Guest blogging, or writing a piece of content for someone else's website, can be a great way to give your own business blog a shot in the arm. It has the potential to improve your search rankings, enhance your reputation and bring in new customers. 
Broadly speaking, there are three main benefits of guest blogging: increased reach, improved credibility and link building.
Increased Reach
People can buy from you only if they know you exist. As Google+ has deftly illustrated, the online world is comprised of overlapping circles. Each person only views content from within their network of friends and the sites they frequent, and each site has its own circle of readers. By guest blogging, you gain exposure within a whole new circle. Though there may be some overlap between the audiences—people who follow both blogs—you will still be reaching new people who otherwise may never hear of you.
Your reach expands even more if some of these new readers share your content with their network of friends.
Some of these new people may end up following your own blog and/or become customers down the road. Some may have their own sites, allowing you to network with more bloggers in your industry and perhaps find additional guest blogging opportunities. There are many chances to expand your reach into what is hopefully an ever-widening circle.
Improved Credibility
When done correctly, guest blogging can boost your credibility with both human readers and search engines.
Authoring a guest blog post serves as outside validation that you are an authority on the subject, or at least someone worth listening to. Anyone can post on their own blog, regardless of quality. But if someone else wants you to post on their blog, that implies to readers that you have the respect of others in the industry.
And now that Google is tracking AuthorRank, it can have a similar effect on the impersonal search algorithms. If another site, or at least a well-respected site, carries your content, Google will interpret that as a sign that you are a more influential author. Your improved AuthorRank will then contribute to the search rankings of all your authored content, including your own site.
Link Building
AuthorRank is a new and as of yet mostly untested SEO factor. Link building, however, is a well-established contributor to search engine rankings.
Guest blogging is one sure way to build quality links back to your site. Though the site you are writing for probably will not want you to stuff your post with what for them are offsite links, it is standard to at least have a short bio that links to the author's blog. As with AuthorRank, the value of that link will depend on the reputation and relevance of the site on which it appears.
One link might not seem like much, but your expanded reach and audience can easily lead to additional links and social media shares of your site's content.
Though it may take some work and some time, these benefits of guest blogging can make the effort well worthwhile.
* Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
