Most of the stuff you read online about guest blogging is BS! In this case study, I will show you just how I used guest blogging to grow a site’s search traffic by 342.35% in one year!

Whether it’s advice from someone who knows nothing about the subject, or it’s advice from someone not experienced enough when it comes to actually getting results from guest blogging; if you’re an individual or organization whose success depends on the quality and effectiveness of the guest posts you’re able to place, you can’t afford to make mistakes.

While there are several ways to leverage guest blogging, I’m a huge advocate of using guest blogging to increase your site’s search traffic. That is why, today, I’ll take you through a case study on how I used guest blogging to grow search traffic for one of my sites by 342.35% in just one year.

Before I get started, here are some things you should know…

• The guest blogging campaign was started on the 7th of October, 2011 and it took one week
• The site is in the fairly competitive writing niche
• Only 31 guest posts were written and placed on “fairly” authoritative blogs, mostly in niches other than writing
• The guest posts were written and submitted in one week – all the guest posts were published in less than 6 weeks
• The site in question was barely one year old when the campaign started
• All the guest posts used in this campaign were written for the purpose of link building, not traffic or anything else

With that said, let’s go straight into the results.

Case study: how I used guest blogging to grow a site’s search traffic

Search Engine Traffic before the Campaign

To put things in perspective, the first screenshot will show a week’s traffic – six months before the campaign:

 The above screenshot shows traffic for October 1, 2011 – October 8, 2011. That’s the search engine traffic chart for 8 days before the guest blogging campaign started.

There was a total of 2,567 search visitors within that 8-day period. That’s an average of 320 search visitors a day for the 8-day period.

I think this puts things in perspective as to how search traffic is performing before the campaign was started.

The next screenshot shows weekly traffic for a year before the campaign…

This is followed by screenshot for monthly traffic a year before the campaign…

While these screenshots are essentially the same, I believe they put things in perspective in regards to how much traffic the site is getting on a daily, weekly and monthly basis before the campaign.

Traffic after the Campaign

Since we now have an idea of how much traffic the website is getting before the campaign, let’s go straight into the screenshots that show how much traffic the site is getting after the campaign. This here is the real acid test of how I used guest blogging to grow a site’s search traffic.

The first screenshot shows the search engine traffic stats for the week of February 1 – 8, exactly 5 months after the campaign:

As revealed by the above screenshot, traffic has more than doubled just 5 months after the challenge. There was a total of 5,428 search visitors in the 8-day period reflected in the above screenshot.

That’s around 678 daily average search engine visitors just 5 months after the challenge. From 5 months before the campaign, that will be a gain of around 358 daily search engine visitors and a 211.87% increase in search traffic.

That seems impressive in just 5 months, from 31 guest posts written, submitted in only one week and published in less than 6 weeks. That traffic growth is significantly small compared to what happened a year after the campaign (as you will see from the two screenshots displayed below).

Weekly search traffic growth a year after the campaign…

Monthly search traffic growth a year after the campaign…

Note: The traffic drop in October for most of the screenshots is because I’m only capturing data for up to October 8, so the full month of traffic isn’t displayed.

If we take a look at the numbers, the site averaged a total of 139 search engine visitors a day a year before the campaign and an average of 477 search engine visitors a day a year after the campaign. That’s more like a 342% increase in search engine traffic in one year, using guest blogging alone and no other SEO tactic.

No other campaign was planned for search traffic growth or even SEO during the one year period indicated in the above screenshot. In another words, that 342% is largely thanks to those 31 guest posts written in one week.

Now take the fact that you have a sophisticated in-house content marketing team and your solid SEO in place, you can expect more results depending on the competitiveness of your niche.

Nonetheless, guest blogging can be the most effective way to build backlinks to your blog if done right. As you can see from only one blogger’s experience and how I used guest blogging to grow a site’s search traffic.

If I’m being honest, though, the above results is not typical. By using the service of a guest blogging professional like myself, you can increase the chances of your guest post being successful but let’s assume you only get half of the above results, it will still be impressive.

Furthermore, SEO or link building isn’t something you just do and forget, unlike what I did with the above site. It should be a continuous and on-going process as that’s the best way to get the most bang for your bucks.

How Much Can You Save in Advertising/Marketing on Link Building Cost?

Using the results of the site I showcased above, let’s take a look at how much you can save by focusing on guest blogging as a link building tactic (as opposed to just traditional advertising or link building):

If it costs $200 to place a quality guest post on a quality blog – the kind that brings you result – and you decide to do 20 guest posts in one month for 6 months. That’s $2,000 in one month and $12,000 in 6 months.

If you get a ROI of 200% in one year from your guest blogging efforts for a website that has a meager average 200 daily search engine visitors, that will be an average of 600 daily visitors in one year and an average of 219,000 visitors for the whole year.

The calculation goes something like this

$200 x 10 guest posts a month x 6 months = $12,000

200% search traffic increase x 200 daily search visitors x 365 days = 219,000 visitors

219,000 visitors a year since you started guest blogging – 73,000 = 146,000 additional search engine visitors

$12,000 in guest blogging cost / 146,000 additional search engine visitors as a result of guest blogging = $0.082 per visitors

$0.082; that’s how much you’d have paid for a visitor in one year. You can’t get such cheap advertising in any niche, with any quality traffic source.

Besides, we’re talking about search engine traffic that has been proven to be even more effective than PPC traffic.

Personally, I think – if guest blogging is done right – that beats any link building or advertising cost in any niche.

A Note of Caution

Actually, two notes of caution:

1. Guest blogging is becoming extremely competitive these days; while it’s still very effective, the above campaign was implemented a year ago and several Google updates have happened since then, meaning it’s more difficult to get results today. If the person in charge of your guest blogging campaign doesn’t know what he’s doing, you’re toast!

Besides, as you’d have noticed from the above traffic charts on traffic increase, traffic keeps growing to the above website every month; this means, if done right, you’ll get more value from your guest posts as time goes on.

2. Guest blogging takes time to get results. Depending on how many guest posts you’re able to place – the larger the better – you can start seeing results from anything from 2 weeks to a few months after you start your campaign. It’s not something you do today and get results today. In fact, no aspect of SEO works like that.

With that said, the best way to get results from guest blogging is by hiring a qualified expert to be in charge of your campaign. Even if you have a campaign in place already but are not sure you’re doing things right, hiring an expert to help you do a review or analysis of your strategy can prevent a lot of future troubles and accelerate your results.

The good news is I’m available for hire; no matter what you need when it comes to leveraging guest blogging to grow your business, I probably have a service for you.

The bad news is, this website was started as a challenge and my services will probably stop being available once this website is discontinued. In other words, you have a limited time to act if you’re interested in using my services.

Now you’ve seen how I used guest blogging to grow a site’s search traffic…

If you want to grow your business by using guest blogging, check out my services!

PS. The results displayed in this challenge is for a website with a content marketing plan in place – which publishes an average of 2 – 3 new content per week. The content published could have had an impact on the challenge as a whole, so having a content marketing plan in place will have great results if you’re to use my guest blogging services. You don’t have to worry, though, I can handle both content marketing and guest blogging for you if you wish.