Guest blogging is the well established content marketing and SEO practice of writing and publishing content on a website that is owned or operated by another individual or organisation. This content usually takes the form of a blog post or article
Guest blogging can be an effective means of increasing brand awareness with an established audience and to increase the chances of discovery through branded search queries.
Crucially to SEO, guest blogging also presents an opportunity for establishing high-quality backlinks, which can significantly aid SEO performance.
As search engines use ever more sophisticated algorithms to determine site rankings, it’s become increasingly important that guest blogs are well written, and are published only on relevant and genuine blogs or websites. It’s also become increasingly important to not overly optimise backlinks using guest blogging as a technique to build them.
In addition to improving SEO performance, guest blogging as a marketing tool can bring other tangible benefits. When carried out effectively, guest blogging can help establish the writer (and by association their business / brand) as a thought leader and authoritative voice in their industry, helping to foster positive professional relationships with others in the same field.
Authoritative publications will also have a strong social media presence and newsletter distribution, further boosting the exposure of the guest blogger.
Guest blogging is often confused with digital PR, which is the practice of creating comprehensive, unique and highly valuable content and then reaching out to third party publications, influencers and content aggregators in order to create a buzz around the content. Building backlinks to a website or webpage is rarely the priority of digital PR but it can often be the primary goal of guest blogging.