Think that you visit a colleague’s place; behave as a perfect guest and your generous colleague treats you with a sumptuous meal. The relationship between you and your colleague deepens over time, over endless talks and great food, with both of you playing the amicable guest and host, in turns.
I treat the virtual world of internet in same regards as the real world. So, as a blogger, it becomes obvious to behave the same way as you would have behaved as a person- the real ‘you’. After all, your blog is an extension of your personality in the virtual world!
Guest blogging is very similar to the situation I asked you to assume at the start of this article. Only difference is the “sumptuous meal” which is actually the quality traffic to your blog. In order to get a good traffic, you search for other popular blogs of your niche and post your content their as a guest. What do you get? Backlinks to your blog which help the traffic to view your blog.
When guest blogging is so important for generating quality traffic, what are the rules of guest blogging? Let us have a look.
- Approach the popular blogs: To start with, it is important to search for all the popular blogs of your niche.
-How to search such blogs?
Do not go only by the usual method of Google Search; search through social media channels- Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc.
-How to approach?
While approaching to the popular blog owners, make a personalized pitch just like you make a sales pitch to sell your product. Here your blog is the commodity to be promoted and you better be prepared with a nice pitch that why should they choose you as a guest blogger. Also, do not be too direct in approach asking for a link in return for your post even though that is the subtle message which everyone knows.
– How to offer value:
It is always give and take relationship. A popular blog author would take an interest in you if you are offering value to his blog in addition to your guest blog post. Promoting their content through your blog, commenting on their posts are the ways through which you can increase the traffic of their blogs and offer value.
- Write an original content: I have mentioned it again and again that “Content is the mother of all traffic”. You are writing as a guest in someone’s blog, so you should be better prepared with your best work. Quality guest posts make more impact than those posts which have been written only to create backlinks. For new bloggers, a piece of advice- Do not shy away from approaching popular blogs for guest blogging because your blog has not got good pageviews yet. If your content is fresh, your guest post would be readily accepted.
Also, there are certain guidelines to be followed while writing the content as well. Tease your audience with an intriguing question or with an image relevant to your content. Make the readers think about what you are saying through your blog.
- Do not forget to link back to your blog: Why you started guest blogging? To get quality traffic. Links are the best way through which your audience will be compelled to visit your blog. In a particular guest blog, give your blog link at all the relevant places. However, always remember that too many backlinks would have detrimental effect.
- Plan your blogs: It is an intelligent way to hold your audience’s attention. Let’s say you write about how to knit woolen scarves. In the next post, you can write about how to get good wool for the scarves and what should be the color combination. You can link your previous blog to the succeeding one.
- Maintain relationship: Even though you are a guest blogger, it is very important to maintain your relationship with the host blog. Do you remember the rules of conduct in the real world? How you would behave with a colleague (the host blogger)? Do you simply forget him immediately after getting a backlink from his blog? Over the time, the audience of the host blog becomes your audience as well, even though you are merely a guest blogger there.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Thach Pham Nick
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