May 7, 2013 by Daniel Sharkov|
It seems like most bloggers are rather reluctant to try guest blogging…It might be that guest blogging is a big dedication of time and energy, it might be that they are just not sure whether the writing will be worth the while, or it might be that they prefer using the content for their own blogs. Nevertheless the truth is guest blogging WORKS.
It not only works, but it works better than you might think it does.
And with today’s post I am hoping to motivate you to get started with guest blogging as soon as possible!
In the below paragraphs I’ve covered the preparations you need to do for a successful guest blogging campaign, tips to get you going, which blogs are worth writing for and
most importantly the results from my four-month guest blogging quest!
If you want to make the most out of your guest blogging efforts, you first need the right medium. And setting up a blog is not all you need. The flock of visitors that you will hopefully get,
will only matter if you have the means to convert it. Traffic on its own is useless. New subscribers, followers and clients on the other hand aren’t. With that in mind, here are three elements to consider BEFORE you start sending guest post proposals:
Proper design is the first consideration if you’d like lower bounce ratesand people spending more time on your blog. The first thing a visitor will notice after landing on your blog will be its design. As we all know colors and visual information are perceived faster than a block of text, which is your content, no matter how well-structured. So if your blog looks like a mess, you will lose potential readers straight away.
A good design can prove the difference between VISITORS and READERS.
So how do you make sure you won’t scare away first-timers?
Header & Tagline– The number one thing a visitor needs to know when entering your blog is what to expect. When people come from a link in a guest post, they obviously have a clue about your writing. And still one article can’t be conclusive. That is why a stylized header (not simply letters) and a descriptive tagline are a must.
Color Usage– There should only be a handful of colors in your theme. You need one main colorthat’ll be used to add personality along your blog’s elements and your social profiles. Aside from that best is to keep it simple. The simpler it is the less flaws there will be.
Usability- The problem with blogs is there’s not much to do on them. I mean you click on a link, you read the article, you even enjoy it, but in most cases after that you leave the blog. You could make it a bit more engaging by including category navigation bar below your header (like the one on the screenshot), adding the nRelate pluginto show related content and installing THATpopular posts plugin to display your best content.
NOTE:
When it comes to design, using a premium theme can be a great starting point. For instance the Genesis Framework(which I use) provides you with a wide variety of highly optimized themes in terms of looks, code and SEO.
Chances are most visitors won’t decide to buy a product you promote. If they enjoy your content however, they will want to connect. So, the most obvious thing you need is social media icons and buttons.If you are on WordPress there are a few plugins that’ll do the job:
Social Media Widget– That one allows you to include your social accounts in the form of animated icons. You can see them in action on the right of this blog’s header. There are four different animations and four icon styles, so you should be able to find what suits you.I’d advise you to include those either where mine are or as the first widget in your sidebar. Really Simple Share– That one adds all the sharing buttons you could think of above and below your posts. There is also the option to put a sharebar, but I’d advise you to use the Flare plugin, which you can see below. Flare– That one as I mentioned adds a sharebar on the side of your posts. The difference is it’s just more eye-catching and better-looking. You get stylized buttons for the different networks with the number of shares displayed and also a “flare score” – the total shares your post has received.
The other part to your social strategy are the followers. Aside from being people with whom you share your content, your followers also serve as a social proof.
The more you have, the more you get. So, here are three tools to help you discover new followers and get rid of inactive ones:
The third element you need is conversions in the form of new subscribers. As you probably already know, getting people to sign-up for your list isone of the best ways to promote your services, to share the latest products you use and earn a commission.
The two big email marketing services are MailChimp and Aweber. Whereas the first is absolutely free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers, the latter requires monthly payments.
W hichever you choose, you will have the option to include opt-in forms in your blog.
The sidebar is the most commonly used spot, but there are other places where you could add an opt-in. Here are some:
In your About page– that is where people go to learn more about you. And since they have to click on a link to see that page, they are probably already interested in you and your blog. And if they are, they might want to stay updated and hence sign up for your newsletter. In your Welcome page– that is the place to tell people about your blog and share examples of your best posts. Again following the same logic, folks, visiting that page might want to get on your list. Under your blog posts– if someone has reached the end of a blog post you wrote, chances are they’ve enjoyed it. And again you have a very good opportunity to turn a new reader into a subscriber.
More on getting subscribers, you can read in my post “5 Effective Ways to Finally Build a List and Get More Subscribers”
2. Don’t Write for Any BlogNow that you have an idea of what you need to accomplish before you jump into guest blogging, it is time to start looking for blogs to write for. If you are into blogging for some time, chances are you will already have an idea of the blogs in your niche. But still while some of them might be worth your efforts, others won’t deliver the results you hoped for.
And with that in mind, here’s what to look for when choosing where to guest blog:
PageRank– The metric Google uses to determine how authoritative a site is. The higher the PR score (from 1 to 10), the better a site will rank in the search pages and the more organic traffic it will get. What matters to you is that links from high PR sites are far more valuable in terms of SEO than links from low PR sites.
Here’s a toolyou can use to check the Page Rank of any site. Every number above PR 3 is good. Here’s a graphic, showing the difference between different PageRank numbers:
Alexa Ranking– Alexa allows you to get an idea of how much traffic a site receives. As of now the number one spot is held by Facebook, followed by Google and YouTube. Then again anything below a rank of 70,000 is worth a guest post. THISGoogle Chrome extension will allow you to check Alexa ranking.
Social Sharing– A site might have a very good Alexa score, but it might still be getting only a couple of social shares. This basically means articles are getting traffic based on rankings rather than their recency. So in order to actually see traffic from a guest post on such blog, you will have to wait for your guest article to rank (if it ever does).
On the other hand if article tend to get a ton of shares, your guest post will receive direct traffic from those shares right after it goes live, which of course will mean more clicks on your links.
NOTE:
If you are into blogging, internet marketing and social media, here is a great guest post target listyou might want to consider. You can see the Page Rank, the Alexa ranking as well as the average number of comments and retweets the blogs receive.
If you think of guest blogging as a one-day challenge… well you are wrong.
Although my first two guest posts generated a lot of buzz and direct traffic, they didn’t really deliver a huge bump in organic traffic.
It was when I started being consistent that results become more evident.
So my advice for you before you get involved into guest blogging is to first come up with a list of five blogs that you’d like to start with. It would be best of course if you have an idea of what content they publish and if you write some articles in advance.
If you do so, the only thing you will be left with would be to contact the bloggers and pitch your idea. Of course you might have to do some revisions but you should get into gear a little faster.
Actual Results from my Guest BloggingAnd then again, all of what I wrote would be useless if I didn’t share proof of the results from my guest blogging endeavor. I guess that’s the best way to motivate you to follow the above tips and finally get started with it! Here’s how my organic traffic numbers have changed since I started writing articles for other blogs a few months back:
Above you can see a comparison between my organic traffic numbers for the period from January to March and from March to May. I believe the results are conclusive enough.
There is an increase of a little more than 118% from 2,727 to 5,964 visits.
Really hope that you found the post useful friends! That is pretty much all the steps I went through in order to achieve the results you see in the above screenshot.
Now I’d like to hear your two cents!
What do you think about guest blogging? Have you done guest blogs already? Do you accept guest posts? Please let me know, every comment is much appreciated!
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