OK. We all have been through this already. Content is K… and we all should be writing for users and not search engines. How many times have we seen this splattered all over the place? If you ask me, I think I am pretty much “overloaded” with the content is king stuff. I am convinced that I already know about this and so do you 🙂
Putting all this aside, and bearing in mind that valuable content and first writing for your readers is indeed your priority, there is also the matter of why should it not be the best of both worlds. If you write a guest post often and you do your research well, I don’t see any harm in optimizing it and promoting it like crazy. On the contrary, it is good. So let’s run through some things very quickly.
Why do you guest post?
This is maybe another one of those topics that you are already “filled up” with information, but the benefits of guest posting is clearly on the up side. First, and most important, you gain exposure and credibility. Then you get quality backlinks. You tap in the readers base of the blog you are writing for. And many more. Just be sure that when writing a guest post, you read the rules of engagement, which are normally provided by the owner of the blog.
Do you optimize your guest post for SEO?
I am not talking about meta tags and meta descriptions here as the owner of the blog you are writing for should probably be doing that already. I am talking about proper utilization of researched keywords and a compelling “title”. These two are more than good enough to write optimized text. Of course if you are writing here on famousbloggers, you won’t have to worry about that as Hesham uses keyword winner.
Either way, this is just proof of how important you should pay attention to this when writing an article. I always think that writing a guest post should be as if I was writing for my own blog, only better. If you are wondering how can you write and optimize your article at the same time, these 3 step guide to seo writing should get you going.
One final thought. When writing a guest post, you should try to “deep link” your article within the blog you are writing for. Not only it gives a good impression to the owner, you also are saying in a way that you have at the very least read some of their articles. It is a good habit and will be appreciated.
Do you promote your guest post?
Let me ask you one thing. What do you do as soon as you hit that publish button on a recent “killer” article you just wrote on your blog? My guess will be that you promote it like there is no tomorrow, lol. You Tweet it, you stumble it, you share it on amplify, facebook and all those nice social places like mmosocialnetwork. So the next obvious question is, do you the same for your guest post? Simple, and hopefully your answer should be a big YES in all caps. So remember, when you write a guest post and the owner says its live, do your thing.
These are just some few pointers when writing a guest post. There are tons of information out there on how to write effectively and up until recently I also wrote an article on NBB about guest posting strategies you need to know. You really should read it, there are some additional info there that I think you might like.
What say you? Are the points above some things that you worry about when guest posting? Any other ideas on how to make your guest post go viral :)?