Guest blogging is something that has been around for awhile but misunderstood by many. What is the benefit of blogging on someone else's site or inviting someone to blog on yours? And does Google approve of this?
Listen in as I give you my own perspective on the topic, and why you'll want to think a little more strategically about guest blogging going forward.
The resource that I mention in the episode, my newest free book, The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging: The Most Effective Link Building Strategy, can be downloaded here:
https://nealschaffer.com/guest-blogging-guide/
Key Highlights
[03:07] My First Guest Blogger
[05:54] The Power of Guest Blogging
[06:33] Why Relevance is Important
[07:30] Guest Blogging Survey Statistics
[08:27] My Newest Ebook: The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging
[09:20] Relationship Building With Those that Have Influence
[10:35] Example of an Influence
[12:51] Influence of Blogs or Blogging
[14:36] How Guest Blogging Can Nurture Positive Relationship
[15:37] Best Practice for Linking Out
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
Guest blogging is something that has been around for awhile but misunderstood by many. What is the benefit of blogging on someone else's site or inviting someone to blog on yours? And does Google approve of this?
Listen in as I give you my own perspective on the topic, and why you'll want to think a little more strategically about guest blogging going forward.
The resource that I mention in the episode, my newest free book, The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging: The Most Effective Link Building Strategy, can be downloaded here:
https://nealschaffer.com/guest-blogging-guide/
Key Highlights
[03:07] My First Guest Blogger
[05:54] The Power of Guest Blogging
[06:33] Why Relevance is Important
[07:30] Guest Blogging Survey Statistics
[08:27] My Newest Ebook: The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging
[09:20] Relationship Building With Those that Have Influence
[10:35] Example of an Influence
[12:51] Influence of Blogs or Blogging
[14:36] How Guest Blogging Can Nurture Positive Relationship
[15:37] Best Practice for Linking Out
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
guest blogging, maybe you've heard about it, you've seen other people publish guest blog posts and other people's or company's blogs. Maybe if you are a company with a blog or you yourself are a blogger, you've had people reach out to you as well requesting Hey, can I write a guest blog post for your site? What is the ultimate value of guest blogging, both from the recipient as well as the sender side? That is going to be the topic of how guest blogging can benefit your business in many ways that you might not have thought about in this episode of The your digital marketing coach, podcast. Digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick talking LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got, Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer. Everybody, Neal Schaffer here, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to another episode of the same name, blogging, we all know that blogging requires a lot of work in order to be able to consistently publish a blog, as well as to be able to reap the business benefits, including the SEO benefits of said blog. And we also know that search engine optimization is hard as well. Well, what if there was something out there that could actually help us with both, and that is sort of a prequel to today's talk on guest blogging. Now, before I even start, there is a lot of information out there about guest blogging, that it is a tactic that might have worked a decade ago. But Google said guest blogging offers no value to your search engine optimization. There's some people who think guest blogs are spam, they're low quality. There's a lot of various talk out there. And I almost think in a different way, when I wrote the age of influence, I thought that marketers were just misunderstanding influencer marketing in a similar way was there was a lot of talk out there. It's all fake. It's all vanity metrics. And I sort of feel the same way for guest blogging because I see a lot of negative things about it in the blogosphere, yet I know how impactful can be. And I know a number of people that are having success with SEO and really business are leveraging it as well. And that's where I find the delta of opportunity to be able to create some content to help you on your digital marketing journey. So let's get started with my remembering when a blogger reached out to me, way back in 2009, when my current Neal schaffer.com site was known as windmill networking. So I was not necessarily looking for guest bloggers at the time. It was my own personal blog for my own personal website, windmill networking calm, I had just published or prepared to publish windmill networking, understanding and leveraging and maximizing LinkedIn, my very first book back in 2009, but I had someone reach out to me, and she wanted to share her views on nonprofit social media marketing with my audience. Now, I did not have expertise in that space. And I thought it would be unnatural when when my being able to publish more content for my audience, provide them more value in exchange for her being able to access my platform, and be able to reach my community with her content. I also thought that having multiple perspectives and all things social media and social media marketing would add so much value that when I rebranded my website into becoming maximize social business, for those that might remember, I recruited more guest bloggers to share their perspectives on a wide variety of social media related topics. At one point, I think I had close to 20 guest bloggers, and each of them that were blogging either every other month or every month. So over time, being able to offer these multiple perspectives and with each blogger, becoming an advocate of my blog, and sharing my published content with their own communities, undoubtedly lead to more website traffic and backlinks which fueled high search engine rankings for some of my content at the time. I had people like Peggy It's Patrick, social media author who did the social media for Guy Kawasaki. I've had Mark Traphagen, who is one of those leading SEO gurus out there. Rebecca DESE, I've had a number of pretty famous people, famous bloggers that have blogged my site. And with each one of those contributions, it has added a lot of value in a variety of ways. So this was where I first witnessed the power of guest blogging and looking back. I almost think that I literally built my blog on guest blogging, both accepting posts, and I blogged elsewhere as well. I blogged on social media today, a blog and customer think of contributing to business.com guest blog and a number of sites over the last decade, and I still have guest contributors today. And I am not alone in realizing its benefits. In fact, according to sem rush, my favorite SEO tool is going to give them a shout out. Guest Blogging is the single most important way to build links, and getting links to your content or to your website is one of the most important things you can do to improve the SEO of your website. Search engines take notice when there is linkage between one website and another. So yes, guest blogging when done, right. Okay. It's not always done, right. And there are some people in digital marketing and or SEO, who think just getting a link from anyone, and everyone is great. And when Google sees that you've created very, very artificial looking links, you can get penalized. I actually had a guest blogger reach out to me, very recently, like this week, who said me, Oh, can you please delete the links from this post, and even the mention of my company from the post, because they were penalized. And I look back, and it's a company that really is not related to what I talk about really not related to the blog post either. And that's why relevance is so important. And you know, there's a lot more I can go into this, I'll stop there. But for me, relevance is the ultimate. And when I bring on a guest blog, or when I guess, blog myself, that is the number one thing I look for, they don't have to necessarily have the highest domain authority or authority in Google's eyes. But if they're extremely relevant to my audience, and the content is extremely relevant to my website, that's when there is a match made in heaven. So here's another survey I want to share with you, because of all its benefits, and majority of bloggers surveyed are guest blogging. And the number is usually guest blogging is 9.3%. Sometimes guest blogging is 56.2%. That's where I would be, and then never is 34.5. So two thirds of bloggers roughly, according to the survey, it comes from orbit media, we'll put the link. In fact, I'll tell you how to get all these links and all this content shortly. But that comes from Andy Kristina orbit media, one of the authorities on every year, he doesn't survey bloggers, and that data really does become an authoritative, authoritative snapshot of what the industry is like. So guest blogging is often misunderstood or gets a bad rap for a variety of reasons, as I talked about, I want you to understand the value of guest blogging, so that you can decide if and how to make it work for your business. That is why I am really excited to announce today on this podcast, my newest ebook, yay, the definitive guide to guest blogging, the most effective link building strategy. So I wrote this ebook, and it's completely free. The link will be in the show notes, you can always go to Neal schaffer.com/freebies. To get access to it. If you go to Neal schaffer.com, you'll see the freebies menu at the top. If you want to get direct access, you can go to Neal schaffer.com/guest-blogging-guide. But I want to give you like everything else that I do. It's all about the holistic perspective. So what I'm talking about here only touches on some of the many benefits of guest blogging from SEO to something that I thought about when I wrote the age of influence, which is relationship building with those that have influence. Influence is not defined by how many followers you have on Instagram influence is equally defined by how many followers you have on YouTube, or what is the domain authority of your website, or how many podcast downloads you get per episode. It is everywhere across digital media. So in addition, in this ebook, I discuss not only what guest blogging is and how to implement it both as a poster and a host. But I also