5 Steps to Accomplishing Your Guest Posting Goals
Whether you have a small blog that you’re trying to promote on Google or you work for a big SEO firm and your client is looking for a boost in terms of their page ranking, guest blogging is one of the most efficient ways of accomplishing this. However, the thought of submitting work to a stranger can be intimidating. Thankfully there are several different things you can do as a writer in order to help alleviate your anxiety and be confident and proud of what you submit to a blog. If you’re new to blogging, you’re in the right place. Let’s learn about the top 5 things that successful guest posters do in order to get you started.
1. Write for humans, not search engines
This is one of the biggest problems when it comes to people who are just starting out as a guest poster. They try to stuff their story with useless fluff around keywords that makes reading it a chore. Creativity is a factor here. Imagine someone coming to this blog and reading through your article. Will they take something away from it? Or will they just read the first paragraph and then keep scrolling, wishing they could have those precious moments back that they wasted? Chances are, if you don’t think the article is interesting as a writer; then there is no chance that someone else will as a reader.
2. Outreach is everything!
Another very important thing that some people will overlook is the outreach stage of guest posting. That is, getting into contact with the webmaster of the blog and pitching your idea. You don’t get a second chance at a first impression so it’s important to make sure that you know what the blog is about and what kind of articles it publishes. Make sure that they are relevant to your topic. Do you have a blog about your favorite lawn mowers? Then it probably would be a waste of time to pitch your review of the latest riding mower to a snowboarding blog. Spend some time reading articles on the blog; write down questions or comments you have about your article this is a great way to break the ice with a webmaster how is usually completely swamped with requests just like yours. Make sure you read the “Write for us” section of the blog in order to understand exactly what the blog is looking for in articles. If it doesn’t have a section like that then you can usually find that information in the “Contact” area of the webpage.
3. Don’t rely solely on spell check
You would be surprised how many people will type up an article and then just send it out to a webmaster without any kind of editing or revision. But there are no squiggly red lines, you say? That’s great, but it doesn’t mean your article is perfect. Read it aloud, do all the sentences make since? Is your grammar correct? While spell check is a wonderful tool for making sure that you’ve spelled everything correctly, it only has a limited understand of what those words actually mean. Make sure that everything makes sense and that there are absolutely zero errors in your piece.
4. Research your topic
More often than not you will only have limited knowledge on what you’re writing about, especially if you’re working with a new client or just starting a blog about a new-found hobby. It’s important to research what you’re going to be writing about. Not only will this make your article easier to write, it will also make it more interesting to read.
5. Nail down your links
Make sure that your links are relevant to what you’re writing about. It’s important to know what the webmaster allows. Many will have stipulations on how many and what kind of links they want in your article. Let’s go back to our lawn mower example. Say you found a great blog about lawn care and you wanted to write a review for your favorite lawn mower. Make sure the keywords that you use to link back to your website make sense. More often than not this is easiest to accomplish in the bio page of your article where you can usually give your webpage a link.
