Effective Guest Blogging and Posting Strategies

Guest blogging involves posting a blog entry or article on someone else’s blog or website. Successful guest blogging has many benefits, including:

  • Access to a wider audience
  • Get valuable backlinks (search engines like to see external links pointing to your site)
  • Gain authority and credibility

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The importance of targeted guest blogging

Guest blogging can be time-consuming, but it is a highly beneficial SEO (search engine optimization) strategy that can direct large numbers of new users to your website.

Therefore, it is essential for you to concentrate your efforts on sites that get lots of traffic.

Effective strategies for guest blogging and posting

Below are some steps you can take to increase your guest blogging and posting success.

Research

Research the top blogging sites in your niche – use Alexa.com to view the traffic ranking for the blogs that are of interest to you. (Alexa is not always accurate, but it provides a great estimate.)

Alexa ranking ranges from a scale of 1 (extremely good traffic) to the millions (sites having little to no traffic).

For example, a site with a global Alexa Traffic Rank of 100K will have much more traffic than one with a global rank of 1M. Below is a snapshot of Google.com’s #1 Alexa ranking. Facebook has a #2 ranking.

Google's Alexa Ranking

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Be Active

Become an active user of your selected blog(s) and engage with other visitors. Befriend others, share stories and even message other users.

As part of your research, you need to see that the blog site accepts guest posts.

This information is normally prominently stated somewhere on the site. Or review articles that have been posted to find one that is a guest post.

Create

Create an article that you believe will be of interest to the readers of that blog. Make sure you really understand the culture of the blog (writing style, user type – the comments will give you an idea, what do people like about the blog – again, review the comments, formatting look, etc.).

This will allow you to determine how best to create your guest blog to ensure you are providing something that will be of interest to that blog’s users.

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Email the owner of the blog

Send a short and to the point email to the owner of the blog site. Inform him/her that you have drafted an article that could be a great read for users of the blog, and ask if they would like to take a look.

I don’t recommend sending the attachment until they’ve requested it. Due to the increasing number of “drive-by” malicious email attacks, many people will immediately delete an email with unsolicited attachments without even opening it. (The inbox attachment icon shows which emails have attachments.)

All you have to do with some malicious emails is open the email (you don’t even have to open the attachment anymore), and immediately a virus downloads to your computer, without you realizing it – not cool!

Include your Link

When guest blogging, ensure that you include a link to your blog or website. You normally can add your url to the biography section at the end of your guest post.

When users of the blog read your guest post, they’ll see your link at the bottom and some will click through to visit your blog page.

This is why it is essential that you select a blog that has a high level of traffic.

The more users who frequent the blog, the higher the number that will read your guest post and click through to visit your site.

Bloggers are becoming inundated with guest posting requests

Neil Patel, owner of Quicksprout.com (a very popular blog site) stated the following about guest blogging and why bloggers are now ignoring such requests:

"Blog guesting has become such a mainstream method of marketing that bloggers are becoming inundated with guest posting requests, which is causing them to ignore the requests. In the last three months, I’ve received 931 requests for guest post submissions on quicksprout.com. Out of the 931 requests, do you know how many I’ve accepted? 0! And, this is because all of the pitches I get are either spammy or just terrible."

Keep this at the back of your mind when you draft that email and ensure that your email request is personalized to that particular blog or blogger.

What is it about the blog that attracts you? Make a good "concise" case as to the benefits your post will bring to the site. It is a two way street after all.

You benefit by gaining exposure and the site owner gains by getting a free high-quality and insightful article on his site that provides value to his or her users.

If you can't tell the owner quickly how your post can benefit them, then it might be very difficult to get a response back.

– Ogbe Airiodion