The Complete Guide - Leaving Work Behind

Transcription

1 The Complete Guide To Guest Posting
The Complete Guide
To Guest Posting
by Tom Ewer
Leaving Work Behind
You may republish excerpts from this guide
as long as they are accompanied by an attribution
link back to http://www.leavingworkbehind.com/.
Copyright © 2012 Thomas Ewer.
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Disclaimer
The information contained in this guide is for informational purposes only.
The material in this guide may include information, products or services by third
parties. Third Party Materials comprise of the products and opinions expressed
by their owners. As such, I do not assume responsibility or liability for any Third
Party material or opinions.
The publication of such Third Party Materials does not constitute my guarantee
of any information, instruction, opinion, products or services contained within
the Third Party Material. The use of recommended Third Party Material does not
guarantee any success andor earnings related to you or your business.
Publication of such Third Party Material is simply a recommendation and an
expression of my own opinion of that material.
No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole or
in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author. All
trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this guide are the property
of their respective owners.
Users of this guide are advised to do their own due diligence when it comes to
making business decisions and all information, products, services that have been
provided should be independently verified by your own qualified professionals.
By reading this guide, you agree that I am not responsible for the success or
failure of your business decisions relating to any information presented in this
guide.
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Table of Contents
Disclaimer............................................................................................................................. 3
What Is Guest Posting? ..................................................................................................... 6
Why Should You Guest Post? .......................................................................................... 7
Direct Traffic.................................................................................................................................. 7
Subscribers..................................................................................................................................... 7
Links ................................................................................................................................................. 8
Branding .......................................................................................................................................... 8
Relationship Building ................................................................................................................. 8
How To Find Guest Post Opportunities .................................................................... 10
Google ............................................................................................................................................ 10
Your Network ............................................................................................................................. 10
Social Media ................................................................................................................................ 11
Tell People! ................................................................................................................................. 11
Befriend Serial Guest Posters ............................................................................................... 11
Craigslist / Job Boards ............................................................................................................. 11
Blog Lists / Directories ........................................................................................................... 11
How To Get Your Guest Posts Approved .................................................................. 13
Write Epic Shit............................................................................................................................ 13
Read The Blog ............................................................................................................................. 13
Write The Post............................................................................................................................ 14
Read The Guidelines! ............................................................................................................... 14
Don’t Go Over Old Ground...................................................................................................... 14
Keep It Punchy ........................................................................................................................... 15
Make Sense .................................................................................................................................. 15
Keep Your Application Straightforward ........................................................................... 15
Make Sure That Your House Is In Order ........................................................................... 15
Do It For The Right Reasons .................................................................................................. 16
Guest Posting For SEO .................................................................................................... 17
Keywords ..................................................................................................................................... 17
Anchor Text ................................................................................................................................. 18
Writing Guest Posts That Convert .............................................................................. 19
Relevance ..................................................................................................................................... 19
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Quality ........................................................................................................................................... 20
Engagement................................................................................................................................. 20
Volume .......................................................................................................................................... 21
Type ............................................................................................................................................... 21
Surprise with Size................................................................................................................................ 22
Make it Pretty ........................................................................................................................................ 22
Write for Engagement ....................................................................................................................... 22
Byline............................................................................................................................................. 23
Entry .............................................................................................................................................. 23
Comments .................................................................................................................................... 24
Audience....................................................................................................................................... 25
The Most Important Part of Guest Posting .............................................................. 26
If You Would Be So Kind, a Favor ............................................................................... 27
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What Is Guest Posting?
To put it succinctly, guest posting is one of the most effective ways to attract
highly targeted visitors to your blog.
blog. In terms of a return on your time
investment, there are few superior strategies.
If you are completely new to the concept of guest posting,
posting, check out this
infographic from Brandon Rhodes:
Rhodes
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Why Should You Guest Post?
Guest posting is an extremely powerful and worthwhile blog promotion strategy.
When done correctly, it offers you five distinct benefits:
Direct Traffic
This is perhaps the most immediate and obvious benefit of guest posting. For
every guest post of yours that is published, you will have the opportunity to link
back to your own blog. A certain percentage of readers will click through to your
blog via the link(s). You can positively affect that percentage through a variety of
means, which we will discuss later.
Once a guest post is up and running, it represents a form of “passive traffic”.
Although you will do no further work, that post will continue to drip-feed traffic
to your blog - over weeks, months, or even years.
Those who are not fond of guest posting argue that the strategy does not bring in
a great deal of traffic. Whilst it is true that the majority of guest posts will not
attract thousands of visitors to your blog (although you might be surprised), the
key is in the quality of the traffic, rather than the quantity. If you go about your
guest posting strategy in the right way, you will attract highly targeted visitors to
your blog.
At the end of the day, what would you rather have – a thousand visitors who
immediately bounce off your blog, or one hundred visitors of which 60 subscribe
to your newsletter?
Subscribers
Speaking of which, guest posting can be an extraordinarily effective method of
converting visitors into subscribers. And that is ultimately what you should be
trying to achieve with your blog.
It doesn’t take much of a logical leap to understand why guest posting can
generate such a high conversion rate. If someone reads your article on one of
their favorite blogs and feels compelled to click through to your blog, they are
clearly interested in what you have to offer.
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Links
For anyone who has a passing interest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
guest posting is one of the most effective ways of getting relevant, high authority
backlinks to your blog.
Consider this - you are probably trying to rank your blog for particular
keywords. With guest posts, you can place tailored links (with tailored anchor
texts) on 3rd party websites – probably high PageRank blogs with content that is
relevant to your own. Everything that Google loves.
Some people (such as Onibalusi Bamidele) guest post with the primary aim of
building links. One guest post link can be worth literally hundreds of lower
quality links.
Branding
This is perhaps the least tangible of the benefits, but it is still very real.
You are reading this eBook, so I know that you have an active interest in
promoting your blog. As such, you probably understand that your blog’s
popularity increases in line with the recognition of your brand. If your blog’s
name is everywhere people look, it will be difficult to ignore.
Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing really embraced this concept, by having guest
posts published at a huge number of blogs. Back when he was in full flow, I
seemingly couldn’t throw a virtual cat around the blogosphere without seeing
Danny’s name. After repeated exposure, I simply couldn’t help but click through
to his site – out of curiosity, if nothing else. Now I am a RSS and email subscriber,
and he is getting a mention in this eBook. All because of a few guest posts.
Relationship Building
Finally, we come to the most valuable driving force behind blog promotion –
connections. Guest posting is an excellent way of building relationships with
other bloggers. