Guest blogging —back when a handful of people were doing it — was a practice that aimed at creating awareness about like-minded professionals, their products, and their ideas. Today, guest blogging is widespread, and while it still serves a useful purpose, it’s often turned into a widely acceptable form of spamming used simply for the sake of boosting search engine rankings.
Although it seems that guest blogging has gotten out of control, it is a fruitful and needed practice, both in SEO terms and in terms of idea cultivation. So no, guest blogging isn’t going anywhere soon, and there’s still time to bring back its truly useful aspects.
Exposure
Targeted exposure is hard to achieve and guest blogging lets companies and home-based businesses get to audiences beyond their current reach. While other marketing strategies attempt to reach out to targeted audiences, few manage to do so with the level of accuracy guest blogging does. Undoubtedly, it’s too valuable a tool to let it wither.
Brand Awareness
Guest blogging is an effective way of building brand awareness in demographics that might otherwise be unreachable. A rich, high vocabulary knowledge and sound spelling skills will ensure guest posts are of high quality and as such won’t be rejected. Provided that the articles someone submits for guest blogging are carefully crafted and well-researched, guest blogging is the go-to source for many businesses with limited budgets and “solopreneurs” who cannot afford the marketing campaigns of multinational brands.
Quality Predominates
As with every trend, while many people have jumped on this bandwagon, only a few do it correctly. Guest blogging has its own set of principles and those who overlook them generally will not be getting much out of it. Guest blogging rests on the idea of authoritative individuals offering quality knowledge.
Practices where guest blogging is done under “black hat” circumstances will soon be exposed and penalized. So if guest blogging can be said to run the risk of ending in 2014, that only applies to those sites not doing it the way it’s meant to be.
It is even expected that Google will soon roll out a guest post penalty update for poor or “spammy” guest blogging, so again this shows how guest blogging will go back to what it ought to be.
Guest Blogging nurtures progress and innovation
Guest blogging is a non-intimidating way of getting to know the practices other companies or professionals follow, because it connects writers with new contacts they can benefit from and even introduces individuals to hard-to-reach communities and influencers that can offer new opportunities for career and innovation ideas.
Sales and User Engagement
Guest blogging was created out of a need to increase awareness on a company or service and ultimately to improve lead generation and sales by boosting overall page ranking for the blog post contributor.
This is still the case; guest blogging improves SEO and traffic in proven and irrefutable ways, so to proclaim it dead is to overlook its centrality in SEO practices and brand awareness campaigns.
Used correctly, guest blogging can stay a part of the online business future in 2014 and beyond.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments
Ultimate Vocabulary guarantees to help you increase your vocabulary knowledge! Learn more words and apply them in your writings.