Guest Posting 101 – How to Do Guest Posting the Right Way

guest posting 101

Guest Posting is one of the most reliable content marketing methods on the market, it worked 10 years ago, and it works today as well and will work in next 10 years for sure, too. The main idea of this method is crystal simple: to write state of the art content, based on your knowledge and give it to a site with good traffic and related visitors.

You can ask, why you should spend hours or days on writing a very good article and then give it to another person for free? Because, this is a win-win situation. The site owner gets an excellent article from you and he or she gives you a backlink in exchange. A backlink from a strong and related site will boost your SEO, so this is a very good deal to you.

Of course, there are more positive effects of guest posting you should consider. I will cover these effects in this article, so just read on and be sure you use guest posting as part of your content marketing efforts.

Get a strong SEO advantage

As I have covered in the introduction, a good post on a relevant and strong site will have a strong positive effect on your SEO. But how do backlinks work?

When Google indexes the internet, its crawl robots open the websites and check all of the links. They simply open them and jump from sites to sites, following the link routes. People like to link to websites they think is a good website for some reason. So the more links a website gets, the more power it will have in Google’s eyes.

Also, people like to link stranger websites if they are related to their own websites, business, interest, etc. So for example, if many people links a simple website from their music related sites, Google will know, that the target site is also related to music.

As a result of the above mentioned both facts, the internet became the home of stronger and weaker websites, where the strong ones get many links and the weak sites get less. The links also show the relevance between the sites, so by indexing the whole internet, Google will know which sites’ topic are related to each other and which ones are the key websites.

Your task is really simple: to find a strong website that is relevant to your site’s topic and then ask the owner to publish your guest post there. As a result, you will get a super valuable link from a strong website to your own site, hopefully for free.

Of course, big site owners get such requests hundred times a day, so it is hard to get a free article space there. You can pay for the chance to be mentioned, but you can also be smart and don’t have to pay tons of bucks.

Just think a bit and give an offer that the strong site owner should accept:

  • Write a super long and detailed article with great style and grammar – most of guest bloggers write cheap 300 words long articles
  • Research a very up to date topic that was never published on the target site and it is super interesting to its readers
  • Research a very difficult topic that needs days or weeks, and the result will be valuable

If you have the topic in your head, just contact the target site owner and tell him/her, why your article is better that the other 100 requests he/she gets every day.

Reach your new audience and build up your authority

Don’t forget to publish your master of art article under your own name or brand name, as it will be shown next to the article! This means you will have a chance to introduce yourself to new readers and customers who will band the great topic to you.

If it is possible, ask the site owner to show an author box at the top or bottom of article, or at least, few lines of your introduction. Just write few lines and key facts about you, explain in short why you are an expert in the article topic and how can the visitors reach you.

Your article will clearly show that you are an expert and you will get a bunch of new followers or readers after guest posting. Just think about this task as a paid ad, where you advertise yourself. You will reach related audience and you pay with your time spent on article writing, instead of using your credit card.

There is another effect of guest posting, which is related to reaching new audience, the building up process of your authority. If you are a newbie, no one trust on your experience and you should show your knowledge to people.

In the old days, you should have taken presentations at universities, appeared in TVs or on newspapers to gain authority. In our new digital era, guest posting is used for the same. The more valuable content you publish, the more people will think you are an expert. By posting on a well-known and big websites, you will reach bigger audience easier, so your authority will grow super-fast.

Get extra traffic for your site

Because links attract human clicks, your website link in the guest post will get clicks too. As a result, your website also will get free visitors who are interested in your expertise area, and you can grab their attention. You should decide what you want to do with free visitors, but there are almost unlimited possibilities. You can:

  • show a newsletter subscription panel to them, so later you can address them via emails
  • sell an e-book or paper book that is super related to your expert area and guest post
  • get likes for your Facebook page, LinkedIn account, Twitter profile, etc.

Just be prepared for free visitors and target them with the most converting marketing asset. If you clearly tell the readers your goal in the guest post, you will get direct traffic and your conversation rate will be high. For example, some target site owners allow you to insert more links in your guest post; in this case you can add a link to your website and another one that forwards the readers to your offer.

It is very important to tell the truth to your guest readers and don’t trick them with marketing gibber-gabber. If you want to sell your new e-book, then mention it at the bottom of your guest post, like this: “If you liked this article, you can order my new e-book in this topic by clicking here”. By not doing the same, you can easy destroy your authority and people will think, you want to scam them. You can be sure that the readers will report this behavior to the target site owner who will delete your content and ban you from guest posting there for a life!

How to find the right place for guest posting

If you are ready for writing and you went through the above mentioned topics, you should find your target site. It is possible that you already know the biggest websites in your expertise area, then go ahead! Find a topic and check if it was already covered there. If not, then you have your guest post topic.

You should also check, if the target site accept guest posting, in some cases there is a “Write for us” or “Guest posts” sections on these sites. If you find such a subpage, read the conditions, what they need and compare the rules with your article plan. Are they similar? Will your article meet the conditions?

If you have any doubts just contact the site owner and tell your topic and article plan and mention why you are expert in the area. Don’t forget to ask the conditions of link placement, explore if they allow a link to your website, social media profiles, or are you allowed to mention a direct offer, like the above mentioned e-book ad.

Don’t start to write the article while you don’t get positive answer, unless you can place the article on other target website or on your own website. This will save you time that you should spend on article writing.

If you don’t know any related big website where you can publish your article, ask people or use Google. There are many related Facebook groups for every topics, where members can help you in minutes and they can also give you some free advices as well. Don’t hesitate to ask other people, they represent your future readers and offer a free feedback for your plans.

You can also use Google Search to find the target sites, just google for your topic and write the “guest posting” phrase after the area name. For example, if you want to publish article in domain names area, just google for “domain names guest posting”. Open the entries of the search result one by one and read the rules of posting.

How to write a good guest posting request

If you already have your topic in your head and found the best target sites for publishing, you can write the requests for site owners. Yes, site owners, since most of the owners will never answer you and you should be very patient to receive a positive answer. However, there are also few tricks that can be used to have access for guest posting on a big site.

I already mentioned that you should clearly explain your article plan in the contact mail, since no one will give you permission to write about “something” on his/her site. I also covered, how you can offer a good topic that is valuable enough for the target site owner and audience as well.

But you can add few more extra elements to your requests that will lead to positive answer. If you already have some related qualification, it is a big plus. For example, if you want to write about IT topics and you are already an IT engineer, it will count as a big plus. Also, if you gained some reputation and have sample articles, you can clearly show your knowledge to the target site owner. Don’t forget to link your best articles, if they were published on strong stranger sites, as it is a big plus again. A professional LinkedIn profile, where you have valuable connections and/or recommendations, would also fit. Google and Facebook feedbacks on your professional profile will also show your experience.

If you are a newbie and you have not published any single article, you can still try to get a good article place. Don’t be surprised, if you won’t get a guest blogging space on the biggest relevant portals, since as I mentioned above, these possibilities are reserved to people with previous experience. In this case you should start to publish on your own website and share the article links on social media and your LinkedIn profile. By doing this, the visitors will slowly arrive from Google and social networks and your audience and authority will be built up step-by-step.

Once you have some reputation, you can apply for guest blog space at smaller websites, and you will see that your chance to get them increased dramatically. Those small sites will bring you more SEO power, visitors and authority until you reach another level of experience. At the end, you will have enough reputation to appear on the biggest sites as well. The only thing you need is to start blogging and write state of the art articles wherever they appear. This is how guest blogging works and bloggers achieved their goals in the past and will do it in the future too using this technique!

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