With nearly 2 billion websites on the internet, making your brand stand out can be tough. Fortunately, innovative digital marketing strategies can help you. Read on to know more.
Introduction
Let us start with some certain truths.
Every brand website on digital wants to pursue digital marketing with the following aims or goals-
- Increasing the number of people coming to the website (traffic)
- Showing up higher than competitors on searches (SERPS- search engine rankings page)
- Improving the health and metrics of the website (Domain Authority, Domain Ranking, Alexa Rank, etc.)
- Exploring avenues of monetization from a brand website (Lead Generation and Sales Conversions)
- Build credibility and reputation of the brand through the website (Networking and Recommendations).
Every digital marketing strategy has as its goals the above stated five critical KPIs. Yes, you can add several others to the list, but these five are the top ones.
In order to achieve the above stated goals, brands pursue Search Engine Optimization of SEO, Social Media Marketing, Paid Advertising Campaigns on Google, and other strategies. These are referred to as headline strategies, meaning that they are frameworks under which, there are more specialised strategies.
One such strategy that can guarantee the five points stated at the outset is Guest Posting. In this article, we will look at why guest posting is one of the most sought after digital strategies in the world. However, before that, let us see what has made guest posting such an attractive proposition.
Why should Brands and Agencies pursue Guest Posting Strategies in 2019?
The digital offers infinite possibilities for businesses and brands to spread. When it comes to results and cost effectiveness, few avenues of marketing and advertising are as productive as digital. However, this attribute of digital along with its advantages is known by more than 2 billion websites.
When it comes to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing (SMM), most brands find the mediums to hit saturation levels. This is because there is increased competition amongst brands and agencies on both platforms. Doing traditional forms of digital marketing strategies are not going to show results anymore.
There are many updates and changes in algorithms that are made by search engines. Social media platforms also keep changing their algorithms routinely. The aim of Google is to show the most appropriate result for a search query. To this end, there have been several attempts to weed out bad practices and manipulations from websites.
Because of this Google has outdated many of them. On the other hand, increased competition has resulted in older strategies not showing the desired levels of ROIs. In order to get the most out of digital marketing, brands and agencies should look to pursue innovative and high ROI driven strategies like ‘Guest Posting’.
Guest Posting Services: Best Practices
1. Establish relations with Industry Authority Websites and Webmasters only-
If you want to purse guest posting on spammy sites, not only will you be inviting Google’s wrath, you will also not see any results from guest posting. You should always aim to do guest posting in sites, which have significant traffic and high metrics.
This will help you not only win more website traffic, but also appear to be a credible website in the eyes of Google. Google looks at links in authority sites as positive recommendations. This will help you improve your metrics, increase organic reach and climb the rankings.
This will also help you establish contacts, engage in networking and create an industry authority persona among relevant audiences.
2. Pursue Guest Posting only in your Industry Niche-
Google stipulates strict Quality Guidelines when it comes to digital marketing strategies. One such guideline is sharing your links in websites, which are related to your niche. Let me give you an example. If you are a manufacturer of kitchen equipment like Ovens, you can place your website links in the following type of websites-
- Cooking and Recipe oriented websites
- Home Décor and Improvement websites
- Mom, Children and Family related websites
- Tech and Gadget Review websites
As you can see, the above four categories are related to your industry, either directly, or indirectly. Always remember, that for Google, the aim is to add value to the information of another website’s traffic. Link building can never be your primary intention.
3. Engage in White Hat Guest Posting only-
Even though guest posting is such a great digital marketing strategy, it has often transgressed into being a black hat strategy. The only reason for this is that agencies are engaging in not prioritising quality content on related websites.
By posting website links anywhere and everywhere, resellers and scrupulous agencies are doing more harm than good. If you want to convert your guest posting into a truly white hat strategy, all you need to do is-
- Create content, which is long format, informative, useful and original.
- Work with established and reputed websites and webmasters.
Once you are able to take care of the above two points, you can be rest assured that your entire guest posting will be 100% white hat only.
4. Work with Expert and Professional Agencies-
Guest Posting is not a strategy for any novice to plan and execute flawlessly. From making the right kind of outreach, to negotiating on deliverable, the entire process is quite tough to say the least, This is where agencies which offer specialized guest blogging services can become real assets.
Not only are webmasters more comfortable working with agencies, they can also help you drive the prices down. In addition, you can also fix responsibilities and accountability in case something goes awry.
Conclusion
Guest Posting is a performance driven high ROI delivery digital marketing strategy. Most brands and agencies, which have seen results from it pursue it for extended periods. The correct guest posting strategy is difficult to plan, and far more difficult to execute.
However, if you are able to set up the basics in the right fashion possible, you will see your digital presence grow remarkably.
Do let me know what you thought about the article, in the comments section below. Feel free to add value and engage on the topic in a productive way.