Today I am turning the talking stick over to Camille McGlane, who is going to tell us about how to get started as a guest blogger. This article is highly actionable, so if you’ve set a goal to become more active in your book promotion in 2014, these tips will help!
The number of active bloggers has increased over 30% since 2010, and with this rise we have seen an increase in the other type of bloggers: guest bloggers. While everyone knows what blogging is, guest blogging may not be as obvious to the average person. Guest bloggers are simply individuals who post articles on a blog that isn’t theirs. So why is this gaining traction?
Incentives
Guest blogging creates a few incentives for both the author of the article as well as the blogger in several different ways. From the author’s perspective, they can help their own sites’ ranking in search engines by creating backlinks through the blogger’s site. This is important for a website to become successful and in addition, the author gets to take advantage of the blogger’s readers in hopes of attracting new followers themselves.
Guest blogging is attractive to bloggers because they receive posting material for free that is relevant to their site. Also, similar to the guest blogger’s incentive, oftentimes the blogger will require the author to advertise on behalf of the blogger’s site, enhancing the amount of potential readers.
How to Write Successful Guest Blogs
To be a successful guest blogger, you have to maintain a professional manner within your posts. Google has begun to crack down on people who utilize guest blogging solely as a means of creating backlinks, with Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts weighing in on the matter. Cutts states that “Usually there is a pretty clear distinction between an occasional press blog versus someone who’s doing a large scale paid link kind of thing. If you’re paying for links, it’s more likely that it’s an off-topic or an irrelevant blog post that doesn’t really match the subject of the blog itself. It’s more likely you will see keyword-rich anchor text and that sort of thing.”
In order to not only bypass google’s spam search, but impress readers as well, it is important that your post is relevant to the type of site you are writing for. Additionally, your post should be free from errors, feature rich content, and avoid an overwhelming amount of tags. Content that is off-beat, current, unusual and has an attention-demanding title often fares the best. Focusing on these qualities within your post should convince any reader that your post is written by a professional who is not singularly interested in anything but educating the reader. The style of a blogger’s writing is also important to ensure aesthetic qualities within a post, so be sure to follow expert advice on how to stand out further.
How to become a Successful Guest Blogger
Becoming a successful guest blogger starts by abiding by the professional guidelines mentioned above, however these tips are only part of the process. In order build a relationship with a blogger who will accept your content, you should reach out to blog sites with whom you share expertise and maximize your usefulness to them. You can also use sites such as blog.simplyhired.com, who actively look for guest bloggers and have low standards for acceptance. Sites such as these have an established viewership and can be a great asset for an aspiring guest blogger.
Camille McClane is a blogger and infographic designer located in Southern California. She enjoys writing on all things tech and social media, particularly WordPress tutorials and SEO research. She hopes you enjoy this article and that its info will assist you in your writing ventures! You can find her on her blog or over on Google +.
