We're all aware of the benefits that come with writing guest blog posts and with article marketing in general. It can be a terrific way to send some extra traffic to your website via your author bio box. Many writers simply link directly to their website. But there are better ways to go about promoting yourself in the author biography section.
Recently, I've been testing a number of different approaches and found that three methods in particular are highly effective. Each has its own particular advantages and drawbacks, but they're all guaranteed to bring you some extra page views each month.
Direct Keyword Targeting
One method which many fail to capitalise on is the SEO-friendly, keyword-based link. That's where you pick a keyword that shows up a lot on your own blog, and hyper-link it to a category tag on your site. For instance, if you've got a site with a category of “Jack Russell Terrier Puppies”, you'd include that phrase in your bio and link it to the category page for that phrase on your website. With this approach, you're using the link solely for it's SEO benefit, rather than to hope for clickthroughs. People from what I've seen rarely click on such links (an easy way to test – run your link through an SEO Friendly redirect such as bit.ly and view the results).
As such, these links are great for guest posting on blogs with very few readers, but have strong page strength, as well as blogs that are likely to be syndicated.
Free Subscription Sign-Up Links
Another way to boost traffic to your own site is through the use of sign-up links. If you publish a weekly e-mail newsletter, you could link to the sign-up page. Or, if you've recently written a free e-book, you can direct traffic towards the opt-in link for that. You get a lot more click throughs, but it's not quite as SEO friendly as the approach mentioned above.
Furthermore, clickthroughs don't always lead to sign ups, as you're requiring people to make an (admittedly small) investment. Nevertheless, this could be a long term source of traffic for your site via an email subscription.
Promote Your Twitter ID
If you know what you're doing, Twitter is an incredibly effective way to market just about anything to your audience, provided you've actually got something to say. You can get a lot of people to at least listen to your message by including your Twitter ID in your bio so that they can follow your feed with the click of a mouse button. You wont see immediate results, but you'll probably get even more opt-ins than you would with a free e-book or newsletter.
However, you're not only relying on your savviness, but also your user's savviness. If your readership doesn't have twitter or facebook (and – believe me – some don't!), then having a twitter ID or a Facebook Fan Page link on the bottom of your page may not be the best idea.
In Closing
Which route you decide to take depends on you, but I'd suggest you use one of each. If you're allowed to include three links, there's no reason not to include your Twitter ID, a direct keyword link, and a subscription opt-in. Obviously, you'll have to do some field-testing of your own to see what works best for you. But by employing one or all of these methods, you can use your author bio box to substantially increase traffic to your page effortlessly.
Hi Rhys, seriously great tips and to be honest I’m going to share this with our community guest bloggers. I think it’s important to take advantage of guest posting to benefit both the readers and yourself. When you provide quality content that engage the readers it’s so important to make it easy for them to follow you back to your blog, twitter or Facebook etc… Your tips are very insightful and something we can all use seeing most of us have guest posted at one time or another.
Cool – let me know where it is and I’ll jump over there and answer any questions! 😀
Great post Rhys.
A variation on the subscription page is to actually create a special welcome page just for readers of a particular guest post. It’s only worthwhile if you’re posting on a particularly large blog – but if you get a post on a well followed site, a page that says “welcome *whatever the blog is* readers” with a call to join your mailing list can be very successful.
Hi Chris,
That works upto a point, of course there’s a time issue with this, if you get very few clickthroughs on a blog, then it’s not worth persuing.
Hi Rhys. Interesting point of view to take “a bit” more advantage of guest posting. While I totally agree that naturally linking to a specific page, category page is an excellent idea, primarily due to its SEO benefits, I think that if at all possible, these links should be placed within the “body” of the post. Now that Google has been giving a bit more of a push on “authorship”, the bio box can also be used to link to your about or author page, to gain credibility. Just my two cents, but all-in-all, I agree that “if you can, why not”, right?
In all honesty, I’ve seen little results in where the link is placed compared to it’s effectiveness.
It’s something Google says it looks at, but I’ve not noticed any difference.
This is such a very interesting and informative post about link building.,,guest blogging is certainly one the cheapest way of doing it.. as your effort is your only capital
Well it depends on the blog post – you could get it written for you as a paid article 😉
Very clever! I think that your SEO tip might be the weightiest of them all… all hail the Google! Haha. I’m also a huge fan of linking to Twitter, but I noticed that you didn’t mention Facebook. Is there a preference for one over the other?
