Is guest posting dead?!

In the start of 2017, Backlinko published a blog in which they mentioned that the best way to improve rankings in search engines is by genuine and trusted backlinks. And, guess the best way to get genuine backlinks for your website?

Guest posting

Guest posting isn’t about just writing an article on another website to get recognition as an author, it is a solid tool in your arsenal that you can use to build quality backlinks for your blog. In fact, Search Engine Land has ranked ‘Back linking’ as the most effective website ranking strategy for business.

Best Ways to Build Traffic with Guest Posting

While you may have read many tips on guest posting, the crux of all those tips is almost always the same. That is: Be consistent and resilient. This means you will have to do it, learn from it, and do it in a better way, no matter even if it fails.

Here are some of the best ways to build traffic to your website by ranking it higher in the SERPs.

• Be Consistent with Guest Posting

The only thing that can grant you higher authority and therefore better audience is if you remain consistent. The process of guest posting is simple.

• Find a blog with 30+ DA either by yourself or by hiring a blogger outreach agency because Google will give more importance to signals coming from a higher domain authority.
• Next, add a link to your own domain either from within the article or from the author bio, where author bio link will have a slight less importance. But make sure that the link is a do-follow link.

• Try to Write Genuine, Honest, & Practical Content

Your articles should be focused on practical advice otherwise no one will take your guest posts seriously. This means, the advice you share should have been tested by you. For example, X proven ways to get more links. Or, X ways to get a higher ranking for your blog… this list is endless. When you write these genuine and honest advices, you are going to win hearts of people who will use your advice and get better results from it.

Take example of Brian Dean, the author of Backlinko. Why has he become so popular by publishing less than 50 posts on his blog? Because the advice that he shares is practically proven. Not only this helped him gain more links, but it is praised by almost anyone in the SEO industry. Now, think. If you can do the same in your own industry, then you can also become an authority pretty soon. That’s how the guest post phenomenon works.

• Keep Writing on a Single Niche to Increase Your Authority

You just read the example of Brian Dean of Backlinko. He built an authority for himself by just writing about a single niche. Similarly, Neil Patel is another influencer in digital marketing industry that built multiple businesses just by sharing his experiences. He is the founder of Crazy Egg, Kiss Metrics, and Hello Bar. But these businesses only gained recognition when he spread the message across through guest posting.

It is often difficult to write about a single niche but that’s the way it is. Even if you are lost on topics, you can find many more by searching about what people are asking. Now, Google offers ‘People Often Ask’ section underneath each search.

OR

These are long tail question keywords that can help any blogger build authority by answering them in guest posts.

• Always Add Your Own Blogs & Web Pages To Get Traffic

While this may sound obvious as everyone writes a guest post for backlinks, you still have to add relevant pages to get higher traffic. First of all, start by analyzing your own pages. You can use Ubersuggest tool to see what pages of your blog are getting the most traffic. Now, add a backlink to these pages on your selected keywords. Let’s say ‘fitness equipment for kettlebell training’ is one keyword that I would like to rank on. Write this keyword in the guest post and hyperlink it with the blog that you have written on this topic. By doing this, you will be able to get higher SERPs for that keyword in the days to come.

• Answer Questions That People Often Ask

We have already told about one way to answer the right questions. However, people ask numerous questions and you can’t find all of them through Google. So, here are a few ways you can find these questions easily.

Quora

Quora is a QnA website that offers questions related to every topic. Find relevant topics related to your niche on Quora. It is always better to find questions that answer a specific query. Because this way you will have a better idea about what works and what doesn’t.

Tip: You can also create questions on Quora and ask others to answer them. Once they become popular, create a guest post on the same topic. This way, you will be populate your own keyword in the Google searches.

Reddit

Reddit is another great platform to find questions and answers about a specific topic. Simply search:

Reddit.com: KEYWORD and you will get a lot of topics. Make sure to read what people are saying in comments below each post.

LSI Keyword tool

LSI keyword tools like LSI Graph are some great tools to find long tail keywords. Also, you can use Ask the Public tool because it offers great question and long tail keyword topics.

Competitor blogs

One should not forget what competitors are writing about. In most cases, competitors have found easy way to rank their posts. You can copy the same strategy for your own blog by writing about them.

If you want to find competitors of your business, simply search your site-wide keywords and see who ranks on top.

Create questions through keywords

You can also create questions about a specific topic through keywords. One way to do this is by search new keywords through LSI tool. For example, for a fitness blog, an LSI keyword would be:

By running that keyword through LSI graph, we have found some more keywords.

Here are some possible topics that we can create.

What to punch if you don’t have a punching bag?

What are alternatives to boxing gloves?

What are wet punching bags?

Bottom-line

In short, guest posting is one of the best way to get higher rankings for your blog and therefore more traffic to your website. But you need to have a clear strategy in mind, and only then you can get better at it. I hope the tips in this blog will be of help to you and provide better ways to rank your blog in near-future.

If I have missed any tips, simply comment below and let me know.