin algorithm update designed for just this purpose. A high-quality guest post should offer something to the reader, whether it is new information presented clearly, an argument unpicked and explained, or a concept clarified. Readers of the internet have become wiser at spotting blatant spam or clickbait, and in order to appear insightful and authoritative, it is vital to avoid content stuffed with keywords and blatant advertising. Remember, quality content will be read, absorbed, and shared, whereas spam-rich regurgitation of existing content, will most definitely not.

Blog in the right places

So, you’re sure you’ve created some high-quality pieces, and even begun to build up a relationship with an influential blogger, or two. But did you make sure the blogging sites also do their bit to engage with their audience?

Post on sites where bloggers are more likely to engage with their audience and identify which sites are the most appropriate type for your company. Crucially, pinpoint which sites are credible and have a:

High domain authority (DA)
High TrustFlow (TF)
High traffic (at least a thousand monthly visitors)
Offer dofollow links (it’s possible to add a ‘nofollow’ tag which tells search engines to ignore links for ranking purposes. These nofollow links won’t help your SEO.)

If you search for ‘Bulk Domain Authority checker’ in Google, or similar phrases, you will find tools that allow you to check these quality measurements for a range of sites.

There are also some common sense checks you can make yourself. This might mean finding blogs that update their subscribers when they post something new (which could be your piece!) or responding quickly to comments on social media. Blogs with an active, engaged following are more likely to engage with your own content, too. This might result in a higher quantity of social media shares, and a good volume of referral traffic.

Create content with ongoing relevance

Many guest posting strategies choose to focus on creating ‘evergreen content’, or blogs that will retain their relevance for months or even years to come, it is also sometimes worth publishing content that links in with topical or seasonal events. These might see a flurry of shares at certain times of year – for example, if you own a site dedicated to running, you might publish a blog advising runners on ‘how to run safely in the darker months. While this might not receive much attention in spring and summer, it is still a topic with potential longevity since it becomes relevant again every year.

As well as having a carefully thought-out guest blogging strategy, it’s also always important to be on the ball when it comes to adapting to unforeseen events: good business sense means being prepared to make changes when necessary.

Make sure concrete results inform your next move

Marketing strategies evolve according to what has worked best, and your approach to guest posting should be no different. Remember: a post’s success can’t be tracked solely by the number of times it is shared on social media. While achieving a high volume of shares might please the blog host, they don’t always correlate with a post’s success at generating business for you or improving your ranking in Google. Tracking the effectiveness of each guest post individually is almost impossible, as you won’t know how many visits many of them get as they will be on a myriad of different sites.

Instead, to measure the effectiveness of your guest posting campaign, use a tool like Google Analytics to help you measure how much traffic your own site is receiving, both from referral traffic and from your increased ranking in search engines. This can help inform your strategy in the future.

Guest posting is as relevant as ever in today’s world but needs to be approached carefully in order to maximise its effectiveness. Prioritising high-quality, relevant content, and identifying the most appropriate, highest authority sites upon which to post, is paramount. Just as with other areas of your business, taking a strategic approach based on your development plan and combined with careful data analysis will give you the results you need from guest posting.