Building link equity is an important factor when it comes to search rankings on Google. The more quality backlinks you include, the higher would be the chance of your content ranking at the top. In short, link building is a way to bring the audience to your website from another website. When your website is backlinked, it shows that your content is trusted and approved.
Did you know that guest blogging can be a powerful tool for building link equity? In this article, we will discuss how you can use guest blogging to strengthen your link building. Let’s dive right in:
Write Guest Blogs to Build Link Equity
One of the most effective strategies for getting valuable backlinks is to start contributing as a guest writer to external publications. This means that you can submit your work to be published on other websites. How does that help your website get traffic, you ask? Well, it’s not complicated at all. When you write for external publications or contribute as a guest writer on different websites, you have the option to link the content from your own website.
However, in order to be invited as a guest writer or to submit a successful proposal, you need to demonstrate your expertise. You need to be able to produce quality content that other publications feel happy to publish.
If you are just thinking of publishing a guest blog with the sole purpose of advertising your own content, then you are likely to not be successful. You need to produce value for the external publication just as much as the profit you seek for yourself. So, make sure that you actually do your research and submit a quality article or blog.
When you write excellent content as a guest writer, the audience of the publication would want to read more of your work. This way they will feel encouraged to check out all the backlinks you add to the guest blogs. As a result, you will have a new stream of audience for your website.
There are dozens of excellent publications that accept contributions from guest writers. Make sure that you submit your content to a variety of them, so you have a better chance of getting accepted. Once you have published for an exterior publication, you will get the credibility to publish on even bigger platforms.
Benefits of Using Guest Blogging for Building Link Equity
If you’re still not convinced of the benefits of guest blogging for building link equity, then we have some great points for you to consider here:
1. Establishes Credibility
Blogging is a way for you to answer the most pressing questions of your audience and cater to their needs. If you create valuable content through your blogs consistently, it will help establish you as an industry leader or authority in the eyes of your target audience.
Even if you write one valuable guest blog that helps clear the confusion of customers, you’ll have an audience for life. The key is to maintain that credibility. Once you establish yourself as an authority figure, it is easier to maintain and increase your reach by posting useful blogs consistently.
People trust businesses that share honest insights and valuable information with their customers. When you share information that actually helps your audience in some way, it will help establish your blogs and company as an authority figure. The key to achieving such a position in the industry is by providing helpful and accurate content that informs and encourages discussions. That is the easiest way to build yourself as a trusted brand.
2. Guest Blogging is Free (and you often get Paid)
Although guest blogging requires a consistent and thoughtful approach, it doesn’t require advertisements. This means that once you establish your credibility as a guest blogger, your own website and work will get attention automatically. Your only goal from that point onwards would be to make sure that your website retains and improves its rank by consistently providing great quality content.
This can be done by posting high-quality blogs regularly. For this, you can hire blog writing services for professional blog writers who can deliver high-quality content on a consistent basis. Regardless of your overall strategy, gaining recognition and traffic through guest blogging is free of charge at the end of the day.
3. Potential to Create a Community
If you want to benefit from the power of community, then guest blogging can help you do that. When you provide valuable information to your target audience as a guest blogger on a credible publication, they are more likely to trust you and your brand. Blogging is an excellent way to create and maintain a narrative about your services or products in the market and create a long-lasting relationship with your target audience and customers.
Moreover, blogs are also easily shareable, which means your social media campaign can greatly benefit from them. You can share your guest blogs on all your social media platforms. If you’re sharing content that your audience really likes, they will also share it on their own platforms, which will increase your reach even further.
Sharing blogs on social media is also an effective way to increase your website traffic. With this strategy, you can engage your audience and build a community around your posts. It will help you share insights from your company, and reach new and prospective customers. You’ll also get a better idea of how much traction your blog can bring to your social media accounts.
Other ways to Boost Link Building
Here are a few bonus tips for you to build link equity:
1. Top Referral Sources
The first thing that you need to do in order to build link equity and get more backlinks is to track the current ones that you’re getting. For that, you need to start looking at the top referral sources for your website. There must be a few websites that link to your content and give you the backlink.
Once you review what kind of websites are doing that, and which specific type of content is being backlinked the most, you’ll be able to identify the content that does well. When you have this information, it becomes easier to create similar content or publish about similar topics to gain even more backlinks.
Knowing your strengths is key to capitalizing on them. You can find out your referral sources by using Google’s Universal Analytics. All you need to do is open the “Acquisition” tab, then click “All Traffic,” and then choose “Referrals”. There are several WordPress plugins that provide you with easy-to-read reports on your referrals, so you can consider utilizing those as well.
2. Google Search Console Reports
Google Search Console reports are another excellent resource to find link-building opportunities for your content. It is a free tool that Google offers to keep track of your backlinks and also provides you with the necessary data to see what kind of websites are backlinking to your content.
Additionally, this report also offers valuable insights into possible opportunities for backlinking. The other amazing data that this tool offers includes a top linking sites report, which shows all the websites that have ever linked back to your website.
This will allow you to reach out to these platforms for more or continued collaborations. As these platforms have found your content valuable before, it would be easier to establish a partnership that sustains that for a longer period. You can also backlink their content and make this a collaborative project.
3. Study Your Competitors
Your competitors are another excellent resource for identifying possible link-building sources. You can ethically find out what their strategy has been to gain backlinks and implement them for your own website.
There is much to learn from competitors when it comes to SEO and backlinking strategies. You can learn from the kind of content they publish and the sources of their backlinks. Make sure you pay close attention to the competitors who seem to be doing especially well in terms of website traffic through backlinks. What are the strategies that they use? What kind of content are they publishing? Which type of outbound links are found within their content?
It is actually very easy to get access to the complete backlink profile of any website. SEMrush is an excellent tool that can provide you with this kind of data. All you need to do is enter your competitor’s website domain in the Backlink Analytics tool on SEMrush, and it will give you a comprehensive report. Make sure you analyze this report closely to understand where most of their traffic is coming from with respect to backlinks.
4. Outbound Links for Partnership Building
If you’re a new platform with no link building or referrals, then a great way for you to establish those partnerships is to use outbound links. You can link high-profile and credible websites to your own content when you’re publishing something that is similar to their niche. This way you’ll be sending your traffic to these websites.
Then, you can reach out to these platforms via email to offer a partnership opportunity or to just introduce yourself. If the other party agrees, you can proceed to use their website in your outbound links while they backlink to the content you produce. These partnerships can be short-term or go on as long-term collaborations. Once you have built that trust, it would be easier for you to get backlinking from other sources as well.
Final Thoughts
Building link equity with guest blogging has several benefits for your own content. As discussed above, you can widen your audience by capitalizing on the link-building opportunities offered by guest blogging.
Kistopher Langdon is a digital marketing specialist at Content Development Pros and has helped small businesses grow into household names. When he’s not busy curating content that sells, Kistopher Langdon can be found at the gym or watching Netflix. Feel free to send him all your questions about writing a letter of recommendation on the official website.