Dottourism.com

Guest blogging – building your online presence

16 January 2012 | Kate Waite

Two key elements of search engine optimisation is that firstly content is king, and secondly people need to link to your content. Developing a relationship with bloggers is mutually beneficial and can help you achieve both linking and content development goals.

The need for new content

It is vital to keep developing the content on your site, adding new, relevant material. At the start of November Google announced that they had released a new “freshness” update impacting around 35% of searches, prioritising recent and new content. Much of the content that gets prioritised revolves around news or events and it underlines the need to be current and up-to-date with fresh content on your site.

What is guest blogging?

Guest blogging offers the ideal opportunity to increase relevant content on your site. It is a mutually beneficial relationship whereby the publisher gains content and link referrals and the author gets prominence and back links from another site.

There are two main ways you can approach this:

1. Post exchange – You exchange posts with each other, so the blogger will send you an article, for example a personal account on a recent trip they have taken which relates to your destination and in return they will host on their blog an article by you, for example a travel guide to the destination you cover. Both articles credit the author and link back to each other’s site. You both get new content and links.
2. Content supply – You ask the guest blogger to provide you with some content relevant to your site, which you publish, credited to them. You may in exchange ask that they promote the content they have written on their blog and to their social media audience. In this instance you get some content and inbound link, and they get the promotion on your site.

The real benefits of guest blogging

Engaging and working with bloggers is a great thing to do on many levels. It can help you raise your profile and reputation amongst the community but the real benefit comes from the search engine optimisation bonus that can arise from a good, sustained guest blogging campaign.

Aside from the benefit of lots of lovely fresh content for your site, you will be developing a strong link profile, and the guest blogging back link is one of the best types to pursue.

Firstly, it will be highly relevant to what you do. If it is on a page with the content you have written then you can ensure that the page is highly relevant to the link you are benefitting from. As the page will most likely be a blog or news style page there are unlikely to be vast quantities of other links (as opposed to a link directory) giving higher relevance to your own important link.

As you do more post exchanges you will develop a good diversity of different domains linking from you, which will help you develop a really strong link profile.

How do I find blogs to exchange posts with?

Finding blogs to exchange with can be time consuming. The best way to start is to find blogs that post articles on topics which are related to what you do. So, for example for client Mahindra Homestays we approach travel bloggers who have been to or are based in India and regularly write about travel.

However, you can be creative and reach out to other audiences as well, as long as you can supply relevant content. So we might look at cookery blogs and offer a guest post exchange of Indian recipes.

Google is the best place to get started when it comes to identifying potential blogs.  The following keyphrases give you an idea of the sort of searches that can be helpful:

• [keyword] blog
• intitle:[keyword] blog
• [keyword] guest writer
• [keyword] submit content
• [keyword] guest blogger

Aside from searching for new blogs don’t forget to check your own RSS feed, you may already have a list of relevant sites to target.

Comments both on your own and other blogs can be a valuable source of finding potential new partners. The fact that they are commenting shows they have an active voice and interest in the community so join in the discussion and check out their links.

Building up relationships

Once you have found some potential blogs you would like to work with, you need to build up a relationship with the blogger behind the domain. Follow them on various social media channels and engage in conversation. Link to and share their content, comment on their posts and get to know them. This is a genuine relationship you are entering into so engage openly and broach the subject of guest blogging in a thoughtful way. Suggest a topic that would be relevant to you both and if they are happy to proceed you’ll soon have a guest blogger exchange and all the benefits that come with it.

If you are interested in having a guest blog post from us on your site, on the travel and tourism marketing subjects we cover, please drop us a line at hello@dottourism.com - we can't wait to start building a relationship with you!