Guest posting has become one of the most widely used marketing tactics. As the catalyst for new B2B partnerships and a driver of referral traffic, guest posting plays a key role in attracting new leads to a branded site.
According to experts at OptinMonster, 60% of bloggers write at least 1-5 guest posts per month in an attempt to score quality backlinks, social shares and new traffic to their own blog.
The question is, how do you ensure your guest posting campaign is successful? Once published, measuring the metrics can provide you with information about what topics drive the most leads and which articles contain the most conversion-worthy backlinks.
From analyzing referral traffic to syncing social shares, we’ll teach you how to measure the value of your next guest blogging campaign.
5 Ways To Measure The Value of Guest Blogging Campaigns
1. Analyzing Your Referral Traffic
One of the easiest ways to measure the quality of your guest posting campaign is to monitor your referral traffic. One of the key indicators that your guest post has been successful is an increase in site traffic after the article goes live.
If your post has caught consumer attention, you should see your number of page visitors rise, engagement metrics peak, and your inserted backlink drive referrals.
One way to track your referral traffic is to leverage an analytic platform such as Google Analytics to help you track your exact numbers and detect patterns that correspond to particular guest posts.
This brings us to referral sources. Google Analytics is a great tool to use to compare your referral sources across every guest post. Clicking on ‘All Traffic’ and then ‘Referrals’ will bring up a list of all websites that have referred traffic to your site. When clicking on each source, compare your referral traffic data amongst guest post websites to work out which guest posting partnership is driving the most engaged visitors to your brand.
The referral sources with the highest traffic-generating power are the ones you want to re-use and re-engage with as a returning guest post writer.
2. Measuring Your Backlink Quality & Quantity
Did you know that 65% of backlinks are generated by guest posts?
The more backlinks you have to your chosen page or site, the higher the chance of converting qualified leads. Better still, brands that obtain backlinks from competitors are more likely to be viewed as authoritative players in their industry and rise up quickly amongst the SERPS.
One way to ensure high-quality backlink generation is to analyze the authority of your chosen guest posting sites before you outreach your content. Using tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you determine whether a website would drive quality traffic to your site.
The key here is to measure metrics such as domain authority (DA) and domain rating (DR) to determine how well a website ranks during an organic search. The higher the authority, the better the quality of the backlink will be.
Another way to ensure backlink success is to choose relevant sites for your content posting. This includes competitors. If you can engage in a guest post partnership with a brand that is closely linked to yours, your content is likely to be viewed by consumers from your own target demographic.
Moving forward, the goal is to focus on building relationships with reputable brands that naturally align themselves with your values and content. While quality backlinks can be hard to obtain, they have a strong last impact on your site’s search engine authority.
3. Tracking Post Engagement
While tracking post engagement is rather self-explanatory, it’s often a measurement tactic that is missed by marketers. Referral traffic and backlink generation are important, but measuring the success of your content on another blog is also vital.
Make sure you’re tracking metrics such as time on the page, bounce rate and even engagement with other non-branded backlinks. After you’ve done this, we suggest you chose another high-performing guest post on the same site and compare its engagement metrics.
This comparison could tell you that your content may not be the best fit for your source’s audience or could influence structure changes when writing traffic-generating guest posts in the future.
4. Syncing Social Shares
In a social-media-dominated world, 60% of online consumers use social platforms to share content. These shares not only drive more traffic to referral links but build brand awareness across socials.
The key here is to measure the social media impact of your guest posts. This consists of monitoring post shares across all platforms, the social reach of each share and, of course, the comments and replies in response.
Engaging in social listening, using a social media analytics tool, can help a brand identify audience trends and understand what works and what doesn’t.
You can also use analytic tools to compare engagement metrics of your regular social posts against your guest post shares. This can give you an idea of whether your guest post content is performing at the same level as your other social posts.
Lastly, keep track of your social-media referrals and conversions. Measure how many referrals you receive from social shares alone. This will help determine how many followers are clicking through your site content after engaging with your guest post.
5. Monitoring Lead Generation & Conversions
Conversions are the most important metric to track, especially if you’re looking to see an ROI from your guest blogging campaigns. Ultimately, your guest blogs should drive conversions and align with your business goals.
In order to track your conversion success, regularly analyze your metrics before and after guest posting. If you see a steady rise in lead generation, your campaign is succeeding.
Better still, take note of which topics are generating the most conversions. These topics are likely to be trending with your target audience and could influence future guest blogs.
Guest Blogging Trends Of Tomorrow
There are lots of different ways to engage in a guest posting campaigns. Whether you create content in-house or employ a guest posting service to create and outreach lead-driving content, it’s clear that this moneyless marketing method is one to influence your revised strategy.
As startups succeed amongst the SERPS, gaining high-quality backlinks is your ticket to the top. For those that prioritize metric measurement, creating the perfect guest post opportunity is just a few steps away.
Read Also:
- 140+ Authority Websites That Accept Guest Posts
- The Ultimate Guest Blogging Guide For Beginners
- Did You Know These Striking Facts About Blogging?
Author Bio:
Hi, I’m Neve, a content writer at Solvid Digital. I’m a marketer with a passion for writing, especially marketing and technology content. Feel free to check out my Gravatar and LinkedIn!