Paula
Hi Paula,
No reason – I mentioned Twitter because I have a Twitter account!
Rhys
thank you so much for sharing these wonderful ideas! i would love to consider these things because i know that this would be an advantage for me as a blogger..
Thanks, glad you liked it 🙂
Really informative points and I think I would go with twitter id promotion as you can target thousands of readers easily.
Yeah that’s the plan!
Thanks for your tips. Guest blog is the must effective way to promote your own blog. Alghouth we realize that, we don’t know how to do it. Your tips are just very helpful.
These are all very important things but indeed they are very hard to make in work, but I believe our work is to implement them and it will work slowly.
because these kind of things do take time but once they work out good, things will be far better.
Regards
I have a creative idea…how about putting an op-tin form in your post…build that list, baby!
😉
Mark
Haha! It could work but you’d end up getting hated by your guest blog hosts 😉
I totally agree with promoting your Twitter-username. It’s a really god way to get in touch people and create new contact. If someone reads your guest post and likes it, then maybe they’ll add you as a follower on Twitter and you’ll get friends 🙂
Great share Rhys …
Agree with your words on getting creative links in guest posts …
Yeah I’ve already had some nice clickthroughs already on my links 😉
Isn’t it a good idea to pay a very small amount to writers so that the would automatically take care of their income source at their best.
I totally agree with you post Rhys. The bio box is such a powerful box so we never should underestimate its capacity to contribute to an increase in traffic to our site. It’s indeed another effective way to promote our site.
Great post.. Provided some really great insights on this..
I am really pissed of when someone just tries to add some random links in the guest post, if he/she includes some valuable links then you ll love to have them.
So you don’t allow links in the author bio?
Yeah all of this are Ok if the owner of the blog you guest post on, will allow you such self-promotions, even though its the least they can do for your effort.
Yes, most will 🙂
Hi Rhys,
These are very thoughtful tips. Most blog owners will allow guest posters to put at least a couple of links in the resource box. I like how Ms. Ileane gives wide latitude for what her guest authors place in their bio box, and even strategically positions it in two places! 🙂
Your idea of linking to an opt-in page is a really neat idea. Hopefully anyone taking advantage of that method will create a value-filled page that converts well.
I look forward to reading more from you, Rhys.
Hi Vernessa 🙂
Thanks, glad you liked my post!
Rhys
Nice article, in my opinion a combination of both is the best and I agree with DiTesco that it’s better to have your keyword links inside the body of the post if it is possible
Yes it is (in my opinion the link position doesn’t matter from my test – but if your post gets scraped they will get picked up, so it is better in that respect), as long as it is allowed!
Great post Rhys, I just tweeted this article because I got some helpful tips for when I guest post. I already use my twitter ID but I never thought of linking to a category page. Thanks for the input Rhys!
Not a problem, glad you liked it 🙂
I think Twitter hasn’t received the credit it deserves as one of the best tools to use for marketing. It has been described most often as being saturated and a waste of time. A lot of marketers tend to overlook the potential of what Twitter can do.
Your tips are very useful. Thank you for sharing it with us. I might as well tweet so that more bloggers would take your advise. 🙂
I enjoyed reading all your posts, and yes for me a combination of both is the best and I agree it’s nice if your keyword links inside the body of the post if the owner will allow it.
I have many blogs and I plan on using these ideas about creative links. I had never thought of some of these. Thank you for sharing this!
SEO link building can be difficult. But if you can develop the traffic chances are people will naturally link to you.
I started doing guest blogging for clients, although they all said that many abused in doing guest blogging, so I have to make sure that I have a good and quality content. Blogging is such a wonderful thing to do, aside from earning money you earn more than that, it’s the people you meet around globally, who becomes a part of your daily virtual life as a blogger.
You have shared a very simple and effective way which gives full benefits of doing guest post.
This is call perfect use of author bio box. Like it very much and going to implement it.
I really appreciate the effort here and link building.I have book marked the page for even more deep reading and guest posting is just an amazing way of promotion.
Being creative in guest post links is something that’s helpful both organic and instant traffic. Well researched keywords used for link building will ultimately reap you rich rewards from your guest post.
Guest posts and creative links? The roundup looks very analytical and realistic. The use of creative links allows for greater and quality guest blogging in my opinion.
great points there. I think linking to a Google+ profile page in the bio box will also make some sense in addition to Twitter.
Very informative, am also working on guest postings.