Guest posting is a great way to attract traffic to your blog. Here are 3 tips for success.
Guest posting is one of the primary ways to attract traffic to your blog. However, many bloggers still have only a rather vague understanding of how to use this method.
If you find yourself stumbling about for the right approach, here is some advice.
1. Understand what high-quality content is
A good guest post is supposed to do its job – both for you and for the target blog. It may sound obvious, but it is amazing how many bloggers forget this essential truth.
- The post should be attractive for target blog’s audience. This is achieved by choosing a topic reflecting their interests and choosing a catchy title.
- The topic should fall into the interest range of your own audience. You don’t want random people coming to your blog; once they see you don’t cover their interests, they will immediately leave.
- Pay special attention to your call to action. Make it creative, unusual, quirky – anything but bland and forgettable author bios written by the vast majority of guest bloggers.
- You should be just as careful about designing and writing your landing page. It doesn’t matter how much traffic your post is going to attract if they all immediately turn back on seeing the landing page.
- The freebie you seduce visitors with shouldn’t include language like, “sign up for regular blog updates.” People are inundated with information overload as it is, they don’t want your blog on top of this.
2. Choose target blogs
Make sure your target blogs are firmly rooted in the same niche as you. You should share basic audience or at least some interests of this audience.
If you land a guest post on a blog read by ex-military personnel while your own blog is generally aimed at teenage girls, it will hardly do you any good, no matter how great a post you write. Guest posting services usually can help you with the choice of target blogs, but if you work on your own, you will have to do a bit of analysis.
Another point to consider is whether the blog you’ve chosen is worth writing for. Guest posting is a time- and effort-intensive work. Wasting your time on blogs with subpar readership is just this – wasting time. See if the target blog posts high-quality content, has authoritative link profile and can bring you targeted traffic (use Alexa to measure the traffic).
3. Contact the editor
Consider the viewpoint of the editor. When you run a popular website deal with a great deal of correspondence every day, you are selective about what to publish.
Do your due diligence when it comes to submissions.
- Research the site. Follow the content being posted, note the style of posts, topics covered, opinions expressed.
- Communicate with the blog and its community. Leave comments, talk to people, making sure you have something valuable to say. The editor should recognize your name when you finally write to them.
- In your letter, concentrate on the benefits of your post for the blog, not for you.
- Talk to the editor in a way that seems appropriate for the blog and their personality. Be confident but not cheeky, polite but not obsequious.
- Be concise. Your query letter should be no longer than 100-150 words.
- Offer the ideas for the post right off the bat. It will give you more opportunities to pique the editor’s curiosity.
Writing a guest post is far from being the most complicated part of the work. Preparation is everything – so make sure you do a lot of it.
See related: 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Corporate Blogging
Photo credit: WAYHOME studio/Shutterstock
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