Guest Blog Post ROI: How to Measure the Success of Your Guest Post
Did you know 57% of bloggers get their content from guest posts?
With that in mind, it’s fair to say guest posts can have a high return on investment for both the blog owner and contributor.
Before delving into how you can measure the success of your guest blog post, here are a few benefits you need to know:
- It helps you create backlinks to your website to increase traffic
- Exposes you to a larger platform in which to share your knowledge
- You can build popularity as an authority in your niche
Keep on reading to learn more!
Measuring the Success of Guest Blog Posts
Measuring the success of a guest post is not possible based on an isolated metric. There must be a combination of tools and metrics. You want to be sure that you are getting the maximum return on investment.
Here are a few approaches you can use to determine how well your guest post is doing online:
Traffic and Leads
One of the goals behind guest blogging is to generate relevant traffic to your site. However, do not start guest posting all for the sake of building traffic. You might get disappointed sooner because people do not just click on links for the sake of it.
Your site will generate high traffic if it gets referral guest blogging traffic. It means that people have to know about your site first to trust your expertise. This said, start by building a reputable site before settling into guest posting for traffic generation.
Do not use traffic and leads as an isolated metric to measure the success of your guest post. Combine it with custom reporting to check the URLs that reference back to your site.
Social Shares
Social share is an old referral method but very useful. If your readers appreciate the value of your guest post, they will want to share it with the rest of the community. The socials shares build your traffic and enhance brand awareness.
Social shares work in the same way as external links to contribute to a brand’s authority. They serve as an indication of verifiable external sources that validate your content. Once the social share links are found by search engines, they form a ground for improvement in your domain authority.
Replies, likes, favorites, share, and re-tweets are all social shares that count towards increasing your authority. You can encourage social sharing of your posts by offering rewards or conducting interactive surveys.
You can increase the probability of your readers sharing the blog by making the post more empathetic and actionable. Social shares are also a search engine optimization tactic. Provide valuable content to your audience and see your site rank high.
Google Analytics
Regardless of the blogging platform, you can use Google Analytics to measure the success of your guest posts. Most blogging platforms, like HubSpot, have built-in analytics. Others, like WordPress, have Analytics plug-in that tracks visitors.
Google Analytics can be complicated to use when starting out. Start with measuring one or two metrics to familiarize with how it works first. Once you are comfortable, you can start using it on a larger scale.
Through Google Analytics, you can establish the reasons that make your posts popular.
- Is it the post length?
- Do your topics resonate with the audience?
- How do the posts rank?
- What is the number of social shares?
Once you know which posts have been read the most, you can create complementary web content informed by those topics. You can also update the posts with relevant information. By doing so, you will drive more traffic to your blog.
Brand Mentions
As you build your brand through guest blogging, you also gain a reputation as an authority in the niche. It is not surprising that even huge brands use guest posting to build their brands further. It makes sense for small brands with a limited digital marketing budget to use guest blog posts to get their names out there.
If you monitor the number of times your brand is mentioned in a guest posting campaign you can tell how successful your efforts are. Two tools that can help you track brand mentions in both digital media outlets and social media are:
- Brandmentions.com which sends alerts to your email whenever your brand name is mentioned. The database is not only massive but very fast.
- Mention is an excellent tool for monitoring social media mentions. The software also sends email digests for easy scrolling.
Average On-Page Time
On average, 55% of site visitors stay for fewer 15 seconds. With the increasing digital distractions and the decreasing attention spans, you will have to put a lot more effort to have visitors read through an entire blog post.
The length of stay on a blog post is a metric that indicates how compelling your guest blog is to the readers. Provide clear and easy-to-read content to boost the average length of stay. This will also decrease the bounce rate.
If your readers take their time to understand what your content is all about, they are likely to become your subscribers. If your aim is to sell, quality content is likely to convert those subscribes to buyers.
Images and graphics encourage readers to read through the post. Adding a question at the end of your article will increase reader engagement. Go for cutting-edge topics and people will most likely take time to answer your question.
Final Thoughts
Guest blogging exposes your company to a new and broader audience. It not only increases brand awareness but also boosts your readership.
Measuring the success of your guest blog post can be approached in many ways min feedback her. They include brand mentions, page engagement, social media shares, and the length of visitor stay. However, remember not to use any approach in isolation.
Combining the metrics will give you better results. If your post provides value to your readers and solves a problem for them, it is highly likely that it will lead to high conversion rates.
If you’re looking for sites that offer guest posting opportunities, get started here.