Want to increase your online exposure and raise awareness for your brand? Guest blogging can help you accomplish both of these goals and benefit your search optimization strategy.

Guest blogging is the practice of publishing content on another blog in an effort earn more website traffic. Developing content for a blog that’s not your own provides you with a great opportunity to share your expertise and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Guest blogging also allows you to develop relationships with other bloggers within your field. Because of the exposure that guest blogging provides your business, a best practice is to return the favor by accepting guest posts on your own blog.

When taking into consideration some of the criteria that Google uses to rank content–authority, freshness, and quality–it’s evident that guest blogging will benefit your search engine optimization strategy.

However, it’s also important to note that there are marketers that abuse the concept of guest blogging in an attempt to boost their search ranking. Some marketers use guest blogging as their primary link building strategy. They prioritize building links over creating quality content that adds value to readers. In some cases, these marketers even guest post on blogs that are irrelevant to their business or industry. These black hat search engine optimization practices will hurt your brand’s reputation and get you penalized by search engines like Google.

Writing guest blog posts will benefit your search engine optimization strategy assuming that you’re doing the following:

1. Only post on relevant blogs.
The idea of guest blogging is to get your business in front of a new audience that is already interested in topics relevant to your industry. By providing your own unique perspective on a topic related to your business and industry, you can position yourself as an authority and earn new followers.

2. Don’t abuse rich anchor text links.
Rich anchor text refers to clickable text in a hyperlink that tells search engines what the linked-to page is all about. Some marketers use anchor text as an opportunity to get the content on their website to rank for specific keywords, even if the linked-to page has nothing to do with that keyword. This is a poor search engine optimization practice that will get you penalized.

3. Include links to other websites that benefit the reader.
When you’re writing a guest blog post, there may be times when it would benefit the reader to include links to websites other than your own. Don’t be afraid to share the love.

4. Build up your author rank.
The more quality, value-added content that you publish, the higher Google will determine your author rank is. When Google considers you to be credible and an authority in your industry, your content will be ranked higher.

When looking for opportunities to guest post, talk to your peers and influencers in your industry. Keep in mind that guest blogging should be a two-way street, so offer to return the favor by businesses relevant to your industry to guest post on your blog. When guest blogging is done right, you will see an increase in referral traffic, sales, and website authority.