The benefits of guest blogging: Why should you guest blog?

How much do you spend for PPC/CPM ads? How much do you need to spend on Facebook ads, Stumbleupon ads and any kind of targeted traffic generation media?

But think about guest blogging. It is FREE advertising and you advertise your blog/online business on some big blog in your niche.

You’re indeed stealing your competitor’s traffic and use his/her traffic to build your authority. How good is that?

Guest blogging helps you spread out

What happens when you publish post after post in your own blog?

If your blog has a handful of readers, then, nothing surprising would ever happen except that this handful of well-wishing readers keep coming back as a sign good will.

But if you publish one out of 10 posts (that you publish on your own blog) on a bigger blog in your niche, your name/brand gets out there easily!

And when you have from 5-10 guest posts on recognised blogs, 5 times more people will already know about you.

Guest posting helps you build relationships and earns you fans

Seriously! This point is a hit in my diary.

If I had done nothing but publish posts on my own blog, I wouldn’t have met all the nice people I know now.

Some are my blogging pals now, supporting me all the way to success. Some are my fans and super fans, who read my content, share my content and follow me religiously.

Some are my religious customers; they are fond of the stuff I offer and so on.

If I hadn’t published guest posts, I wouldn’t have made so much valuable connections in so little time.

Guest blogging makes you a better writer

When you guest post...

(i) You write to fit different styles

When you guest post on a different blog, you write for a totally different group of people.

The niche might be the same and you may also write on a similar topic as the host blogger.

However, the readers of the host blog are used to a completely different style of writing. Your guest post should fit in there.

For this purpose, you need not change your own voice and style, though. However your style has to be compatible with that of the host blog.

(ii) You are extra careful with grammar

You surely do check grammar when you write a blog post for your blog. But how do you check for grammar when you write a guest post?

Well, I have a tab with Cambridge Dictionaries Online open when I write a guest post.

I mean, I am more cautious about grammar mistakes when writing a guest post when compared to writing on my own blog.

I am not saying that you can publish crap on your blog, but you see with extra-careful eyes for grammatical errors when you write for others.

It is like how you behave at your own house and how you behave when you are a guest at someone’s house.

(iii) You write with a set of rules on hand!

When you write guest posts you are normally given guest blogging guidelines – A set of rules provided by the host blogger.

Your article should be written in such a way that it complies with those guidelines, in order to be accepted.

This means that you are writing with some constraints on hand.

And, sometimes the rules can influence your writing pattern, style, the length and the quality of the post (the information in it).

Guidelines give you an idea about the styles and the quality, thus you are not left hand-cuffed in a forest.

You are free to write out your ideas and thoughts, but still you have to follow a guideline; the important point is that the guideline is not set by you but by someone else.

This is great for your writing.

(iv) You become more accountable

Again, just like grammar checking, you are extra careful about the information you share in the guest post.

Things like the information you share, the images you use, the ideas and everything in that guest post have to be unique, original and have to be written by you.

You cannot do a copyright infringement of the information and the items in use.

Further you cannot use the information anywhere else; the guest article is only for that particular website to which you wrote it for.

If you intend to use it, you can quote a part of the idea with appropriate reference to the original content.

(v) Extensive research

Guest posts are usually longer than the average posts you write on your blog.

For the extra length you just cannot blabber space filling words or sentences. You have to provide in-depth information.

You therefore do an extensive research for writing a guest post. You take extra time and provide as much information as possible.

Link building (this is not what you think!)

I must put more emphasize on this factor when it comes to guest blogging.

OK there are very many ways in which you can build backlinks to your blog – both white hat and black hat. Considering only the white hat techniques, there are still lots of ways to build links.

Some other ways include, article marketing, setting up link wheel(s), forum posting, link exchange (footer, blogroll etc.) and so on.

Now, not every backlink is equal and Google pays attention to what is called the quality of a backlink.

Let’s take article marketing for instance.

There are softwares at our dispense which help us to write one article (let’s say excellent quality article) plug it in a software to create 100 unique copies of it and plug it in another software which will automatically submit our 100 articles to 100 different article directories to earn us 100 backlinks in…. may be 10 minutes to an hour, at the maximum.

This is littering the internet with same piece of content!

Similarly you can go on with link exchange or pay 100 webmasters to put your links in 100 different Blogrolls or Footer or Featured links.

Now while all these are counted as links, their quality, according to Google, is in question.

Google has undergone multiple updates (the Pandas) and many websites who’s rankings were soaring high got a big slap and were washed out of the SERPs. Why?

It is because of Google’s perspective on backlinks – Google is not anymore with quantity only but weighs quality more than that. So what are quality links?

So if you’re the one who says, “I don’t have the time or guts or interest to write guest posts. Link building via guest blogging is a tedious and time consuming process. I’d rather go with other easy and lighter methods”, then you might want to think again!

Guest blogging opportunities are everywhere. You just have to grab them!