In case you haven’t heard yet, blogging is the way of the future as far as internet businesses are concerned. Not only is blogging versatile and cheap, it is the perfect medium for less known writers to publish their work and gain notoriety in the market of their choice. While the low barrier of entry is nice in most regards, it also poses a threat to the quality bloggers that are out there. In order to stand out in a crowd full of cruddy posts and spamming commentators, bloggers need to be constantly on their toes, providing new content and generating traffic to their site.

One of the best ways that small businesses, avid bloggers, and online publications have been so successful in keeping up with the times has been by using guest bloggers. Guest bloggers are bloggers that a website will hire in order to post on their behalf. Sometimes it is to keep up with the growing demand needed by the blog, other times it is to provide a different perspective than what readers typically get while on that website. In case you were wondering, guest blogging is becoming a growing phenomenon and not ending any time soon. So, what are some of the benefits associated with guest blogging?

A Platform For Perspective Bloggers

One of the best ways for writers to get their work out in the open waters of the internet is to guest blog on some of the websites they frequent most often. For example, if the writer is knowledgeable about organic food and wants to write about the topic, guest blogging can provide them an opportunity to get into that field. If the website is willing to give them a shot at writing for them, they will ask the writer to do a guest post so they can judge the writer’s abilities. Not only does this give the readers a new voice to read, it gives the author exposure and it provides the blog with new content!

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the main resource for bloggers to attract new visitors to their website, but there aren’t very many people who practice SEO efficiently. By hiring a guest blogger for your website, you can ask specifically for a SEO optimized article in order to attract more page views. While it may not sound very exciting, SEO is king when it comes to a successful online blog. The trick with hiring a guest blogger for SEO articles is to have the author write naturally, yet still hit the key words you want mentioned within the article. If you hire a guest blogger that can increase traffic just by using the key words Google and Bing are searching for, your blog may be in for a rather large boost in traffic.

Expanding Your Audience

Another reason why you should utilize guest blogging is for the potential of expanding your readership. Say the guest author has his or her own blog on a similar topic. If they were to come on board and write a guest post for you, you may agree on linking the article up between the two blogs. As a result, you get fresh content and the author gets more exposure, along with a re-blog on their website. It may not seem like much at first, but some of the most prominent bloggers today started by guest blogging and by linking back to their less known blogs. Be careful though, it is important to agree on the terms of re-blogging prior to the article being published. You wouldn’t want an article exclusive for your website to end up on theirs and “steal” the traffic from you.

Time Management

Another reason why guest blogging isn’t going anywhere is because sometimes, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for you to write all the content you want. There are many bloggers out there that mainly blog as a side gig. By doing so, they may not be able to devote as much time as they would like to the blog, whether that be because of a day job, their children’s games, or any other every day occurrences that come up. By hiring a guest blogger for an article or two, you can take a small break from your hectic life and focus on the things you need to. It is important to remember that you are only human and can only do so much; sorry to all you coffee heads out there, this is for you too! So sit back, relax, and let somebody else take care of an article for you. Who knows, you many end up with a lasting partnership when it is all said and done.

Warning before you hire a guest blogger:

Now, guest blogging certainly isn’t always a walk in the park for blog owners. For one, it’s hard to hand the reigns over to someone else. As the owner, you are the one that put in the long hours of writing content and building up viewers. Make sure that you are fully confident in the guest blogger’s abilities and have a strong line of communication with them in case any issues arise.

It has been said time and time again that communication is key, not just in blogging, but in all aspects of life. Aside from giving up the reigns for an article, guest blogging can cause headaches when it comes to communicating between author and blog owner. Even in today’s world of Twitter, Facebook, and text messaging, most professional correspondence is done through email, which can be slow at times. The guest may not always be checking their email for updates or instructions from you, which could be bad. If you come to terms with allowing a guest blogger to write an article for you, don’t be surprised if they never get back to you on a project. It has happened to almost every serious blogger out there and it will continue to happen. You just need to smile and move on to the next person.

Overall, guest blogging offers numerous benefits for businesses, blog owners, and those busy bloggers who simply don’t have the time to write all the content they want. It can provide the a starting point for aspiring bloggers, expand your existing readership, and take a little pressure off of you when time is running out. Be careful with who you select to be a guest blogger on your website though. You spent a lot of time building it up to what it is; you do not need some knucklehead with a bad reputation to bring it down with one post.

For example, start out with a guest blogger who is somewhat established in your market or a regular commentator on your blog. The more familiar the person is with the subject matter and style of your blog, the higher the success rate will be for both parties.

