If you have been blogging for a while, you will have heard about guest blogging and how it is great for getting your name “out there” and driving new traffic your way.  But what is guest blogging and why is it beneficial to you?

What is Guest Blogging?

In a nutshell, guest blogging is when you write a post for someone else who has a blog in your niche.  In exchange for writing the post you would expect a byline and a link back to your blog.

It is a good idea to contact successful bloggers in your niche as the link juice is going to be more respected.  Those blogs will also have a higher following, which means more potential readers to come your way.

There is no right or wrong answer as to how often you should contribute to guest blogging, but the more you do it, the more links you will obtain and the higher credibility you will obtain as a writer.

What are the benefits of guest blogging?

You may well ask why put in the effort to write a great post only to put it on someone else’s blog. After all….when you guest post, you still have to keep up the blogging schedule on your own blog!  There are however a few great benefits of guest blogging as follows:

1) The guest post will provide that all important link back to your site which will help with SEO.  If you are successful in achieving guest blogging on some high and relevant ranked blogs in your niche, the links pointing back to your site could elevate your own site’s status.  It’s worth it for that alone don’t you think?  Be careful about the anchor text in which you choose!

2) Every time you write a guest post for another blog, your are exposing yourself to a whole new audience of readers.  If you play your cards right, those readers could in turn become your new readers, followers and subscribers.  All of this in turn creates more social sharing of your posts and added exposure.

3) Guest blogging will ultimately help to get your name “out there”.  The more quality posts that your produce, the more authority you build for yourself and in turn the more networking opportunities you create.

How do you go about guest blogging?

So you may be keen to get started with guest blogging, but now have no idea how to go about it.  This is going to take a bit of courage when starting out, but the more you do it the easier it will become.  Simply approach some other bloggers through the contact page on their site (or a write for me page if they have one) and offer up a guest post.  Some blogs already have submission guidelines clearly displayed on their blog, but if not, ask for them to be sent to you.  If you are serious about having a post published on their blog, then make sure you follow the submission guidelines….strictly!!!!

Certainly not all posts you write are going to receive a rave review and not all of them are going to be accepted. Take the feedback and plough this into your next post.

A good piece of advice is to ensure that you are not being overly promotional in the post.  Of course you want readers to know how they can find “you”, but a post that is all about your blog is very unlikely to get very far in guest blogging.

Take the time to really read the style of the blog you would like to post on and the type of information that is being offered.  Guest posts are more likely to be accepted if it is relevant to the target audience and fits in with the overall style of the blog.

Should you accept guest blogging from others?

The other side of the coin is accepting guest submissions on your own blog.  This is definitely a great thing to consider,  but first of all you need to think about what your submission guidelines are going to be.  Before you accept a guest post, you need to ensure that the content is going to be valuable to your readers.

One of the great advantages of having a guest post on your site, is that the writer will likely invite their followers to check out the post.  This could in turn bring you repeated followers who would otherwise not have known about you.

If the post is not going to be perceived negatively by your readers, then it is definitely a way of gaining new traffic to your site and contributing to your overall online presence.

Have you undertaken any guest blogging.  Did you find this beneficial and do you have any tips that you would like to share?  We would love to hear your comments below.