How Guest Posting Can Help You Grow Your Online Audience

Google’s former head of web spam Matt Cutts once said that guest blog posting was dead, because of how much people were abusing the practice. But is it still?

If you've been wondering about the effectiveness of guest posting today, I'll have you know that guest blog posting isn't dead. While a quick search on Google will serve up a slew of articles supporting the "guest posting is dead" notion, the reality may be different.  

Most of those who say guest blog posting is dead reference Matt Cutts' 2014 blog post, who may have simply been paying lip service to his paymaster (Google). Matt has since left Google and may not hold the same view today.

The point is, guest blogging, or simply guest posting, works tremendously well, IF you use it properly. And the benefits of guest blog posting are many, too.

Benefits of Guest Blogging for Audience Growth

If you're thinking of taking up guest blog posting as a part of your marketing strategies, it can bring some awesome benefits for your business and brand. Here are some of the main benefits of guest blogging?

1. Drives Huge Amounts of Website Traffic

Guest posting is an incredibly potent tool for driving traffic to your website. In fact, it's one of the best inbound marketing strategies in the world as it produces exponential returns on investment.

This is particularly more effective when you publish on high profile websites with a lot of traffic. It's also incredibly cheap. In fact, done right, it won't cost you a dime in cash. Only time equity.

You'll need to spend a lot of time finding the best sites for your guest posts, reach out to them and pitch titles. After which you'll then write the content, send to them, and if they approve, they'll publish on their blogs.

But you probably already knew all these. However, if you don't want to do all the heavy lifting, you can always outsource the entire process or hire a virtual assistant and writers to help with the bulk of the tasks.  

Now, the key to guest posting for traffic is volume. One guest post won't cut it. You need to do it many times on dozens of websites. Do this for long enough, and the traffic volume trickling in from many of these sites start to add up. Before you know it, those "messengers" will start generating lots of referral traffic to your website. 

This is why you should also think of guest posting as a long-term traffic generation strategy. 

2. Positions You As an Authority in Your Field/Niche

The shortest cut to becoming a thought leader in your industry is by publishing lots of articles on leading websites. With consistent, repeat exposure to your content, readers will start viewing you as an authority. 

And once people feel that they can trust you, they'll start following you instead of your competition. Many will start visiting your website more frequently to get even more informed. Others will start sharing your content with their friends and family. All these add up to positioning you as an expert. 

The good thing about being an expert is people start to trust you and your brand. once you have this credibility, it's often hard for people to not want to recommend your content to others or drink from your fountain of wisdom.

Of course, with this new position comes extra perks like paid speaking gigs, increased revenue from increased sales, podcasting interviews, and industry relevance. 

3. Boosts Search Engine Visibility

Of the many benefits of guest posting, this ranks high. Guest posting helps you get backlinks from trusted sites. Every time you leave a link pointing to your site in your author bio, you get something called a backlink.

Backlinks are an important search engine ranking metric. This means that your website will start getting pushed up the search engine rankings for target keyword terms.

If you do this for long enough and gain a sizable quantity of high-quality backlinks, you'll soon find your website getting on the first page of Google and other search engines. 

So, when people carry out a search that's related to your keyword, the search engines will serve up your website as a good resource. Higher search engine visibility often translates to increased traffic, more revenue and boosts profits. 

4. Increases Brand Exposure

If you want increased brand exposure without paying a small fortune in paid advertising, guest posting is perfect. In fact, if you're just starting a new blog, this is how to start getting the big dogs to recognize you. 

New blogs are hard to grow, much less make money from. If you need help, guest posting can work, along with other techniques. The good news is with consistent posting on popular and relevant websites, your brand will gain more exposure. 

People will learn about your business. And if you craft your posts compellingly, they'll be curious enough to want to see who you are and what you do. What I recommend is overwhelm them with valuable content. The more content you push the merrier, really. 

People have built six and seven figure business using guest posting as a key marketing tool. You can too, but you'll need to put in the work. Publish as much and as frequently as possible. 

It's not impossible to publish a new article every day on popular websites. The idea is to get so much content out there that people see mentions of your brand everywhere they go. 

This will force them to take note of your business and check you out. Do a good job on your website too, and you'll most likely find your business growing in leaps and bounds. 

5. There's No Limit to Its Effectiveness

Ultimately, apart from all the aforementioned benefits, guest posting can also help with growing your network in the industry, guarantees repeat exposure, and promotes long term relationships.

Combine guest posting with other marketing methods like email list building, and you'll soon have a sustainable business that grows and serves you for years and years to come.