provide you some tools recommendations to help along the way. So I want you to think about guest blogging with an influencer marketing meets digital first approach. As I just content websites who already have a high domain authority or are receiving lots of traffic in your industry are as if not more influential as influencers on various social media platforms are treating these entities with the same respect you would give an influencer will provide you the right mindset to best leverage everything that I'm discussing in this guide. Now, I just basically read to you the introduction to this new ebook that I wrote, in my own words, but I think that was just the best way to touch upon the subject. And I'll give you an example. You know about influence, I had a fractional cmo a pre sales call the other day, and if and if you're interested in my fractional cmo service, go to Neal schaffer.com/cmo, there's a form there. And once you fill out the form, we can schedule some time together. And we can decide if we're a fit together, we're, and we get a software fit or not. But they were saying that they wanted to reach out to influencers. And they're going yeah, you know, someone posts us on Facebook, and they have a 10,000 followers, and they get 500, clicks and Ziggo. Social media does not work that way. organic clicks are the hardest things to get. Now, for me, I am a verified Twitter account, I have 223,000, whatever followers, I published a lot of content, I published a lot of legs, yes, I do get clicks. But I'm not getting 500 clicks on a single link. And that's with over 200,000 followers. So if you do the math, we know that the organic reach on platforms is low link content is the lowest only like Twitter and Pinterest, still give and maybe LinkedIn for some give relatively high reach for organic content. But if organic content reaches 0.1%, zero point something percent, and then getting someone to like it is one thing, getting someone to comment on it as another thing, but getting someone to click on it is one of the smallest amounts of engagement you get per post, you need a heck of a lot of followers at a really, really high average engagement rate to be able to get that amount of clicks. Now, what if it is a website though, they don't have 200,000 followers on Twitter, but they get 200,000 visitors per month. So every time they publish a new blog post, they're getting a few 1000 People that are automatically seen it. And then over time with search engine optimization, that number goes higher and higher over time. It's not lost in the social media feed, right? That content might live on for a long time. And then we begin to do the math. Well, we'll 1% 2% click on that link maybe. And then you begin to see the math that huh? blogs or bloggers have tremendous influence, especially when we talk about the clickability. But it's for brand awareness as well. It's for mentions in that blog. And then when you understand above and beyond that value of being able to work with an influencer, that long term SEO value that it's generating a link back to your website. And you can be very strategic, as to where you want to link to one of the case studies in this ebook, is how someone literally built a huge email list. Because when they guest blog and other blogs, they strategically created their bio, and the content and say, Hey, if you want to find out more, click here to download this free ebook. So there's a lot of different ways we can look at guest blogging. But I want you to promise me one thing, whatever you've heard about guest blogging, just ignore it for now. And it was the same thing that I asked when I wrote the age of influence, whatever you've heard about influencer marketing, forget about it for now. Because guest blogging is for real. I have so many people reach out to me for guest blogging, I only accept very few. And the very few that I accept, right, damn good content. And I'm able to structure it in a way that they write the content that I would want to write, but I don't have the time to do. So yes, they get a backlink back, I'm more than happy to give them a backlink back to their website in exchange for writing really, really great content. And does Google know that? Yes, this is a guest blogger and therefore, they were able to get the backlink because they were getting Yeah, sure they know that. But guess what? Life business, it's about who you know. So at least they have that backlink versus their competitors who don't. And the mere existence of that is a positive that they have the relationship. It's all about relationships. And I'm, I'm really excited to progress a little bit further on my upcoming book, which is this relationship central perspective on digital marketing? Because that's what this is as well. And I think back I'm gonna give a shout at the Tim's strategy.com I don't even know if the website still exists. But Tim Tyrell Smith agree A blogger good friend of mine here in Orange County, another marketer, he was really into brand marketing. And he when he was in transition back in 2008 2009, wrote a great blog for really helping people with their job search. And because I knew him, I was writing a blog post about LinkedIn and job search. I went out of my way to link to his blog. He didn't ask me to do a piece of