Did you know that guest blogging builds better backlinks? I don’t understand why people don’t guest blog more. Let’s pretend for just a second that you were a celebrity and you had just finished a movie or a book. How would you promote it? You could take out ads on radio and television, or the newspapers. I guess that works, and it’s pretty expensive too. Most celebrities get out there during the month of release and heavily promote it personally themselves on every television and radio show they can. Those shows are happy to have the celebrities on because they draw in more viewers.
So – you’re not a celebrity, and you can’t get on the Tonight show to talk about your blog or web site – can you? No matter who you are though, there are blogs online that have many more readers than you do, and believe it or not – they could use your help! You may not have “celebrity power”, but if you can write engaging content – you have the same thing for any blog that a TV or radio show gets out of a celebrity appearance. You have “content power”!
Are you one of those people that wish they had more traffic? Do you wish you could double or triple your RSS subscribers? Do you keep posting and commenting on blogs relentlessly but still you get lackluster increases in web traffic? If you follow my plan for guest blogging, I believe you can build the best backlinks you’ve ever had, and get the highest returns for your time spent.
How to Guest Blog
- Find your top 20 Competitors in your niche
- Write a coverletter explaining who you are
- Contact all 20 competing blogs
- Write posts for the blogs that respond
- Give sample blog titles to blog owners for approval
- Write 1,000-2,000 word posts
- Write incredibly engaging posts
- Once posts are published, respond to all comments for at least a month
- Let the traffic roll in!
I’m sure you already know who your blog niche competitors are. If you don’t, just type in your best keywords and all the sites on the first 2 pages of google are your competitors. More than likely they all have a contact page. If they don’t, do a whois lookup (google it) and to find the email address of the domain owner and email them. What you want to do is write a coverletter, just as you would to accompany a resume for a job. Explain who you are, why you’re an expert in your niche and show direct examples of your writing online including the URL of your main blog. Offer to “guest post” for their blog a minimum 1,000 word post with accompanying graphics in exchange for a short byline with one or two links at the end. Once you get a response from these blogs, submit some sample article titles before you start to write. Then, write a post that is the most engaging you can possibly come up with. Once your article is published, check it multiple times per day for comments, and respond to each and every one as if it were your own blog. Then watch the backlink accrue!
In my case, I was researching WordPress blogs one day and I came across a list of the “top 10 wordpress blogs” on the web. The first thing I thought was “why am I not on that list?”. Then I thought, well – if I can’t make the list I’ll bet I can guest post on each and every one! Which do you think will do you more good, leaving 100 comments on blogs or writing 1,000+ word guest posts for your top 10 competitors? I’ve talked to some people who can’t bring themselves to guest post because they think it’s “giving content away”. Since when is self promotion giving content away? It’s giving a piece of yourself away mostly, because you’re showing how good your content is and giving people a reason to come back to your site and read more. It’s like putting up your realtor sign in somebody else’s yard. Every blog I’ve guest posted on this month has had more than 5,000 RSS subscribers. And guess what, the most your guest post – the easier it is to guest post at some of the biggest blogs online, because you can actually change your coverletter to say “I’ve guest posted here, and here, and here…”. I’ve written SO MUCH content for other people over the last two weeks that now I have offers stacked up for a month – and they are all to PAY ME to write content (and still get bio links at the bottom)!
If you want examples – I’ll give them to you, along with the time I invested in each.
I wrote 2 articles for wphacks.com back to back:
How To: Hack WordPress Theme Template Pages
1,700 words, 4 hours to write
How to Use WordPress Conditional Tags to Hack Your Theme
1,400 words, 3 1/2 hours to write
Then I wrote for 2 other blogs:
10 Ways to Install Accordion Menus in Your WordPress Theme
1,400 words, 6 hours to write
10 Things You can Do with WordPress Besides Blogging
3,900 Words, 11 hours to write
Conclusion
If you’re good at guest posting, you can build the best backlinks (that money CAN’T buy). The last guest post in that list was soooooo popular, that once it went live it got upwards of 100 tweets and their web host SHUT THEM DOWN. I think they had to switch web hosts, or at least upgrade – because the site was down 3 days before it came back online. I guarantee that post is SO good that page will have it’s own pagerank in 3-4 months, how much better is that backlink? Don’t envy your blog competitors, use them to your advantage – guest posting helps both you and them. And who knows, you might even network some new relationships that start projects with your competitors!
This is a great way to get links to your blog. I have used it in one of my blogs and I think everybody should invite people to write as a guest to their blogs. You can get a perfetcly anchored keyword to your site or better a post when doing guest blogging on a site that is in the same niche as yours.
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JT,
You are absolutely right! All sorts of people write GREAT content and not enough people see it, so they give up. Guest posting is a chance to show people the quality of your content. If they like your work, they’ll read your site and you’ve earned a subscriber (the good kind that stays).
Well put!
I’ve always thought that backlinking was a great way to build traffic. My problem has always been fear of rejection. Not the fear that they wouldn’t let me write a guest post, but the fear that they wouldn’t like the posts that I write. I always feel like I need to step it up a notch when writing for someone else and it stresses me out to write above and beyond my normal style.
Great post. I’m going to have to just suck it up and jump back in to guest posting.
.-= Matt Wolfe´s last blog ..The Power of Twitter =-.
I am new to blogging (and old hat at blathering about on the keyboard though), and this sounds like a rock solid idea to me. Although if you have a new blog with only a few posts should you build up 10-20 posts before hitting the guest blogging circuit or just jump right in and hope they don’t send you packing with a boot print on your bum?
I would definitely put up 10-20 posts first before asking to guest blog. That’ll give you time to find 10 blogs you really like, comment like mad and become known – and then pop the question. You might think about putting up some articles on ezine articles first as well.
I always wondering wether it’s good to invite people to write on our blog. And what you had wrote above is very interesting..
.-= allroundus´s last blog ..No lawyer ever runs out of the intellect =-.
Inversely what are your thoughts on allowing others to guest post on one’s blog? Would there be an equal benefit in that other than the extra content. Perhaps some carry over traffic from those that follow that blogger. Might be especially helpful if you don’t have time to blog every day I would think.
.-= Earth Friendly Goodies´s last blog ..Create Your Own Organic Tea Blend and Win Moolah =-.
a great idea and sound advice , i’m currently looking to build my backlinks and this is a tactic i never thought about
This is good advice. It does hinge on on a few things though – you need to be able to write good content (obviously), keep feeding good content to your own blog as well, and be able to talk competitors into featuring your posts on their blogs. If you’re able to pull it off it should give you a great payoff!
.-= Driver Genius´s last blog ..Driver Genius – Professional Driver Management =-.
Great advice, I never really though about writing as a guest for my competitors only because my thinking was why would they want to help me out if they are my competitors. I will have to give this a try.
That’s solid advice and makes sense. I have started with ezine articles, but not that much posts on my own blog. So I will first build my blog and in the meantime find blogs in the same niche that I can comment on and later suggest a guest post.
.-= Claudia / Diet on Autopilot´s last blog ..“How Many Calories to Lose Weight Calculator” =-.
Great post.
I am rather new to all this and i have tried to read up on a lot of other peoples ideas. However most other people go on and on and never really make sense.
Your mblog is different is very informative and easy to understand.