3 Essential Steps to Creating Smarter (and More Effective) Guest Posts

If you’ve been blogging for a bit, you know it’s no secret that guest blogging is THE way to start building an audience for your blog. The thing is, many folks rely on a “spray & pray” strategy for their guest posts, posting about whatever, with no real tactics involved.

For this post I’d like to break down 3 really easy things that you can do to ensure your guest posting efforts give increased returns.

1.) Funnel People to Your Email List

When submitting a guest post, a lot of bloggers aren’t using a specific strategy to “funnel” readers to their email list.

While blog design is an important part of sending people to your mailing list, that’s not the kind of “funnel” I’m talking about here.

They simply hope that by placing a link, they’ll get a ton of subscribers.

While you will be getting subscribers for every guest post (if you’re choosing the right blogs), you could be doing much better with your email conversions.

Say a reader gets all the way through your post, they are going to be prime for more information on that exact topic.

So, if you’re a fitness blogger who just writes about HIIT cardio (aka: High Intensity Interval Training), and you submit a guest post to a much bigger exercise/fitness blog, you should write a guest post about HIIT.

If you’re a personal finance blogger who focuses on saving money, your guest post for a big personal finance blog should be something like 7 Ways to Save More Money With No Effort.

Why?

Because you are ‘priming’ folks to want more information on saving money, which is exactly what your blog is about.

It’s even better if you have a freebie e-Book or other giveaway for readers on the same topic.

To continue our made up “saving money” blogger, if you could write up a free e-Book on saving money, it would have a really high conversion rate from our “7 Ways to Save Money…” guest post, because readers would be primed for more information and likely opt-in to get it.

Try to keep your guest posts laser focused, and when people visit your site, you’ll see increased conversions as folks come to check out the specific benefit that you can offer.

2.) Mention Influential Bloggers & People

Here’s the deal, even on a big blog, there are ways to get more traffic to your guest post than just “writing amazing content”.

The other thing is: it’s pretty easy to do, and it also helps you build connections.

The simple answer?

Mention influential bloggers or other folks in your niche!

When you mention people (links to their site are a must) they know that you’ll be sending them traffic their way, and they’ll probably find out about the post without you telling them through their analytics.

If not, a simple @Mention on Twitter will do to let them know, or maybe you can even shoot them a quick email (I do this all the time).

Since they’ve been mentioned, they will likely share the post, not always, but usually.

If they have even a decent following, this will pour more traffic into your guest post, and the author you posted for will be happy, and  you’ll of course be happy, since some of that traffic will trickle back to your blog.

You might also build a relationship or two, I know I’ve had people email me saying thanks after I featured them in a guest post.

So, if you can fit them in naturally, feature other influential people in your guest posts, as examples, quoting them, sharing some of their advice, etc.

3.) Guest Post SEO: Ranking Your Own Blog

The great thing about guest posts (aren’t there just a ton? ;)) is that they are also a fantastic way to build contextual backlinks.

Guest posts on big blogs also carry more weight and are DoFollow, unlike comment links and other nonsense.

Take advantage of this, if the author allows it.

For instance, in this guest post for Hesham, if I wanted to refer to my guide on WordPress SEO, I would link to the article with the keyword “WordPress SEO”, as that will allow me to rank for that term better.

On FamousBloggers, Hesham allows you to add links back to your own site.

Before you do this (and you should do it sparingly, and don’t let it effect your writing), it’s best to ask the author what their “link policy” is for guest posts.

I know for my upcoming guest post on SocialMediaExaminer, no links back to my site (outside of the author box) were allowed, so this wasn’t applicable there.

But for many other blogs, you CAN add contextual backlinks, and it’s a really good idea to do so, as you’ll start ranking for tough terms and generating more search engine traffic.

Over To You

What are some of your favorite guest posting strategies to maximize effectiveness?

Which of the strategies above is your favorite?

Thanks for reading, and as always, if you want more information on guest posting, you can visit my site, Sparring Mind.

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