What is Guest Blogging?

One of the ways to promote your personal or corporate brands is through guest blogging, also known as guest posting. This is a content marketing tactic that involves writing and publishing articles for other websites. Although personal blogging has been around for quite some time, guest blogging is a method which has become progressively more popular to expand a business’s reach and to generate more traffic to their site. It is common for guest bloggers to write on similar blogs to their industry to be relevant and more effective. It can now be seen as a necessary tool in giving opportunities to engage a new, fresh audience and enhance social media presence.

With many aspects in life now taking a strong digital turn, online presence for businesses has never been more important. You must be seen to be heard. With guest blogging allowing you to reach your desired audiences and build on your exposure across new fields, it is important to show that you are providing a credible source for your audience.

The aim of guest blogging is to direct traffic back to your site, it is an effective way to both raise awareness and build authority within your niche. You can do this by improving that all-important SEO. SEO or ‘search engine optimizer’ is the processes used to organically improve the visibility of your sites when someone searches for it. An essential factor of SEO that can be included in your article are quality backlinks. Including different types of links that can be naturally added into your content will boost the value of the article and prove to readers that your article is genuine. If you are struggling to create quality backlinks there are many sites which can help you understand about links and help generate them such as: Semrush and Moz. One tip to make this successful is to keep them up to date with current issues and good links that are natural and come from high quality, relevant sites. 

By creating good SEO, this then coincides with a positive effect to the domain authority of your site too. The more quality content that is published by your brand, the more its audience will trust your site and remain interested. As a result of these key guest blogging features, your name and business will become more established to its relevant audience, making you reputable to others and possibly develop great relationships with contacts in your industry.

Guest blogging is a mutually beneficial exchange between the writer of the article, who gains exposure, but also to the site publishing the article. It enables fresh new content brought into their site, keeping their readers engaged with a constant stream of new content available. The first step in guest blogging is to choose the best site that is going to work for you, taking into consideration the target audience of the site and research so you know exactly what their niche is. Analyse any posting guidelines to ensure they match with what you are looking for and likewise, they will accept your content to match their brand. Platforms like AI Guest Posts are a good way of finding sites which welcome posts and they have lots of brand sites to choose from, covering a range of industries so you are sure to find something which suits your content. These types of exchanges are now something which is working for people across all fields, helping to navigate through different realms of business, one post at a time.

How do I Drive More Traffic to my Website?

6 proven ways to increase website traffic

1.Content, content, content!

I’m sure you will have heard many a time that ‘content is king’! It really is when it comes to attracting visitors to your website. If your site does not contain a blog consider adding this in, the more content your site has the more content available for Google (and other search engines) to index. Your written content should be relevant to your target audience, factual and interesting and ideally articles should be 500 words minimum (for Google indexing purposes). Ensure you are consistent and realistic with the number of pieces you can add to your blog, if one-piece a week is manageable be consistent, post every week.

2. Monitor page speed

Regularly check your various web pages to ensure they are not slow in loading. If any pages on your site are slow to load to a user, you are likely to lose that that visitor and you have an increased chance of them not returning. The faster the page loads, the better!

3. Ensure your webpage is mobile responsive

Today for many websites more visitors reach them via mobile than via a desktop computer or laptop. Ensure that each page loads correctly and can be easily read on a mobile, otherwise users will leave and quite likely not return.

4. Utilise social media

Having a social media page on relevant platforms is important for many businesses. It’s a great place to share your content, details of your products and services and pick up more customers when searching for your firm or services on Google or other search engines. Ensure your social media pages are populated and up to date with things like opening times, your web address, contact details etc. Its also a great place to engage with your customers. On Facebook for example customers can review and recommend your business, encourage your customers to do just that.

5. Link Building, via guest posts

Link Building plays an important role in driving organic traffic via search engines. When you write a piece share it with third parties and be sure to link back to your website, this may be your home page or a specific page within your website. There are a number of businesses that will share your content containing your links on their sites. AI Guest Posts charges a small fee to share your content across a portfolio of 12 brand websites, with prices starting from just £70. Link building is considered by many to be a major part of their marketing strategy.

6. Send newsletters

If you have a database of customers for whom you have an email account, ask them if they would like to opt-in to receive your regular newsletter. If they are engaged in your products and services, it is likely they will be happy to opt-in. Email newsletters are a great way to engage with your customers to detail any changes in your services or offering (perhaps a new website with new functions or any major change in service such as free postage on orders over £50), with offers to entice them back to you or perhaps to gain their feedback on your service.

What is a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)?

What is a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)?

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. This is the page that a search engine displays to the user when they submit a search query. For example, if you go to Google and type in ‘what is martech?’ and press enter or click the search emblem, the search engine results page (or SERP) will be the pages that are returned to you.

You will notice that the search engine will most likely not return only one single results page, depending on your search term but quite likely it will return thousands or even millions of results pages.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques allow businesses and their marketing teams to rank higher on search engines. Obviously, page one would be the ultimate goal for businesses, the fact is that most users will not go beyond pages 2 or 3 to find the content, business, service or product they are looking for.

Where a business ranks on search engine results pages is an important factor for most businesses, particularly those that seek to increase organic traffic to their website. According to stats published on Expand Digital website, ‘businesses that show up on the first page of results get 92% of consumer traffic’. Here you will also find other useful stats that will aid in your SEO efforts.

Google is the most used search engine, who typically have around 90%+ market share. It is however worth considering that Google is not the only search engine used, others include Bing, Yahoo!, MSN Search, AOL, Ask.com and Yandex, amongst others.

What is a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)?