One thing that I really love as a blogger is guest posting. There are so many things that guest posting helps you achieve. Above all, writing guest posts consistently gives your website or blog a quick SEO boost.
Guest blogging should always begin with a well-thought-out plan of action so that it helps you maximize the benefits.
Here are four key questions to keep you right on track.
Q1. What goals do I want to achieve?
Every online marketing tactic that you use begins with a goal. So, why isn't so with guest blogging? I don’t think there are too many marketers or bloggers who start guest posting with some specific goals on their minds.
With guest posting, you may want to –
Drive traffic to your site
Get more exposure in your chosen niche
Create backlinks
Build a community of loyal followers
Showcase your unique skills
Generate leads for your business
Starting without a goal is like shooting arrows in the dark. If you want to hit the nail on its head, you should clearly understand your goals.
Q2. What topics should I cover?
When you write a guest post, you are actually competing against other guest authors. To stand out in the crowd quickly, you should always choose the topics for your guest articles carefully. A good idea is to cover those topics that are hot and happening in your niche.
To find trending topics, you can go to sites like AllTop – I’m sure you have heard about Alltop.com before. The news site has a special section dedicated to blogging where you can look at all the recently published posts from a large number of popular blogs.
Q3. Where should I publish the guest article?
This is again one very important question that you need to ask before you want to write a guest post. Of course, you’ll find several blogs that accept guest articles in your niche. But you've got to make the selection very carefully. You should always choose host blogs based on their relevance to your niche, their overall popularity and their reputation with search engines.
Sometime back, I wrote an article for BusinessesGrow.com blog where I talked about the six most important signs that help you decide whether a blog you choose to guest post on is truly authoritative.
Those six signs of an authoritative blog include freshness of the blog, the quality of published guest authors, blog statistics, blog Google PR, the average number of comments per blog post and social media influence.
Q4. How should I promote it?
Guest posting won’t bring you the desired results until you have also worked out an effective promotion strategy. In fact, you need to invest as much effort into the promotion of the guest article as you put into writing it. The more promotion your guest article gets, the quicker you’ll achieve your goals.
Top Resources for Guest Post Promotion
Are you a guest blogger too? Please feel free to talk about any tips or views that you may have in mind.