Inbound Links Drive Traffic for Guest Bloggers

Guest blogging can be a great way to increase traffic on a company or personal website. Aiming to write for the big blogs is tempting, but it might be more effective to focus on smaller blogs to increase SEO with inbound links.

While guest blogging on a huge site may seem like the key to receiving many hits, inbound linking is actually the better way to go, according to HubSpot Blog‘s Pamela Vaughan. This is because appearing on a larger site usually doesn’t garner as many referrals as many people assume.

It’s smarter, Vaughan says, to provide good inbound links in numerous posts, which will then boost the search traffic for the blogger. By targeting numerous small blogs instead of concentrating on big ones, marketers and bloggers will “get more of your content published in less time when writing for smaller-scale blogs, and this means more inbound links,” she says.

Vaughan attributes this to small blogs being “hungry for content” and as having a quick turnaround rate. The big blogs aren’t looking for content at the same pace.

In her own case study, Vaughan found that after having 28 guest blogs published, traffic to her site increased about 200% in six months thanks to her use of inbound marketing. Combined, all of the guest posts she wrote brought her less than 150 visitors from referral traffic.

The inbound links are more valuable, especially when it comes to search engines, because, she says, “People are using search engines to find solutions to their problems, and are in the right frame of mind when they come across the pages you optimized for in search–because these pages directly cater to what they were searching for.”

Once people find their way to a blog the trick is to convince them to stay and come back often. A good method is to prompt a call to action by asking users to subscribe, or making it easy to share content via social media channels, writes echogravity‘s Kelsey Collister. Also, she says, make sure that the blog includes captivating images and videos, and that it’s updated regularly.

While referral traffic may seem like an attractive idea, it’s inbound linking that will ultimately drive traffic to a blog. Targeting the right blogs and including posts linking back are some of the most useful ways to gain followers and get content shared.

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