Just about everyone these days has a blog. But how many of them are actually getting the traffic that they’d hoped to get? If you’re wasting valuable time creating high-quality posts only to realize they aren’t gaining much attention, then you may want to consider guest blogging to increase your presence on the web and drive more traffic to your site.
What is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging — also known as guest posting — is the practice of contributing a post to another person’s blog in order to build relationships, get exposure, gain authority, and to get backlinks. Instead of adding a post to your own blog, you add one to the blog of someone else in your industry. Since you are helping them with content creation, they help you by allowing you to add a link or two in your article that leads back to your site. Guest blogging is an easy and cost-effective way to get in front of a broader audience and drive more traffic to your site. Here are some things to consider.
Know your Audience
In order for guest blogging to be successful, you have to know your target audience. The idea behind guest blogging is that you reach out to websites that are similar in nature to yours and see if you can write articles for them, with the hopes of getting their larger audience base to click through to your site. If you don’t know your audience, you won’t know which websites to approach regarding a guest blogging opportunity.
Create Great Content
In order to be seen as an authority on a topic, you have to create high-quality content that adds value. The first step to creating great content is determining the kind of content your target audience reads. One way to do this is to look at the common questions that people are asking. You can also create content that is valuable to you because if it is a question that you’ve asked in the past, chances are others will have the same question.
Finding Guest Blogging Opportunities
You can find websites that accept guest posts by searching Google, or your favorite search engine, for terms like “Submit an article category”, or “Submit article category”, “guest blogging category”, where “category” is replaced by the category you are interested in. Examples would be “submit article dogs” or “guest blogging survival”. Sites that welcome guest bloggers will usually have their requirements published. Be sure to read and comply with them for the best chance of getting your posts published.
Build Relationships
Sometimes it’s not just about finding a site that accepts guest posts, or how good your writing is, but who you know. Getting a referral from someone that a site editor trusts can go a long way in securing you a spot as a guest blogger. Reach out to other bloggers in your industry and start working closely with them. Participate in networking events to make connections and be sure to follow-up with them after the event. The more connections you can make in your industry the better off you’ll be when it comes to creating guest posts.
Finding guest blogging opportunities can be easy if you know how to approach the process. Finding the right websites to contribute to will help you reach a broader audience that you didn’t have access to before. The larger your reach the better chance you have of driving more traffic to your website.
