GUEST POSTING

Guest Posting to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

So, what is guest posting?

How do I find the places to guest post?

Search in Google: Keyword + “become a contributor”

Keyword + “become a guest blogger” Keyword + “become a guest writer” Keyword + “bloggers wanted” Keyword + “guest contributor” Keyword + “guest post by” Keyword + “guest post guidelines” Keyword + “guest post” Keyword + “my guest posts” Keyword +“submit a guest post” Keyword + “write for us” Keyword + inurl:guest-post-

guidelines Keyword + inurl:guest-posts Keyword + inurl:write-for-us

Things You Should Pay Attention to

Look for platforms where it will make sense to readers for you to post. The niche doesn't have to be identical, but there should be an overlap in audience, and you should be able to offer something valuable to them that also makes sense from a branding perspective.

Things You Should Pay Attention to

• Check the PageRank and SEM Rush traffic to make sure the blog has the right ranking factors.

• Check for activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

• Look for a large subscriber count.• Does the site publish any of its own

material, or just guest posts?

Things You Should Avoid

• Blogs that accept all content sent their way with the obvious goal of publishing as much content as quickly as possible.

• Sites with excessive ads.• Sites that have already been penalized. Always check to

make sure that the blog ranks for its own brand name and other things it should clearly rank for, in order to ensure that it hasn't been penalized.

Things You Should Avoid

• Sites that allow visitors to post an article directly without approval from humans. These should always be avoided.

• Blogs that have fake followers on social networks. Check through a few profiles and you can usually identify whether they are human rather quickly.

Developing an Outside-the-Box Guest Post Idea

Great resources out there that can help you come up with original ideas:

• Content Strategy Generator Tool – This tool from SEOgadget shares content ideas from Bing News, Reddit, YouTube, Topsy and so on.

• Google Analytics – Keywords that people are landing on your site for are a good place to start.

• Google Alerts – Try digging through your alerts emails and seeing if you can spot patterns or trends in the news that others may not have picked up on..

Outreach Tools

GroupHigh – Identify influential bloggers, track their reach, and send personalized messages through email or Twitter. Set up workflows and reminders to manage your contacts, and take advantage of geo-targetting for local clients.

BlogDash – Find and reach out to bloggers who already want to be contacted.

Rapportive – Get social feedback on your contacts directly from Gmail.

Buzz Stream – Manage your contacts easily so you can focus on link building and relationship building.

Create your guest posting profile

• Choose the name and create the email with the name (John.Doe@gmail.com, NOT swaster1976@gmail.com)

• Find the photo you will use in author bios, Gravatar and social media profiles

• Create Facebook, Twitter and Google+ profiles and update it few times a week, you may link to them in author bios, if Website link goes in the post

When it comes to letter…DON’Ts

Hello Chris, I’m Joe, the Social Media Manager, Sales Coordinator, Head Copywriter, Client Rep

Manager and an SEO Consultant (yes I wear many hats) at Matter Solutions in Brisbane, Australia. We are moving our operations from a traditional SEO base into Inbound Marketing and as such I have been tasked to do some guest blogging on appropriate sites and found yours through the Citation Labs Link Prospector Tool (if you haven’t used this before I just used it for the first time and it’s incredible, do try). Your blog is exactly the sort of blog that I’d love to write some content for.

A lot of my focus lately has been on getting our clients to contribute to the content creation process whether by creating their own content or simplifying the creative process for them. We have established techniques and practices that we have our clients engage in that allows us to create better, more interesting content for them. To start I think a guest blog on this topic,  ”Encouraging Clients to Produce Content” [would be a good fit].

Let me know if this is something to your liking and I’ll get started on it right away. Hope you’re having a good day mate.

Keep it short and get down to business ASAP!

When it comes to letter…DON’Ts• Don’t act hungry for links• Don’t set your own rules• Don’t send any article in the first letter• Don’t admit you’re trying to trump

Google

When it comes to letter…DOs Hello!

My name is John Doe and I am freelance writer from New York. I would like to suggest a guest post: "Best ways to land a guest post" for YOURBLOG.com.Please, let me know what you think about this idea.

Thank you!Best wishes, John Doe

When it comes to letter…DOs

Hi Will Smith, My name is Mark Sams and I am the webmaster

at MySite.com. I stumbled on to your post on increasing your Adsense revenue and I thought it was very informative. If you are interested I would love to write a post about “forgotten Adsense tools” that I think your audience would really like.

Please let me know if you like this post idea or would like me to write about something else and I can get started right away. Thanks!

Sincerely,Mark Sams

If you can’t put the link in the article body…

• Make your author bio fun to read so that readers see you as a person, not an automaton.

• Mention your brand name and don't focus on keywords. Branding matters!

• Include links where they make the most sense and where they will drive maximum conversions, not where they send the (already outdated) signals to the search engines.

• Encourage readers to contact you directly via Twitter or email so that they know you're available and ready to start a conversation with them.

Good luck!