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Why Blogger Outreach Benefits Your Website’s SEO

July 3, 2012

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The world of link building – where SEO pros toil into the deep of night working link directories, optimizing metas and URL structure and 301 redirecting outdated content – only hold so much weight when it comes to search engines.

Yes, having a search-engine friendly foundation for your site is important. But, having relevant, influential sites and blogs link back to you offers an even greater advantage with search engines.

You see, Google (and other search engines) rank sites higher based on the number of quality links the site receives from high-value sites, such as high trafficked blogs, news and publication websites and government or educational sites. The more authority that the individual blog or website has the more SEO value the backlink has.

It’s for this reason that effective, scalable blogger outreach provides an accessible and extremely effective method for building links that content farming and article hoarding can’t touch.

Breaking It Down: The SEO Benefits of Blogger Outreach

Old fashioned approaches to link building, where quantity often outweighs quality and relevancy factors, are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

The reason is simple: Google loves quality links. One of the easiest and most impactful way to get quality links is to a) write good content that nabs the attention of an influential blogger who links back to your post, or b) write a guest post for an influential blog.

While writing valuable content should always be the focus, the more proactive approach to blogger outreach is to leverage that content and build relationships, instead of waiting to be found.

So here are a few best practices to ensure your proactive approach blogger outreach is also SEO friendly:

  • Research blogs/bloggers in your market and build an engagement list, segmenting blogs by relevance and authority.
  • Create an editorial calendar built around topics relevant to these influential blogs in your market that are also aligned with your keyword priorities.
  • Build relationships with targeted bloggers by commenting on relevant blog posts. Sharing their content and striking up a conversation on social networks doesn’t hurt either.
  • Research the blogger’s audience and topical focus, and find out who accepts guest posts and what their submission criteria entails.
  • Most influential bloggers are very specific about what kind of posts they’ll take, so don’t pitch a guest post solely based on its SEO value to your blog. This is still about the relationship – make sure you pitch something that is relevant and beneficial to their audience.
  • Always think relevance when it comes to choosing topics to write for guest posts. The more targeted the content, the better it is for both SEO and earning the attention of an influential blogger.
  • Start with relevant blogs that you have existing relationships with and test the waters with your guest post submission there first. It will also give you additional leverage when you do approach the more influential blogs.
  • Write ahead and build a backlog of quality posts that you can pitch to different blogs. This will also ensure you have backups if a blogger balks at your first topic.
  • When negotiating a guest post, make sure the host is okay with including a link in the bio back to your site and a relevant blog post or two. Most bloggers are okay with this as long as you don’t go overboard with links. Use a priority keyword in the anchor text of that link.

There are just a few basic tips to get started with optimizing your blogger outreach for SEO benefits. To be honest, smart outreach typically takes care of the SEO outright (quality links don’t appear out of thin air), but it’s important to at least understand a few best practices once the content starts flowing and the outreach is in full swing.

What are your best practices for blogger outreach that positively impacts SEO? Please share your insights and thoughts in the comments below.