If you take the time to set clear expectations and guidelines before an agreement has been made, you will not only feel more comfortable with allowing a guest blogger on your website, but the author will feel more prepared and willing to turn out a great piece of work for you. It only takes one positive experience with guest blogging to see why bloggers throughout the world are using it, and why guest blogging is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Social media and search engine optimization services are rapidly changing the way that people use the Internet. Therefore, for it should come as no surprise to find out that there are conferences around the country that are dedicated to presenting the latest and greatest into these industries. Average people and businesses both can head to these conferences to find out what is new in social media, how to maximize SEO, meet likeminded people and much more. Here is a look at a list of social media and SEO conference for 2014.

SXSW Interactive

South by Southwest, better known as SXSW, is one of the more popular options to attend. 2014 will mark the 21st annual gathering for the SXSW festival and it seems to get more impressive each year. SXSW takes a look at older technologies like Facebook and Twitter, but it’s also a great place for new tech companies to mingle with others to try and get there name out there. SXSW is more than just your typical conference, as it offers guest speakers, comedy routines, music and so much more. SXSW runs from March 7th to March 11th in 2014.

Social Fresh

Twice in 2014, Social Fresh will bring together innovative leaders in the social media industry. But while some conferences are about the glitz and glam of packing a ton of stuff into the show, Social Fresh attempts to slow things down with presentations from just a single person at a time. This allows for much more detailed presentations that also makes it easier for the audience to get involved. Social Fresh East is in the spring of 2014 and Social Fresh West will be in the fall.

MozCon

Originally MozCon started as a SEO conference that has recently converted to focus on social media and other types of digital marketing as well. In 2014, MozCon will take place from July 14-16 in Seattle, Washington. During these three days, you can expect to get a better view into how social media and SEO intertwines with mobile platforms and customer optimization. MozCon is more geared towards being a fun and wild event, rather than your typical sit and listen to presentations scene.

Inbound

In 2013, the Inbound conference had speakers like Ariana Huffington and Seth Godin. Those high-profile names made it one of the more successful conferences of the year and it’s hoping to hit 2014 with a line-up that will be more impressive. This year, the event will take place in Boston, Massachusetts from September 15th to the 18th.

Demand Success

Vocus is a company that provides cloud-marketing software for its customers. And in June of each year, they offer Demand Success as their conference to help social media, SEO and digital marketing companies to come together. While at Demand Success, attendees can meet with other likeminded individuals and learn how to build their brand. In 2014, the lineup for Demand Success includes Judy Smith, Avinash Kaushik, Adrian Greier and many more. The event is held in Washington, D.C. from June 5th to the 6th.

Content Marketing World

Considering that the content is what brings your audience in, it’s no surprise that Content Marketing World is one of the top SEO conferences of the year. While attending, guests can find out more about how to market their company to its customers, including what to look for in potential clients and the best way to attract them. Content Marketing World also offers presentations that are specific to industries, which can be helpful for attendees to get a better idea what might work specifically better for them.

SearchLove

It’s all about action at the SearchLove Conference in California. This conference looks to help attendees learn to better funnel customers into their site, while helping them construct better search methods through SEO results. The conference offers a variety of lessons, most of which are applicable from everyone from the SEO beginner to the more advanced. You may walk into SearchLove as a novice, but you’ll certainly come out ready to take your company to the next level, and next page, of customer interaction

Conversion Conference

What good is showing up in search engines if your customers aren’t converting? Well with Conversion Conference, attendees will find out exactly just how to maximize their efforts while attempting to get conversions from customers. The bottom line is that Conversion Conference does more than just present ways of how to show up higher in search engines. Instead, you can learn how to maximize numbers and help grow your business in a multitude of different ways. What’s even better about Conversion Conference is that there are multiple conferences held throughout the US and Europe.

SMX

One of the best conferences for advanced SEO techniques, SMX skips the basics and jumps right into the hardcore information available in the industry. Throughout the entire multi-day conference, the schedule moves quickly and attendees are invited to maximize as much as they can possible learn during the event. Luckily, they also won’t be forced to sit through boring sessions of what exactly SEO is. Instead, you’ll get hardcore answers from the leading innovators in the industry, which will help you maximize your SEO results once you get back home to your business.

BlogHer

Primarily aimed at women, BlogHer is a conference for female entrepreneurs and Internet experts to come together. BlogHer is not only a conference, but also a website dedicated to helping women find their niche online and market it to their customers. Therefore, the conference will have plenty of information that comes from the techniques that their site uses, which allows them to stay atop search engines and increase in popularity. Furthermore, the conference also offers customized keynote speakers in areas like food, fitness and much more. No matter what your site is about, if you want to learn from other women and be surrounded by equally motivated females, BlogHer is the place to be.

