You can’t perform search engine optimization (SEO) without content. While search engines scrutinize hundreds of factors for organic rankings, their algorithms place the most weight on content. Websites with lots of high-quality content tend to rank higher than those with fewer or lower-quality pieces of content.
There are other content marketing tactics, however, that can increase your website’s organic rankings. You can still publish content on your website, but you may want to include blogger outreach or guest blogging in your SEO strategy. Blogger outreach and guest blogging revolve around externally published content that mentions or links to your website.
Overview of Blogger Outreach
Blogger outreach involves contacting bloggers and asking them to write about your website. According to Oberlo, there are over a half-billion blogs on the internet. Some of these blogs are probably in the same niche as your website.
With blogger outreach, you can contact bloggers who operate a relevant blog and solicit a post from them. If your website sells a service, for instance, you can offer them a free trial of the service in exchange for a post. Bloggers who agree to your offer will write and publish a post about your website on their blog.
Overview of Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a slightly different content marketing tactic. It consists of writing posts and submitting them to relevant blogs, specifically those that accept guest posts.
Not all blogs accept guest posts. Some of them exclusively create content in-house. Fortunately, there are millions of blogs that outsource their content creation by accepting guest posts. By including guest blogging in your SEO strategy, you can write your own posts and submit them to these blogs.
Blogger Outreach Benefits
Posts created with blogger outreach will typically discuss your website or an element of your website, such as a given product or service your site sells. They won’t just mention your website. Rather, the posts will focus on your website, resulting in a high level of relevance.
You can earn backlinks with blogger outreach. When bloggers write about your website, they’ll typically link to it. Posts that focus on your website as a whole will usually feature a link to your site’s homepage. Posts that focus on an element of your website, conversely, will usually feature a link to a subpage. Regardless, you’ll earn backlinks with blogger outreach.
Some webmasters choose blogger outreach over guest blogging because it doesn’t require any writing. You won’t have to write the posts. The bloggers whom you contact will write them. With that said, you may have to provide them with an incentive. Bloggers may only agree to write about your website if you give them a free product or service or pay them.
You can target any blog with blogger outreach. Just a single post from a popular, relevant blog can prove invaluable to your website. It will expose your website to the blog’s audience, and some of the blog’s visitors will likely visit your site.
Guest Blogging Benefits
Like blogger outreach, guest blogging can generate new backlinks to your website. Blogs have different rules you must follow when writing guest posts. Some of them have formatting requirements, whereas others only accept guest posts on approved topics. As a form of nonmonetary compensation, though, most of them allow at least one link in guest posts.
When compared to blogger outreach, you can expect fewer rejections with guest blogging. Blogging outreach consists mostly of emailing bloggers, many of whom probably aren’t interested in writing about your website. With guest blogging, you’ll target blogs that explicitly seek guest posts. They may have a page where you can apply to become a guest blogger.
Guest blogging is completely free. No blog will charge you to write a post. After all, blogs will benefit from the free content, so you shouldn’t have to provide them with money or anything else. If you come across a blog with a paid guest blogging program, it’s probably a scam.
Guest blogging is generally safer for SEO than blogger outreach. The problem with blogger outreach is that it’s typically incentivized. You’ll have to provide bloggers with an incentive to write about your website. And assuming they link to your website, these incentivized backlinks could harm your SEO efforts.
Incentivized backlinks must be affixed with the nofollow tag. Otherwise, Google will consider them to be a form of PageRank manipulation. Any backlink that you purchase or provide goods or services for is an incentivized backlink. Therefore, blogger outreach requires the nofollow tag for backlinks.
The nofollow tag will negate most of the SEO value of backlinks. Visitors will still be able to click the backlinks to visit your website. The nofollow tag simply tells Google, along with other search engines, to discredit the backlinks. Most guest blogging backlinks aren’t affixed with the nofollow tag, so they are better for SEO.
Guest blogging is also more effective at building your personal brand than blogger outreach. You can create an author bio that’s displayed either at the top or bottom of your guest posts. Within this author bio, you can include your name and background along with a photo.
Visitors who read your guest posts will learn about you in the author bio. Some of these visitors may later search for your name online, which can direct them to your website or other properties that you manage under your name.
You can’t build your personal brand with blogger outreach because there’s no option to create an author bio. In most cases, the bloggers who write about your website will publish the posts under their own names. Bloggers will build their own personal brands when writing about your website. To build your personal brand, guest blogging is far more effective. You can create an author bio for your guest posts.
Blogger outreach and guest blogging are content marketing tactics that are commonly used for SEO. As the name suggests, blogger outreach involves reaching out to bloggers to solicit a post. Guest blogging is a more hands-on tactic in which you write posts for blogs. You can use either of them for SEO.
