With the growing popularity of blogs and the high activity those posts generate in the online community, it was just a matter of time for savvy marketers to see this as a great opportunity for doing business. Add to the bandwagon the choice made by search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, wherein their algorithms were changed to pick up importance on updates and backlinks, giving online businessmen the opportunity to stay in the news and raise sales levels, and you’ll have the birth of guest posting for business.
Though blogs made solely for making money is frowned upon by the blogging community, writing authentic guest blogs and being paid for it is legitimate work, and the process should be mutually beneficial. For the guest blogger, it would mean a steady income, while attracting potential customers for the host site. For example, a guest blogger whose site provides carpet cleaning services would have potential clients in posting an article in the website of the local dealer of carpets.
And the technique is not only limited to small business enterprises. More so, it is valuable for big companies providing products and services online. The website itself is made to advertise the company’s products and services in a less costly way (compared to advertising fees in television, radios and newspaper). And in creating the company’s website, owners usually try to find ways in maximizing its scope, on how the site could gain a lot of traffic. For some, employees are instructed to post comments and paste links on the company website and in social media networks, while others might be instructed to join online communities to help spread the word out. It is not surprising that guest posting had become a welcome addition to this arsenal.
Posting a blog to other web sites to gain attention from other the sites’ readers and probably making those readers click the links at the end of the blogs or article posts might be a little awkward at first, but its benefits can’t be undermined:
One, it generally gains the traffic your website needs. As we have pointed out above, the increase of links would increase the chance of people leading them to your own website. In turn, if the reader is lead to your website and find your website attractive and/ or useful, it is almost a given that that reader would come back or tell his friends or share your site’s link to his own website, giving you another chance of getting public attention, popularity and visitors.
With your site’s popularity comes, two, your company reputation. The more attractive, useful and/ or entertaining your website is, the greater the chance that visiting people would come back and spread the word. How many people call photocopy machines “Xerox”? Or how many people call soft drinks “Coke”? Selling your products and/ or services is easier if people know your company and your reputation.
Which brings us to, three, more income. With the activity generated by guest posting, your site’s traffic potentially increases, especially if the number of viewers rise in multiples of two or more. Because we all know that the greater traffic or number of people entering your website, the greater is the chance of getting a sale out of the few hundred visitors.