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First, let’s take a look at guest blogging myths almost everyone is concerned about (mind that the only method MyBlogGuest has been promoted was guest blogging so we really do know what we are talking about):

Myth #1: Guest blogging is great for traffic.

The reality: A *great* guest post can drive a few really interested people to your site (usually those are people who liked your guest article so much that they decided to click through your links to learn more about you). But those will be really few.

Our own case study: From hundreds of guest posts that were push live with “MyBlogGuest” in the byline, the only one that did fairly well was Mashable’s guest post (mind that they place the byline *above the fold* which is not really common, yet that link didn’t get an overwhelming amount of traffic):

Guest blogging for traffic

(Stats is courtesy of our Link Tracker: As you can see, a guest post at Mashable drove only 54 hits our way)

Myth #2: Guest blogging only makes sense if you contribute to huge blogs

This one is somehow connected to Myth #1. There’s no reason to only focus on huge blogs: Traffic is not worth it and the time of waiting and placing is discouraging.

In most cases contributing to smaller blogs (while doing your job building relations) is much more effective: newer bloggers are hungrier for new connections, they are more ready to give back and, let’s face it, they are faster to publish and promote your article. What’s more important, they are likelier to remember you and keep helping you in the future.

Remember, all blogs were small one day, so you have a good chance to grow together with your blogging connections!

Myth #3: Guest blogging is great for getting backlinks

The reality: Ok, not exactly a myth (those links may work) but focusing on links is a waste of time! So you get 10 links a month that will go down the archive a couple of weeks or month later. Now what? Getting 10 more links next month? This is a complete waste of time and resources: Like any other content marketing tactic, guest blogging should aim at making links flow in on their own for you not to build them. Otherwise, it’s low efficient.

Our own case study: We did a presentation featuring our own content study: How one guest post at @2createawebsite brought us one link to MyBlogGuest, but then links kept coming because Lisa kept linking to us from her further articles driving more users our way!

This brings us to the actual topic of this Twitter chat: the real power is in building relationships, NOT links because people put links and that’s much more rewarding than hiring someone to do that.

Don’t trust our own case study? Here are a couple more:

Branding and relationships:

Case study #1: Read this case study on promoting a book and mind the “Guest Posts” section. And I quote:

In my experience guest posts don’t drive a lot of traffic. Instead I find that guest posts are better for making friends with site authors and for gaining more credibility. My goal with guest posts is to create a blanket effect. Meaning that someone in my target market should see several tweets, read a couple of guest posts I’d written, and see my post on Hacker News. The idea being that they may not pay attention the first or second time, but after seeing my book mentioned several times within a couple hours they will click through and be more interested.

It worked. A few people made comments about how “they had seen like a billion posts today” that I had written.

Ann’s comment: The “blanket” (or “be everywhere” what I call it ) trick is what I’ve been using for ages: I blog on huge and small sites all the time and people keep seeing me again and again:

Being everywhere with guest blogging

Case study #2: Guest blogging myth: incoming traffic. And again, I quote:

I’ve posted for several large blogs now, and I can say with all sincerity there have been posts that yielded no noticeable lift in traffic.  But when I spend between 15-20 hours researching an audience, there’s always a decent little bump from byline clicks…

Every popular blogger started at zero. Most of them will be willing to help, but only if you’re hungry and WILLING to realize success doesn’t happen overnight.

In other words, don’t make your guest blogging efforts about “getting famous”, but rather to simply be invited back.

Ann’s comment: MyBlogGuest doesn’t do that well in Google (one reason is that I’ve never promoted the important keywords like “guest posts” and “guest blogging”) but we still are getting some hits from Google. And you know the most frequent word people are searching?

It’s [myblogguest]!

It means people talk and read so much about us that we don’t really rely on keyword rankings, links or direct traffic from Google. We have our brand name!

Guest blogging for branding

To Conclude:

And final word from Michael Martinez:

That is what the future of guest blogging should be all about. You don’t want those links nearly as much as you want the traffic. If you force yourself to work in an Either-Or mode you’ll write the best damn guest blog posts possible. After all, your brand depends on it as much as the people who accept your guest blog articles.

And the BEST TWEET of the day:

>>>Next week Thursday, 11 am EST 3 pm GMT we’ll introduce #MyBlogGuest G+ Community for guest post ideas and promotion!<<<

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Joseph

Founder at MyBlogGuest
Ann Smarty is the founder of MyBlogGuest. Feel free to contact her if you have any questions about the platform.

7 Responses to “The Only Benefit of Guest Blogging that Matters (with Case Studies) #MyBlogGuest”

  1. Tommy Walker

    Everything here is spot on!

    Recently, I’ve been asking around to many of the places I’ve guest blogged for (and some that haven’t) about the percentage of people who use guest blogging for purely selfish reasons. (I.e “seo value” or “building their brand”) and I was shocked to hear many of them say between 80-95% are doing it only for self serving purposes.

    To me, that’s really unprofessional. Even IF you’re doing everything we’re talking about here, if you’re only doing it for your own motivations, the long term sustainability of that will taper off to 0.

    I think, if you’re going to do it, you should guest blog like a professional it’s not about getting a decent pop of traffic the day it goes live, it’s about creating long term value for the blogger, the audience, and you.

    This means you do your keyword research, your competitive ranking analysis, and promotional outreach. but it also means following up AFTER your post has gone live. Even the people who are “bigger” than you are building their business, and I don’t care who you are, that always requires a little extra help. If your posts are a source of long term traffic, who do you think they’re going to turn to?

    Reply
  2. Joe Cassandra

    I agree with Tommy, it’s easy to try and just get links and branding (which we all like) but I see so many guest posts that are clearly written in 5 minutes and are there just to get a link. (Not sure why the blog it’s posted to posts it, but that’s another story :D)

    I want to guest blog yes for branding, but more to build a relationship with the blogger and see if I can help down the line as well as we’d had already work together. That relationship pays dividends more than a selfish guest post.

    Reply
  3. Ryan Mendenhall

    I can’t say I disagree with you Ann, after all, I HAVE seen you everywhere. I think you really burst my bubble though when you said that links don’t matter and that you don’t get much traffic. I was surprised to see that your Mashable article brought so little traffic! Have you done any analysis on the effect of your rankings because of the guest blogging? It just seems like there’s still an effect on traffic, it’s just not so direct.

    Reply
    • Ann Smarty

      There’s really an effect on both traffic and link profile. If your article is great, 90% of those ~50 clicks will convert and 20% of them will become your long-time supporters and promoters. So it’s a very *useful* traffic (if you are doing your job well), but it all comes down to how much effect you are putting into the article.

      I haven’t really looked deeply into “indirect” affect though (because of lack of time), but since too many people are offering guest blogging services, the direct affect is enough to disappoint the client…

      Reply
  4. Randy Pickard

    And guest blogging can be a major credibility builder. Being able to show that top editors have judged your content to be worthy of being published burnishes your reputation

    Reply
  5. Kristen Hicks

    I know I’m late to the thread here, but found this post very useful. I just recently did my first guest post (thanks to Carol Tice for publishing it!) and the topic of the post wasn’t something likely to earn me new clients. It did address an issue I’ve struggled with as a freelance writer and thought her readers, primarily other freelance writers, would be likely to relate to and benefit from. I made a point to engage with readers in the comments, and add some of them to my Google + circles and follow them on Twitter, treating it as a way to interact with my professional community more than anything else. I’ll admit, I was happy to get a link out of it, but I doubt that will serve to be the most valuable thing I earned from it.

    Reply

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