How Can Guest Posting Increase Traffic?

Many website owners and online publishers think of guest posting in the context of referral traffic. That is, getting others to click through to your website. 

After all, when you take advantage of guest blogging opportunities in exchange for the free content that you're writing for the target website, they will link back to your target URL.

This is a good start... but it's not REALLY how guest posts can help increase traffic for the long term.

Guest posting is a win-win situation for everyone involved. They get niche-specific, high-quality content based on topics they're interested in while you get a nice, highly-targeted, keyword-driven contextual backlink. 

Everybody's happy, right? Believe it or not, if you play your cards right, guest posting increases traffic volumes in the long term as well. In other words, you kill many birds with one stone. 

Here is a secret that many link-builders aren't up front about with clients: These links are actually primarily meant for Google's eyes.

I know what you're thinking...

Aren't contextual links are supposed to be helpful to users? Isn't that the point of guest posts?

Yes and No.

See, guest posting is POPULAR now. And most "guest posts" aren't really providing users any useful info...

Most guest posts DON'T GET TRAFFIC or even rank for keywords. 

But on paper, they still provide a quality contextual backlink.

But if you can create QUALITY guest posts that actually start to rank themselves, that's when you get REFERREL traffic and long-term SEO benefits that lead to overall traffic increases for your website.

Either way, with guest posting, you solve your guest posting partner publication's content problem, and you get backlinks, so it IS natural. Even if that post doesn't have any readers.

You also MIGHT get fresh eyeballs to your site, but again, this isn't the main purpose of guest posting for SEO.

These are the reasons guest posting is one of the best SEO practices you can implement today. You'd be surprised how much content out there is made from guest posts.

It's been around for a very long time, and it's not going to go away any time soon. When properly executed, it is built on value. Not only does the website linking to your webpage benefit, but their users benefit too. 

How Can Guest Posting Increase Traffic?

When you select the right guest post partner, whatever content you publish on their site will appeal to the audience you're trying to reach AND make Google view you as an authority in your niche. But the main thing to keep in mind is that:

Guest Posting is a Long Term Strategy

It can take 2-3 months of consistent guest posting to see a good strategy start to work. Here is the amount of referring domains for a client's new website. We started the strategy in July...

You can see that about a month and a half later we started seeing a general increase in the overall organic traffic and amount of organic keywords for the site.

They are building 3-5 links a month with us. About 50% going to the homepage since it's a new site.

Despite case studies like this, many people don't understand that the most important traffic source of guest posting is not the referral traffic from the website you write for.

Actually, most guest posts don't drive traffic much at all unless you get placed on extremely high profile authority sites.

The most important way you'll get traffic by a guest blog is from getting high quality backlinks for your website CONSISTENTLY.

This is important to search engines, like Google, not so much to visitors of your website.

Referral Traffic

Of course you create more awareness for your brand by being published on another site. People may not be aware that you offer certain services, content, or merchandise in your niche.

When your content gets published on a site people respect and trust in your industry, some of the brand power of that website is carried over to you. Put simply, you share the same audience which opens doors of opportunities as far as traffic is concerned. 

This takes place in people's minds when they see your content and click through your author profile to check your website. 

You best believe that if there's a strong connection between the content that they are clicking from and the content on your site, some of the brand power of the website that published your guest post will carry over to your site. 

This isn't theoretical or speculation. This has tremendous practical effects because your brand is now a known quantity. People feel that they can trust your brand as much as they trust the brand they clicked from. 

You are effectively "on the radar" as far as your target audience is concerned. But the benefits don't stop there. When people click from the guest post to your site and like what they see, they will probably click through your blog posts categories and get deeper into your site. 

Of course, there is a steep drop-off between the people who click on your author profile from another site and the people who find themselves on your target pages. The further they get into the guts of your site, the fewer users you'd be dealing with. 

The good news is if you get enough guest posts published on many different pages of high-authority sites in your niche, these "deep clicks" and heavy internal link clicking can go a long way in establishing a loyal organic community around your site. 

Quality Guest Post Example

Guest posting is a link building strategy to help improve your appearance in organic Google search and your overall online presence.

When you receive a backlink via a blog post, it's contextual, which can be used strategically especially if you are trying to rank a specific URL/keyword.

For example, if I'm trying to rank one of my URL's for "link building consultant" and I write a guest blog about "Link Building Strategies in 2021" with a link to my URL, this shows search engines that my URL (and domain) is an authoritative source about this subject.

It's no secret that backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors.

When done right, links like this can make rankings skyrocket.

Guest posting is a crucial first step for an organic following

At the end of the day, you want people to keep coming back to your site. This is going to be difficult to do unless you have a mailing list. But even then, people will not join your mailing list if they don't trust your content. 

When you invest in high-quality content and interlink them properly, people will find themselves deep within your site. And the more links they click, the more you brand them. This builds loyalty and credibility because they believe that you know what you're talking about and can be trusted. 

Because you know key areas of knowledge within your niche that would be valuable to them, what do you think happens next? Well, they are more likely to come back to your site. Just as important, they are more likely to post your links on their social media platforms or share your content. 

They can also refer people directly to you from forums and other similar platforms they find themselves in. Your organic community is a direct source of referral traffic because you've proven yourself in the minds of these individuals. 

They no longer have any doubts about your brand. And this organic referral system has a tremendous impact on your social media growth and SEO campaigns. 

The more links Google finds about your site, the higher the chance your pages will rank higher on Google. But it doesn't stop there. The more people find you on different parts of Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, the more your brand grows on those platforms. 

Eventually, people will trust your brand enough as far as your niche goes. This gives you an almost insurmountable competitive advantage because your competitors will have to start from square one. 

They have to establish credibility and trust with the target audience. On the other hand, you no longer have to do that because your content is found on all platforms and has developed an organic following. 

Make no mistake, guest posting increases traffic volumes over time. The key is investing time, focus, and strategy in guest posting.

Eventually, you will see that guest posting increases traffic volumes in the long haul.