Are we there yet?: 3 Reasons Guest Blogging is a Good Idea

by Stephanie Faris

If I write one more article on “5 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2015,” I’m going to lapse into a coma. I’ve written so many, I’ve lost count. But the benefit of all of that work is that I’ve put a great deal of time into studying the best ways to market your small business.

As writers, we’re all small business owners in a sense. We’re working hard to “build our brand” and engage customers (readers). Many of us have read that one of the best ways to do this is through blog tours. Blog tours allow us to appear on other people’s sites, participating in Q & As, posting blurbs and doing guest blogs like this one. But you don’t have to do a blog tour to get the benefits of appearing on someone else’s blog. Here are three ways guest blogging can help you build a reader base.

Reason #1: You Gain New Followers

Bloggers have long expressed frustration that they work hard to write a thoughtful blog post, only to have no one show up to comment. When you appear on someone else’s blog, you get exposure to all of that blog’s readers and you send your own readership over to meet the blog host. I read a large group of blogs each day and I found most of them on other blogs. One great post could connect with your host’s audience and earn you readers for years.

Reason #2: It Increases Search Engine Visibility

Google wants to make sure when you search for something, you get the best results possible. Over the years, the company has worked hard to reward good content and penalize bad, spammy sites. A page is considered a better authority on a subject if there are links pointing to it. When you guest blog, the host posts a link to your blog and you post a link to it—both of those behaviors make Google’s algorithms happy. The more our blogs are connected, the better our chances that when someone types in search terms relevant to what we’re writing, that person will see our blogs on the first page of those results.

Reason #3: It Builds Community

The community in the blogosphere is amazing. The more we cross-post and promote each other, the tighter that community becomes. Many of us participate in events like the A to Z Challenge or the Insecure Writers Support Group, which means often we all have the same blogging friends in common. Guest posts give us the opportunity to introduce our own friends to the bloggers we’ve met, growing the community even further.

Instead of waiting until you have a book to promote, consider contacting fellow bloggers with an offer to guest blog. You can return the favor by hosting those bloggers on your own blog. Not only will it help your Google visibility, but it will also introduce you to new bloggers who are probably eager to find great new blogs to read.

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And thank you, Stephanie, for stopping by and sharing with us! I am in 100% agreement with all three reasons.

Stephanie Faris knew she wanted to be an author from a very young age. In fact, her mother often told her to stop reading so much and go outside and play with the other kids. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University with a Bachelor of Science in broadcast journalism, she somehow found herself working in information technology. But she never stopped writing.

Stephanie is the author of 30 Days of No Gossip and 25 Roses, both with Aladdin M!x. When she isn’t crafting fiction, she writes for a variety of online websites on the topics of business, technology, and her favorite subject of all—fashion. She lives in Nashville with her husband, a sales executive.