I originally published the article below in one of my newsletters, but I'm posting it here as well (sorry for the formatting being a bit off. I typed it up in notepad originally and it didn't transfer over to DP well). It talks about using "guest blogging" as a free tactic to get more traffic to your blog or website. Some of you will be familiar with this tactic. Others won't. Either way, hope you find it helpful! ** I wanted to talk to you a bit today about a traffic generating tactic that's easy enough that anyone who can write a blog post can do it, yet it can be very effective at driving targeted visitors to your website. The tactic I'm talking about is guest blogging. You've probably heard that blogging in itself can be a great traffic generator, since blogs are "search engine friendly" compared to a static website. Well, the power of guest blogging is it allows you to LEVERAGE the popularity and readership of existing blogs in your niche to drive traffic to your own site. In this article I'll be explaing a little about how guest blogging works, and giving you a quick step-by-step strategy for getting started getting traffic from guest blogging. Guest blogging, in case you haven't figured it out by now, is simply when a blog owner allows another writer to write posts on his or her blog. Usually, the "guest blogger" gets to include a bio box or link to their site somewhere within the article. The blog owner gets fresh content for his audience, with no additional work. The guest blogger gets traffic and exposure from reaching another audience. And the "guest" blog readers get informative content. Everybody wins! If you're familiar with submitting articles to article directories in order to generate traffic, guest blogging works similarly to that. However, one of the advantages that guest blogging has over submitting articles to directories is that on a blog, your article isn't competing with thousands and thousands of pages of other content about the same subject, and so it has a much better chance of being read. Another way guest blogging can bring you traffic is that if you have an existing blog yourself, you can invite other blog owners to be a guest blogger on your blog. If they agree, you get content for your blog that you didn't have to write, YOUR readers get fresh content, and your guest blogger will usually let his readers know that he's going to be writing a post for your blog, so some of his readers will check out your blog. For now though, let's just focus on you writing posts for other people's blogs. Here is an easy six step strategy that you can use to get started today. step 1: Find blogs that accept guest bloggers. You can either do this by searching for blogs in your niche, and contacting the owners directly via the "about" section of their blog or some equivalent...or you can search online to find blogs that are actively looking for guest bloggers to write for them. Here is one such list below: http://piggybankpie.com/guest-blogging/52-blogs-that-accept-guest-posts/ step 2: Check out the blogs you're interested in writing for so that you get a feel of what their posts are like and what their audience wants (be sure to check comments on other posts so that you can find out what questions from readers keep popping up consistently). Also be sure to read their terms of service so you're clear on what is acceptable for guest bloggers in terms of things like your bio box, affiliate links, etc. step 3: Resarch and write your blog post (be sure to double or even triple check for spelling/grammatical errors...remember, your guest blog post will be some people's first and possibly ONLY impresson of you, and first impressions do count. step 4: Be sure that once you've written your post, you have mechanisms in place to keep in touch with visitors that arrive at your site as a result of your guest blogging efforts. Offer them a free report, newsletter, video or other content in exchange for their email address, or if you have a blog, at least have a feed subscriber form set up so that they can opt-in to receive updates when you post in the future. This will allow you to build a subscriber list and promote offers to them later. Step 5: Submit your blog post. Step 6: Once the post if published, analyze your results, make improvements based on those results, and repeat with another guest blog. That's it! Now you have an easy, effective strategy for getting both immediate and long-term traffic to your website or blog. You can do this any time you want, and as much as you want. You get to build relationships with bloggers in your industry. And even better, it doesn't cost a thing!
The same tactic works when you ask to write a free article for another webmaster's newsletter. You become the guest writer, and you do this in exchange for a link back to your site within your article. It's a nice, targeted way to take the same idea and drive targeted traffic to your own site. Both things can work nicely. Dan
I actually wish more bloggers would embrace the guest blogger idea. Not only is it a great idea as far as building friendly relationships with other webmasters in your niche (perhaps setting the stage for a future profitable JV) but it's a no brainer way to generating content. Sometimes creating new content for a blog can seem like an endless journey. And I think readers also welcome a fresh point of view once in a while, especially if your blog is getting stale. So thanks again to Hagen for sharing this concept - I think we can all run wth it in different ways. Dan
I like the concept and will probably try it later on... But, just wondering... Wouldn't it be easier to just create 10 ezine articles (Or even more) in the same amount of time it would take to find blogs similar to yours, write a high quality specific article, and wait for them to approve/post it?? You get that many more links, you still get tons of visitors, and you can target a larger market. I'm not saying guest blogging is bad at all, just wondering how the two compare, just so I can figure out which one is better to spend my time on. Thanks in advance!
Thanks for the list but it seems like they are in 1 of 3 categories: make money, blogging tips, SEO. Anyone have any other lists for guest posters with something other than those categories?
While guest blogging is a good idea, you might waste too much time on others' blog. I would rather squeeze my brain juice for my next blog post.
As a newbie this is great news for me. Thank you so much for sharing this info with us. I'm going to try it
It really depends on the traffic level that the blog gets, how much people like your blog post, versus the quality of your articles, your click through rate and call to action, etc. Also, there's no reason why with a little re-writing you couldn't do both. It doesn't have to be an either or thing.
You can do a Google search for blogs in other niches, or check out various blog directories and search by category. You could try this one: http://blogs.botw.org/ or just Google "blog directory" and see what directories come up. I included the list in the original post because those were blogs that advertised the fact that they were looking for guest bloggers, but other blogs may still be open to having guests write for them even if they don't advertise the fact, as long as it's something they think their readers would like. Just check with the blog owner and see what they say.