Guest blogging helps you gain traffic, get in front of your audience, and boost your SEO ranking in a cost-effective way. – Mike Fishbein on guest posting

Mike’s right. Guest blogging (or posting, as it’s also known) can do all of that and more, but only if you do it right. He recently wrote a post on Convince and Convert about how to get more web traffic through guest blogging, and I wanted to create a Top 5 list of my personal favourite reasons to guest post.

#5 – Guest posting builds relationships

Whether it’s a relationship with the new audience who’s reading your content, or the one you build with the owner/editor of the blog you’re guest posting on, it all comes down to relationships.

Bloggers talk a lot online and can be extremely influential with both their on- and off- line audiences. So it makes sense you’d want to be friends with them, right? This goes for professional and business bloggers too.

Making friends and developing relationships with other bloggers grows your sphere of influence online, which leads to more readers and blog subscribers.

#4 – Guest posting adds to your email list

When readers find you on other sites and like your guest posts, they’ll want to read more of your writing. Especially if they’re busy prospects who perhaps don’t have the time to come to your blog every time you publish new content, or want to know where your next guest post is published.

A dynamic email list is also a good thing to have for your business, giving you a captive audience who wants to hear from you. So include an email signup link in your guest post bio to keep track of them.

#3 – Guest posting lets you try out different writing styles/ideas/formats

This is especially helpful for business bloggers who are constrained by a strict style guide. (I’m not saying a style guide is bad, but sometimes you want to try something new before unleashing it on your main audience — and a guest post is a great place to do that.)

#2 – Guest posting helps you generate new ideas because you’re doing more research

By researching the sites you’re targeting, you’re looking at other blog posts, articles, and websites. You’re using it to craft the best guest post pitch, but it’s also a great way to gather ideas for new posts or other content assets. Simply put, it’s research! Use it for whatever you need.

And now, for my #1 reason why I love guest posting…

#1 – Guest posting helps your site with SEO love

The simple reason is because you’re creating backlinks to your own site from reputable, authoritative sites. Search engines (in particular Google) love this. It means that your site is also authoritative and trust-worthy too.

Secondly, it lets you take advantage of long-tail traffic. Neil Patel talked about how this works over on the QuickSprout blog, as did Jeff Goins. It’s another opportunity to create valuable content based and let’s you rank higher and better for these keywords. (To find out more about long-tail keywords, read this.)

Thirdly, by writing a summary post of the guest post on your own blog, you’re adding another layer to your SEO toolkit, and your site earns even more love. Remember to keep in mind any exclusivity clauses on the guest post site, and to not simply copy & paste the post to your site. That’s why it’s a SUMMARY post, and link it over to the guest post.

So, over to you now. Are you guest posting for your technology business? How’s it going?

For examples on how I’m guest posting for spacebarpress, read these posts:

• Social Media Examiner – How to Optimize Your Twitter Profile for Mobile Users
• KISSMetrics – The Top 3 Ways to Get Your SaaS Customers to Open Your Emails
• RingLead – Blast Through the Most Common Business Blogging Obstacles
• Social Media Examiner – 10 Ways to Improve Your LinkedIn Company Page