This is the definitive article answering  the question once and for all, ‘What is guest blogging?’. Guest blogging is the process of writing an article for a blog, as a guest author, with the aim of building relationships and getting exposure as it relates to: traffic, brand recognition or backlinks building.

Sometimes what you require is just one of the above, and at other times you want more.

In most cases, a guest post is written on another blog by a one-off author (i.e – not a regular contributor) and often with the aim of enjoying any of the above benefits.

To help you better understand how guest blogging works, this article will share a few benefits of guest blogging as well as an anatomy of a perfect guest post – all with screenshots and examples.

Benefits of Guest Blogging

Here’s a summary of some of the main benefits you can enjoy by guest blogging:

1. Traffic: This is often the number one reason why most people guest post. Depending on your blog, the quality of your guest post and the blog you’re writing a guest post for, you can get anything from a few visitors to hundreds of thousands of visitors from a single guest post.

My highest performing guest post to date has resulted in almost 2,000 visitors.

2. Exposure: Guest blogging is often used for more than just traffic. It can be much more powerful with the right strategy in place.

Major brands or individuals can benefit by writing guest posts for the purpose of gaining exposure. Imagine what happens if your guest post was to appear on at least 5 different but relevant blogs every day for up to a month. If all the blogs you appear on are in the right niche, even if your guest post doesn’t result in a lot of traffic, thousands of people will have seen your name and become aware of you.

Not only will you become widely-known in your niche, but the trust associated with most of the blogs you appeared on will be reflected on you and you’ll become more credible as a result.

That’s why it is important to select your blogs wisely when guest blogging.

3. Backlinks: This is what most people use guest blogging for today, but it’s much more powerful than that.

Guest blogging can be very powerful for building backlinks. In fact, by creating a one-month guest blogging campaign and waiting for a few months, I noticed an increase in search engine traffic of up to 60,000 visitors in a 6 month period.

If done well, guest blogging for backlinks can be very powerful.

It’s important to note that guest blogging for backlinks is just as dangerous as it’s powerful, so hiring a guest blogging consultant to help you with your campaign can be of significant impact.

4. Domain Authority: When it comes to building a strong SEO presence and growing in the SERPs, you don’t just want to limit your effort to promoting a few pages.

Domain authority isn’t only important, it’s critical. Guest blogging can help you build a strong authority for your root domain. Not only will this make your internal link building efforts more powerful, but the chance of each new content you write getting ranked well increases.

By building your domain authority, you don’t have to market every single content you write before they get ranked well in the search engines.

5. Build a Strong Subscriber Base: Sometimes you want more than just traffic. You want a strong subscriber base, and guest blogging is one of the best ways to build this subscriber base.

I’ve noticed traffic from guest blogging to be high-converting when done right. In fact, some of my guest posts have resulted in hundreds of email subscribers.

6. Get Feedback: If you want to test an idea for a product or you want to get feedback on your writing, a great way to do this is by writing a guest post for a bigger blog in your niche.

Since those reading the guest post aren’t your fans, (yet) they’ll be more honest in their feedback. This can help you improve significantly.

The Anatomy of a Perfect Guest Post

What is guest blogging as it relates to anatomy? What does a perfect guest post consist of? What is it made up of? In this section, I’ll be taking a screenshot of what I think is a perfect guest post on a successful blog. I’ll be highlighting elements of it and what I think about them.

This will not only give you an idea of what a guest post looks like, it’ll also help you learn to write your guest post in a way that gets great results.

If you take a look at the above screenshot, you’ll notice that I highlighted 3 things:

What is guest blogging: the critical aspects

1. Links to the guest author’s blog: The 4 numbered links in the first box cite examples on the guest author’s blog. This can be very powerful in driving traffic back to a guest blogger’s site.

2. The second marking on the screenshot shows the word “guest post” underlined; the keyword links to an article on the guest author’s blog and that can be very powerful in helping that content rank for the keyword “guest post” and a host of similar keywords.

3. The author bio: The last box in the screenshot shows the author’s bio. Every guest post should have an author bio; this presents you with an opportunity to introduce yourself to the audience of the host blogger after they’ve read your guest post, as well as an opportunity to use your desired anchor texts to link back to your blog.

The above are 3 notable things I highlighted. I highlighted them because they are features a guest post should have that general articles on your blog might not have.

There are a lot of other factors that make the above referenced guest post very successful, so when you think about the question, ‘What is guest blogging’, think carefully about the aspects I’ve identified within the post above.

1. It’s great content. If your content is poor, the benefits are meager. If it’s great however, the benefit will be significant. You’ll notice that this particular guest post was well accepted in that it has hundreds of social shares.

2. It has a great title. No matter how great your content is, your title will introduce it to the audience you’re writing for so make sure your guest posts always have great titles.

3. It is properly formatted. This guest post is an example of a well-formatted guest post; in the form of numberings, links to other websites and articles on the host blog, properly formatted headings and sub-headings.

4. It is instructive. Not all guest posts have to be instructive, but it can be a plus if your guest post is. The above referenced guest post is both practical and instructive. You’ll notice examples are included when necessary, a screenshot is included earlier in the article to demonstrate the power of videos – the subject of the article – and 3 different videos are included as an example to back up each point. This is an example of the perfect guest post!

With a guest post like the one referenced above, it’s impossible to go wrong.

Get Consulting!

The thing about guest blogging today is that it’s so overused to a point where it isn’t as effective as it used to be. Without the right guest post – in terms of content and approach – you won’t be able to go far.

If you’re interested in a guest blogging expert to help you with marketing, or in a consultant who can help you develop a strategy, you should check out my services.