I've long advocated incorporating guest blogging in your online marketing as a great way to build visibility in your niche. When you carefully target the blogs you where you want to guest blog, you can generate ongoing traffic to your site and establish credibility in your subject area.
This is a guest post by Susanne Myers of DailyAffiliateTasks.com.
Why Guest Blogging?
Whenever I need to generate more traffic to one of my niche websites, the first strategy I turn to is guest blogging. I love the fact that I can get in front of an established audience (the loyal readers of the blog I’m posting on), share my content and then invite them to check out my own site. It’s a great way to get a big surge of traffic directly from the blog and to also build some strong incoming links that will help will search engine traffic for years to come.
Where To Guest Blog?
Your first goal will be to come up with a list of bloggers that you can approach about guest blogging. You want to find about 10 blogs that cater to the same niche you are in. Don’t go after the really big names at first. Instead focus on some established blogs that are getting traffic. Look at the number of comments. I like to go after blogs that average 5 or more comments per post. This usually indicates that the blog is getting some traffic and has some loyal readers.
How To Guest Blog And Get Published?
Your next job will be to spend some time reading the blogs you’ve selected. Browse through the archives and add the RSS feed of the blog to your favorite RSS reader. You want to accomplish two things here:
- Get a feel for the blog and the types of posts that are published.
- Start commenting regularly to start building a relationship with the blogger.
After a couple of days two things should happen. You will start to get ideas for blog posts you can write for each blog and the blog owner should start to recognize your name from all the awesome comments you have left.
Write one of those guest blog posts and send it to the blogger. Rinse and repeat with the other blogs on your list. Don’t bother emailing the blogger first asking if they’d like a post… go ahead and send them the finished blog post. It’ll make it easier for them to just plug it in and publish.
To increase your chances of getting the post published, link back to one or two posts on the blog or include an affiliate link for the blogger (you can find those within other posts on the blog). The idea here is to make it even more beneficial for the blogger to post what you’ve written. The more there’s in it for them, the harder it will be for the blog owner to say “No” to your guest post proposal.
What’s Next?
Keep writing and sending off more guest blog posts. Once a post gets published, spend a little time promoting it. Tweet about it, post a link on Facebook etc. You’ll end up getting more traffic from each guest blog post that way and you may just be invited to guest blog on those sites again.
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Learn more about how to get targeted traffic to your sites in a series that includes four additional articles.
About the Author: Sweet and smart, Susanne Myers is a little power house with a huge affiliate marketing presence but, don’t let her quiet demeanor fool you. Susanne’s brain works at the speed of light formulating plans and plotting to take over whatever niche she happens to be working on at the time.
The journey to a 6-figure income was filled with twists, turns and yes, failure but Susanne, never let the mistakes get her down. She educated herself and quickly learned how to choose profitable niche markets and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, Susanne has taken her love of all things internet & affiliate marketing and has started to teach others how to claim the same success she’s found by using a step-by-step, this-is-exactly-how-I-did-it strategy and she’s willing to teach it to you.
I think the main thing to look for when guest blogging is relevance. Don’t just post wherever or else you might get caught up in those spammy article networking sites. Just keep everything original and always focus on your quality.
I have seen the awesome site lists from this http://guestpostblog.weebly.com/ which allows guest author. There are lot of benefits like quick response, fast approval and so on. You really enjoy it.
Thanks, Susanne, for your insight into guest blogging. Especially the point you made about contacting the blog owner. Bloggers should select blogs that are related to what they want to write about. I’ve received many request to guest blog about content that wouldn’t benefit my readers.
Great tips and strategies, I know I should be doing some guest blogging but really didn’t know how to go about asking the blog owner. Sending them the article, ready to publish is an excellent suggestion.
While I don’t do a lot of guest blogging these days, when I was a guest blogger on Social Media Examiner (for about a year), traffic to my primary site increased as well as new subscribers. It’s definitely worth the time and effort. Thanks, Susanne, for clearly laying out the steps to get started.