Guest Blogging: Tips, Advice, and Best Practices

Guest blogging is simply the idea of serving as a guest writer for another blog or website.  While the concept might be simple, guest blogging provides a variety of outstanding benefits for both the blogger and the host site that many people are unaware of.

The concept is a relatively new idea that has built momentum as a great networking tool that can also provide the following:

• A great way to drive targeted traffic and readership to your blog
• An outstanding platform to build your reputation and authority in your industry niche
• A unique way to build “merit-based” links on relevant sites

All you have to do is write an original, compelling article on a subject that fits within your guest host’s topic of interest.  Easy enough, right?  Well, there’s a bit more to it than just that and in this article, I’m going to provide some of the most important tips and “best practices” on guest posting for both the beginner as well as the advanced internet marketer.  In the near future, I’ll be featuring a series of posts that covers even more in-depth advice and expertise on guest posting as well.

Here are some of the most important tips for effective guest blogging:

Find Relevant Blogs that Accept Guest Posts

The first thing that you’ll need to do is put a list of potential blogs together in your industry that accept blog posts.  A simple way to start is to just put a list together on a spreadsheet of all your favorite industry sites and blogs, maybe even just starting with your own “Blog Roll”.  You can look at the Blog Rolls of other industry leading blogs as well to get even more ideas for prospective guest posting sites.

You can further seed your list of potential guest posting spots by doing a few Google searches.  Simply combine one of your primary keywords with a few variations on the word “guest post” or “guest blogging” and you should be able to dig up even more prospective sites:

• [insert your relevant keyword here] + “guest post”
• [insert your relevant keyword here] + “guest blog”
• [insert your relevant keyword here] + “guest blogging”
• [insert your relevant keyword here] + “guest posting”

Stay Organized

Keep a running list of all these sites in a spreadsheet that includes the domain name, number of feed subscribers, PageRank, and other relevant information about that particular blog.  Each time you submit a post to a site, log it on your spreadsheet.  Information can easily get out of hand and if not tracked properly, you’ll quickly lose track of your inquiries and submissions.

Here’s a list of things that you might want to keep track of in your tracking sheet:

1. Site URL
2. Contact Name
3. Email Address
4. RSS Subscriber Count
5. Google PageRank
6. Post Title
7. Initial Request Date
8. Date Post Submitted
9. Date Posted
10. URL of Live Post

You can customize your tracking sheet according to your own personal needs and priorities.  Having a list like this will help you prioritize all of your prospective sites before you make your initial contact and will be very handy when trying to keep track of your live and pending posts.

Establish Yourself First

When you’re first starting out on your guest blogging journey, you need to establish yourself first in order to build traction and to build an argument for posting on more important blogs.  Writing for an audience that has a readership of 50K or 100K sounds exciting, but it can be disastrous if you’re not prepared for it.  Start out with the blogs on your list that have smaller readerships, contribute great posts and build on that success by pitching increasingly more and more important blogs with greater visibility and bigger readerships.  Starting out with smaller, lower profile blogs will help you “cut your teeth” and allow you to improve and build your foundation as a guest blogger before approaching your A-list blogs.  Here’s a list of some popular blogs and lesser known niche blogs that accept guest posts.

Be Patient

Guest blogging is a time-intensive process that will not reap rewards overnight.  Particularly if you’re just starting out, plan on investing some time and energy into the process because it’s going to take some time to achieve quality results.  Be patient and remember that building a solid guest blogging reputation is a process, it’s not an event.  If you stay focused and patient with the process of establishing yourself, you’ll be much better aligned for success.  Your trust in the blogging community has to be earned.

Focus on Quality Writing

Quality articles are paramount when guest blogging.  Especially when you’re first starting out, you have to focus on writing really good posts.  Make sure that your article is well-researched, very well-written and at least as good as your own blog posts.  The best guest bloggers take their guest posting very seriously as well they should.  If you aren’t a good writer, hire someone who can write for you.  Ghostwriters often work in this capacity.  You can find very good quality freelance writers in a variety of locations online as well:

• FreeLanceWriting.com
• Freelance Writing Jobs
• Freelance-Writers.net

Good Links are Important

You should make a concerted effort to link out to some other authoritative sources on the topic in the body of the post as well.  Linking externally to authoritative resources, also commonly referred to as “co-citation”, is a very important component of top –notch, quality guest posting.  It’s good for the host site, it’s good for the site’s audience, and it’s good for you as a guest blogger.  Additionally, you should also try to link internally to a few posts of the host site as well.

Write a Keyword Rich Author Bio

Traditionally, in exchange for the post, guest hosts traditionally offer to provide a few links in the author biography (AKA “byline”) at either the beginning or the end of the article that provides background about the author and usually a link to the author’s website.  Be sure to spend time carefully crafting your author bio for all of your guest posts. The copy for each author bio, like the content of the guest post itself, should be unique.  Don’t reuse the same author bio with the same copy and the same anchor text for each and every guest post.  Mix up your author bio copy and anchor text as much as possible for each post.  Don’t fret too much about the anchor text for the link in the author bio.  Just make sure the copy for your bio that surrounds your back link contains those valued keywords.

Prepare Your Introduction Carefully

The introduction to your targeted guest blog is probably one of the most important components in the process.  Before you make your introduction though, you’ll need to research the targeted blog thoroughly and look for gaps in its topic coverage that you can fill in with your expertise.  One of the best techniques to generate interest for a guest post is to propose a compelling topic idea with a unique and thought provoking title.  You can use this simple template:

Hi ____,

My name is ____ and I blog for __________.  I was wondering if you were open to accepting guest posts.  If you are, I have an idea for a guest post topic that I think your readers would really appreciate.

The post would be about _______________.  If that topic sounds like a good fit for your readers, I’d be happy to send you the finished post for your consideration.

Thanks for taking the time to consider it.

If you happen to have some good articles or blogs posted elsewhere, provide a few links so the site owner can get a good feel for your writing style. Ask upfront if there are any requirements the blog owner is looking for such as specific word counts (500-1000 words) or post deadline dates.

That’s it for now, but I’ll be back to cover guest blogging in more depth at a later date.

Additional Resources on Guest Blogging Tips, Advice and Best Practices:

• Top 10 Tips for Guest Bloggers (About.com)
• Learn the Art of Guest Blogging (BlogHerald.com)
• Guest Blogging 101 (ProBlogger.com)
  

Related Posts:

• Tips and Advice on Blog Carnivals - Most experienced bloggers might already be familiar with the concept of a blog carnival, but for the uninitiated, we’ve put together some tips and advice...
• 7 Tips for Creating Unique Content That Doesn’t Suck - As bloggers, we’ve all struggled with the following question at one point or another: “What can I write about now?” Sometimes it feels like all...
• Social Media Marketing Best Practices for Your Small Business - Like most of us running small businesses, you’ve probably heard a lot about the explosion of social media and its most prominent players, Twitter, Digg...
• How Fresh Content Can Increase Your Website Traffic - Regardless of how fabulous your online store is, there are a few basic things that you can do as a new site owner to ensure...
• 10 Simple Tips to Build Your Business With Facebook - Facebook is definitely an up-and-coming resource for businesses to promote themselves. But more than simply for promotional use, it  has proven itself to be the...

Tagged as: copywriting, Guest Blogging, Link Building