friend. Right. And so I wanted to link to his blog. And is Google gonna say, Oh, well, you're friends with Tim Tyrell Smith. And when you link to him, that link doesn't count for anything. No, they don't know that. There's no way they could know that. And therefore, when I have friends in digital marketing, who also have blogs, and we have a great relationship, I want to go out of my way to link to them. Because guess what, when you link out to content, it's also good for SEO, because you're becoming a resource for the internet. So if I'm going to link out, because it's the best practice, and with every link, I want to educate my audience more about that anchor text, whatever it is, I'd rather link out to someone that I like know, and trust, right. And that's where the relationship building the influence and marketing aspect really kicks in, and can be really, really powerful. Once you understand it. I hope that this episode has been very intriguing. I always try to find a different angle, a different approach and a holistic perspective, to find underserved areas in digital social media marketing, where I believe educating you can have the biggest impact. It's what I did with the age of influence. It's also why my last freebie or lead magnet or ebook was on email marketing, which you can also find on that freebies page. It's also Neal schaffer.com/email-marketing-guide. Because they're undervalued. No one, everyone's talking about tick tock, or everyone's talking about something else. And, you know, it's almost like, let's look at the scoreboard, what is impactful? What works today. And that is what this podcast is all about. I also want to let you know, for those of you that have been longtime listeners, thank you, if you're a new listener, make sure you hit the subscribe button. But my mother passed away on January 3, and I fell, as you can imagine a little bit behind in my podcast recording. But one of the promises I made to myself was that every year, I'm going to publish 50 episodes, I'm going to show up, I'm going to do it weekly. And there might be a week or two where I'm on vacation or what have you. But I'm going to publish 50 episodes a year. So even though I was behind, and they were several weeks where I publish no episodes, I put together my calendar, and it's going to be half solo half interview. And with this week, I'm really happy to announce that I've caught up now for those of you that enjoyed the twice a week episodes, I'm sorry. But I do believe that for content creation. If you publish things too frequently, in general, there is a tendency for the quality to not be at its optimal. It doesn't happen all the time. But it can happen because we're human. So that's why, for me, the weekly pace is a great pace. It allows me to really look forward to each recording versus twice a week not to say I don't look forward to virtually chatting with you because I do but I think you get the picture. So I'm really happy to be able to get back to that, quote unquote, normal cadence. So be on the lookout, I do hope to stick to a Thursday schedule. So be on the lookout. Every Thursday morning, I'll be showing up either solo or with my guest. And I continue to serve you and try to find other areas where I think this podcast versus other podcasts can make impact because that's on your digital marketing coach, right? I want to give you actionable, tactical, impactful advice. And if it's not that Then what am I doing? You know, I spent a lot of time in Japan in concert area of Japan. And the content areas were Osaka is in Osaka, sort of famous to the really, really famous line that says if an eight delicious and an eight cheap in a Osaka and that's sort of my goal for this podcast, right? If it's not actionable, actionable, if it's not insightful, if it's not tangible, then it ain't that your digital marketing coach podcasts like that ain't Neal Schaffer, because that's what my brand is about. That's what that's what I am about. So thank you for listening to my rant for today. And for the week, I suppose. I look forward to continuing to serve you. Once again. If you're new here, I do hope you'll hit that subscribe button. And if there is a topic, whether it is a more deep dive into that topic with like an ebook. And right now I do have free books available for LinkedIn for influencer marketing for digital marketing and social media marketing tools for email marketing, and now guest blogging and guest blogging does sort of intersect blogging and SEO. So I am increasing the number of ebooks that I have available for you. But if there's a topic you want me to write about, or you want me to talk about in Episode of your digital marketing coach. Or maybe it's like Neal, why don't you interview me? Reach out to me? Go to Neal schaffer.com/contact Fill out the form, or just email me. Neal at Neal schaffer.com or hit me up on social media. Either way, I'm the real Neil. Neal Schaffer everywhere. You can find me. Alright everybody. That's it for another episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer, signing off and reminding you to keep your eyes on the goal. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes, and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog post that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.