Believe it or not, one of the best ways to get increased exposure for your company is to publish content on websites other than your own. Are you thinking, “Who the heck would let me do that?” The answer is lots and lots and lots of places – once you know how to find and approach them.
Sometimes called “influencing” sites, this is a fantastic form of online public relations that, when done correctly, gets you tons of exposure and lots of backlinks.
What Is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging simply means being allowed to publish a blog or other information as a guest on someone else’s site. Generally you can include at least one link to your site and a short author biography. Sometimes a site will want specific information, like a proposed topic and outline, before you post; but other sites want guest bloggers so much that you’re almost guaranteed to be able to post something there.
One very easy way to find sites that allow guest bloggers is using specific terms in the Google search bar. These can include:
- inurl: “guest post” – This will find pages with the words “guest post” somewhere in the page URL.
- intitle: “write for us” – Page results will be those with the phrase “write for us” in the title. This one is especially helpful because it takes you directly to the specifications for guest blogging on that site.
You can also add specific keywords at the end of the search terms to narrow down your results even more. If your company makes bird feeders, you could type the keywords “bird feeders” or something similar to find sites that discuss that topic.
Once you find potential sites, it’s important to read through them to be very sure you’ll get the value you want by posting something there. A related site will get your content more views than one that’s not associated to what you do or sell.
What’s In It For You
Posting on other sites can get lots of potential customers clicking back to your site for more information. If you’ve got great information to share, people will start linking to it. More people linking to your site means it will consistently rank higher in Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs), and this triggers even more people learning about your products and services.
Linking Your Author Picture To Search Results
In Google’s current Post Panda and Penguin environment, you will rank higher in the SERPs if there is a picture of you included with any content you write, whether it’s posted on your site or someone else’s page. The search result would look like this:
The way to make this happen is to properly link your guest blog to your Google+ profile when you publish that content online, as shown in the graphic below. Generally this link is in the “About The Author” box.
Highlighted in blue is the HTML code from Ricky Ribeiro’s author information that shows how the Google+ link is created:
If you’re not experienced writing HTML code, there are many helpful online sites that can help. It’s worth figuring out because this will make your picture appear in the search engines for content you post, whether it’s on a low-value or high-value site.
Posting useful content on websites other than your own is a proven way to increase your search engine ranking, which in turn lets more potential customers learn what you have to offer. Try it and watch what happens!