PubCon

Last, but certainly not least, PubCon offers great options for marketing professionals and social media enthusiasts. The event usually has as many as 200 speakers during the four-day conference, making it a place where you can find everything for newbies, intermediates and experts. This event happens later in the year, which means you can hit up a few other conferences on this list and then round out your techniques by heading to Vegas for PubCon. Don’t miss out on PubCon for one of the most diverse conferences for social media and SEO services.

There is no denying the importance and impact that social media and SEO has on the Internet. But no matter how much you think you already know, there is always more to learn and involve yourself with. And with the conferences on this list, you can meet other likeminded people, spruce up on your skills and learn about some of the latest and greatest technology coming to the net. Don’t miss out, especially if you are looking to maximize your efforts by marketing your company online.

Ah, link building. It’s the quintessential trademark of SEO, especially recently, and while links are still important, how you obtain them has changed quite dramatically in the last year. Before, it was perfectly acceptable to create inbound links by including them as “authoritative sources” in guest blog posts, on other sites, or as part of blog comments. Now, however, natural and organic link earning is the name of the game.

So where does link earning turn into a link scheme? The line between the two is very fine, but staying on the right side of that line is crucial to your online reputation and success as a website and business owner. Below is a description and examples of link earning and link schemes, as well as best practices to help avoid falling on the wrong side of the line.

An Inbound Marketing Primer

First, you should be clear on the importance of inbound links, what inbound marketing is and does, and why you should care. Inbound links are links to pages on your site that are located in areas of the web that are not on your website. So, for instance, if someone blogs about the insurance industry and thinks your website article about protecting your home from a fire was outstanding, they’ll include a link to your article when they write about home insurance. This is an example of an inbound link and acts as inbound marketing for your website. In other words, you don’t have to do any active marketing to get the traffic, it simply flows into your site from other areas of the web.

These high quality links that you’ve earned by offering high value content on your website are exactly what you want. The links are included on sites by the site owner, not by you, and link back to your site or an article/page on your site as being an authoritative source. When people follow that link, you get traffic, and if you offer something they need or want, you’ll likely get business, as well.

Inbound marketing is extremely important to your business, but earning links is the key. Now that you know what link earning is, what inbound marketing is, and why it’s important, you should learn about the difference between link earning and link schemes and how to stay on the right side of that fine line.

Link Earning

Earning links is like earning money – if you do a good job and you provide something of value, you’ll earn links by default. The best ways to improve your chances of earning inbound links from others are below.

• • Provide informative content.
• • Offer content that is helpful and assists your readers in solving a problem.
• • Include content on your site that is written authoritatively and confidently.
• • Link to authoritative sources in your content to validate that what you are saying is true.
• • Do not write “sales pitch” content; content marketing and link earning is about establishing authority and providing information, not hard selling.

You should add content to your site that is geared towards what you sell, but not written like a sales presentation. If you own a law firm, for instance, you could write an article about what to do in a certain legal situation. Obviously you and those at your firm can help with that, but the content is not directly geared towards selling.

How does this type of content help you earn links? Because just like you should add authoritative links to your web copy and content, other people need to do the same thing. If your site is well written, has high quality content, and provides valuable information, others will find it and link to it as they create their content. This is the natural, organic method of earning inbound links to your website. It’s content marketing and link earning combined into one simple admonition: create and publish the best quality content you can – and lots of it.

Link Schemes

The evil twin of link earning is link scheming. Link schemes are essentially a less than honest way of trying to increase the number of inbound links that exist for your site. If link earning is the farmer who plants a seed, waters it, cultivates it, and grows a harvest, then link scheming is taking already grown plants, putting them in the ground on a field, and saying you grew them. Both people have plants, but only one of them truly earned the harvest.

Essentially, link schemes are “marketing” plans that include adding links to a home page or other on-site page in as many places on the web as possible. If you’ve ever gone to a blog to see a few honest comments, and then one strange comment with a link in it, the comment with a link in it was likely part of a link scheme.

Link schemes appear in many different places and link scheming is done in many ways, but below are the most common link scheming tactics you’re likely to see.

• • Adding links to a blog comment without contributing anything to the conversation.
• • Guest posting on other blogs and including links to your own site as an authoritative link.
• • Posting on YouTube videos, Facebook posts, etc. and linking to your site when it has nothing to do with the subject matter at hand.

If you have a link to your website in your signature and you are honestly contributing to a conversation on a blog that you’ve been a part of for awhile and have a genuine interest in, that’s completely different and is not link scheming. But many people will go from blog to blog posting a link to their site when they have no prior history with the blog or its community, the post adds nothing of value to the conversation, and they have no interest in the subject matter other than to obtain links for their site.

As with any unethical or less than honest practice, many people still get away with these forms of link “building”. But the search engine algorithms are a lot smarter than they once were, they know to look for these schemes, and they’re getting quite proficient at finding them. Case in point: be cautious, and earn your links naturally.

