Search engine optimization is a great way for anyone to bring targeted traffic to a website when the goal is to increase sales. But if you want to get the most from your effort, creating compelling content won’t be enough on its own to provide you with the results for which you have been hoping. Those who want to outrank the competition will need to build backlinks to their content consistently, and doing so can be a time-consuming task. Rather than generating low-quality links, you will only want focus on domains that have a reputation for offering valuable resources, and guest blogging is one of the best ways to reach your desired outcome.

When your mission is to create backlinks by guest blogging, your first task is to find and create a list of at least 10 blogs that are worth considering. If you have been in your industry for a while, you should already have a few in mind, but you can also use Google to track down related blogs. Once you have a list, you will want to use the Mozbar plug-in to determine the domain authority of each website, which will help you decide on the blogs that are worth pursuing.

After you have narrowed your list down to blogs that have a decent domain authority, you could feel tempted to pitch your offer from the start, which would be a mistake. If someone runs a quality blog, that person will receive guest blog offers on a regular basis, and you will need to find a way to stand out from the rest if you want to stand a chance. To earn positive attention, comment on blog posts and reply to the comments that other people leave. No matter the situation, always focus on offering value, and the blog owner might approach you first.

Blog owners won’t always contact you, but that is not a problem with which you should be concerned. After one or two weeks of interacting with and providing value to other followers, it’s time to pitch your idea. Before you move forward, ensure that you are familiar with the writing style and tone for which the blog owner is looking. You can also search for your targeted keyword on Google to get an idea of the kind of articles that perform well. When you email the owner of the blog, don’t forget to mention why you think your content would be valuable to the followers. If everything goes as planned, the blog owner will approve your guest post, and you will earn a backlink that will bring you traffic and increase your SEO rank.

Each guest post that you submit will take you one step closer to your SEO goals, but you must remember that it’s an ongoing process that never ends. Every guest post that you write needs to be high-quality if you want to earn creditability within your market. Collecting a lot of backlinks with this method won’t happen overnight, but remaining committed to the task will be worth the reward.