With post-pandemic business recovery, advantages of traditional approaches to web marketing have gained additional importance. Similar to how jurisdictions and economies went into the crisis unevenly, they are now recovering at a different speed: whilst for many it is already “business as usual”, others still struggle with getting back to it.
Web marketing was only minorly affected by the lockdown, but at the same time played a huge role in finding new customers who, facing similar restrictions, took most of their purchases to the Internet. Let’s look at one of the most common ways to guide them to the seller of goods and services they’re after – you.
“Signposts” bringing potential customers to your website are known as “backlinks” – external referring links on other pages, preferably looking naturally in the text read by soon-to-be visitors. Choosing an appropriate source is one of the important nuances of guest posting. For example, your company may put high priority on the British market. In order to get backlinks from UK, SEO experts should aim at website names ending with “.UK” (the 5th most popular top-level domain as of 2016 – Wiki).
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Key Differences to Remember
Guest posting should be distinguished from two other similar approaches to getting backlinks.
- Whenever an external resource is paid for placement of an article containing backlinks, that is called sponsored posting.
- If a popular website is paid for mentioning your brand, it is an example of native advertising.
- Finally, if no one is paid other than your own content managers who write an article to be republished by a website with high traffic, that is the essence of “classic” guest posting.
All three may be referred to different approaches, and as long as they bring high quality backlinks, choosing between them will matter more for the budget rather than search engine optimization itself. On the other hand, sponsored posting is generally less efficient as compared to guest posting because, like clickmeter.com says, in the former case we are virtually “at the mercy of the content writer” who may choose whatever anchor he or she likes, no matter how unnaturally it looks.
The “New Normal” of the Post-Covid-19 Era
Getting backlinks in 2021 clearly has unique specificity. Economic consequences of the pandemic appeared to be much worse as compared to even the global financial crisis of 2008. It may be one of many other aspects of search engine optimization – and only a tiny nuance of the whole development strategy at the higher organizational level – but backlink building still has an important role to play as a facilitator of business recovery.
As such, it should take into account other efforts made the recovering business to ensure its continuity and fast adaptation to the post-pandemic reality, for example:
- Emphasizing sustainable development in its stakeholder outreach;
- Taking interests of key stakeholders into account when making decisions;
- Alignment of all actions with corporate values;
- Working across several time horizons.
After being presumably very close to liquidation (at least some may have thought of you that way), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that promoted content has to clearly manifest your company’s intention to live long and prosper. With that in mind, you commence the very first step of any guest posting strategy – identification of goals and tasks to be solved. These could, for example:
- Increasing brand recognition, or
- Attracting new subscribers to your database.
But the emphasis on sustainable development demands higher priority for tasks like increasing organic traffic to your website to a certain extent which may even be quantitatively defined in the strategy.
The second step of making a list of resources for potential posting will also be affected and, believe it or not, integrated with the whole organizational strategy. Here is a good example. Because of the European “Green Deal”, by the year 2050 all the EU businesses will have to ensure carbon neutrality (or face fines otherwise). As indication of their ongoing restructuring processes to ensure compliance with the new requirement, companies might want to address a specific audience.
That new audience is not necessarily the main consumer to increase the number of successful landings on the website with further conversion into buying customers, but rather providers of long-term capital. Higher priority to raising external finance would now definitely affect decisions related to choosing target websites for posting as well as subjects for content to be posted and terms of further negotiations with website owners.
Long Road Ahead
As one clearly sees, guest posting has obviously remained one of the main tools to attract visitors to your corporate website. What changed in 2021, however, are macroeconomic conditions which dictate new strategies to be adapted for further survival.
Business recovery is going unevenly, just like it was with diving into the crisis. On the one hand, it is all about getting on your feet sooner than others. But there is more to it. The recent crisis has again demonstrated a centuries-old wisdom which says that the fastest doesn’t necessarily win the race.
Read More: What is guest posting and how it can increase your traffic?
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