How to Avoid Link Scheming

Many people worry that they will inadvertently contribute to a link scheme without meaning to. However, “accidentally” link scheming is quite difficult to do. Most people know when they go and post a random link to their site on a YouTube video (particularly if it has nothing to do with the video) what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. But if you’re truly concerned, here are some best practices to follow.

• • Don’t include a link to your site in a blog (or other) comment if it doesn’t have to do with the subject matter.
• • Including a link to your site in your signature is fine, but only use that signature in online communities with which you are already affiliated and have a relationship.
• • Unless it’s requested, don’t link to your site on other people’s social media pages.
• • Do link to other areas of your site within articles and posts you create; this is called interlinking and is very helpful to SEO.
• • Focus on improving the content of your site instead of promoting your site elsewhere by linking to it.

Following these best practices can help ensure you earn your links, engage in high quality on-site SEO, and grow your business organically.

SEO is full of different responsibilities and things you need to consider—analytics, content, social media, design—so it can be tough to know where to start. You might have your website up and running with a little bit of content, but actually optimizing that site will take a collaborative effort between all the departments in your company. Everyone needs to be on the same page, and that all starts with prioritizing your tasks correctly.

A List to Help You Prioritize SEO Tasks

Taking a look at all of the different things you need to do in SEO is a great way to help make sure you’re on the quickest path to success. I recommend putting your different tasks into groups based on priority so you’re not wasting any time having to go back and re-do things.
Below are a few different categories you might want to consider:

First on the SEO Priority List

• • Check your indexing.

If your website isn’t being indexed by Google, you’re not showing up on the SERPs. This means that when people search for something related to your company, they have absolutely no way of finding your website. Oftentimes a noindex is just a small button you need to press or code you need to change, so it’s easy to miss.

Resource: You can visit this article learn more about changing your index status.

• • Get rid of duplicate content.

If you have a lot of duplicate content on your site you are going to get penalized, which means your company will drop in rankings on a SERP (sometimes eliminated altogether). You need to either delete these pages completely or go through and put fresh content on them in order to remain in good standings with Google.

• • Install social sharing buttons.

I always make this a priority because it’s easy to do and it’s an easy way to start building visibility for your company. Social sharing is important, so the faster you can give your visitors access to sharing your content, the better.

• • Check your navigation and design.

Before you can really begin optimizing your site, you have to have a site that works. Navigation is something that is important to Google when it comes to rankings, so make sure you don’t have too many deep pages (4 clicks to get somewhere from the homepage) and your site isn’t too confusing.

Second on the SEO Priority List

• • Mobile compatibility.

Once you have your desktop website all set to go, it’s time to move on to mobile. Even if you haven’t fully optimized your desktop site yet, I still recommend starting to think about mobile so that you have something out there. Have a responsive web design and make sure that pages can load quickly for a phone.

Resource: You can learn more about mobile optimization in this Forbes article.

• • Local search.

Again, once your website is all setup and ready to go, it’s important to get involved in local search. You need to claim your business (it may already be created even if you didn’t do it) or create a new business listing on sites like Google+ Local, Yahoo Local, and Bing Places so that you will show up for those searching locally.

Resource: Visit this article if you need help getting started with local search.

• • Get started with keyword research and content.

It’s important to do some keyword research to get an idea of what your audience is searching for and where your competition lies. Once you have an idea about terms you may want to rank for, you should get started writing content. Find good writers and put out fresh content a few times per week to get into a good rhythm.

Resource: The Google Keyword Planner is the best and most popular for keyword research.

Third on the SEO Priority List

• • Being building links.

Once your website is set and ready to go, it’s time to start building links and promoting your website by working with other authoritative sources. There are many black hat tactics out there so you have to be careful, but in general earning links for your website just takes some good quality work. Consider guest blogging for quality sites in your niche and playing around with social media contests to start creating buzz about your company.

• • Use relevant title tags.

Your page title is going to be how Google and the search engine bots learn what your page is about and then categorize it accordingly. After you’ve done your keyword research, go back and check to make sure that the content on your site has relevant title tags, or title tags that match up with your keywords/goals.

Last Priority

• • Experiment with some SEO tools.

SEO tools are an absolutely necessity for many small businesses, but I still think they can be put last on your list of things to do. You shouldn’t get fancy with SEO tools under you know you have a solid website and have a good rhythm going regarding content and link building. Once you do, tools can be very helpful (especially with analytics and data).

Resource: Check out this article for some of the best SEO tools out there.

Of course, there are quite a few more SEO tasks that you’ll need to deal with as your company continues to grow, but above are some of the biggest and most important. Let us know how you prioritize your SEO efforts or if we’ve missed anything important in the comments below.