Guest posting to bolster small business search marketing efforts

Creating content is the most challenging aspect of running any blog or social media strategy – it takes time away from other business-vital activities entrepreneurs could be performing. With this in mind, small business owners may be able to find search engine optimization opportunities by offering other websites guest posts.

It’s a win-win situation – the blog owner gets free content that he or she didn’t have to write, while the entrepreneur secures a backlink to their own small business website. Moreover, guest posts establish the writer as an authority in their field and may help them reach new audiences through a different blog.

That said, guest posting is all about separating the worthwhile blogs and websites from the ones that won’t provide much of an SEO boost. Any incoming link is beneficial, but entrepreneurs have finite time, so they need to prioritize.

“The best value comes from picking out the top tier targets,” Search Engine Watch suggests. “Don’t waste your time writing articles for lots of blogs that few people will ever read. Blogs that have little authority won’t help establish yours, either with the users or search engines.”

How to create a list of target websites

Business owners know they need to create a list of prospective targets for their guest posting strategies, but how do they accomplish this?

One tactic is to simply brainstorm. Have employees jot down people they know within the industry, or media websites that would be interested in running featured content. This gives small business owners a starting point to build a relationship. The key is coming up with a list of people and sources that influence potential buyers.

When all else fails, a simple Google search will also likely turn up dozens of prospective blogs and websites. “Try some search queries using search terms for your market space. Add some phrases like ‘news’ or ‘announcement,’ or ‘tips’ to try and uncover blogs covering the space,” the news source suggests. “For extra credit, append the phrase ‘guest post’ (including the double quotes) to try and uncover sites that have accepted guest posts.”

To that extent, remember there are other search engines as well. Reports from Experian Hitwise have noted that people search for different things by using a variety of portals – financial topics tend to be queried more on Yahoo, while Bing is a hotspot for travel sites.

Directories are another means of finding guest post opportunities. Directories work like telephone books, enabling people to search them by various categories. Small business owners can simply look up other websites included in their own category to discover new potential targets.

These are just some basic suggestions – as the news source notes, the possibility to find new sources is nearly limitless. That said, finding guest posting opportunities may be more difficult for some businesses – whereas a marketing company may not have any trouble, a chainsaw manufacturer might have to be a bit more creative.

“If your market space is too much of a niche to have a decent number of influencers, look to those market categories which are supersets of yours. Influencers in those superset areas probably want to provide coverage of your topic occasionally, and that is all you really need,” Search Engine Watch added.

According to data from comScore, more than 19 billion searches are performed by Americans every month. Having a website at the top of Google search rankings is paramount to driving traffic to a small business website, and guest posts can help achieve that goal.

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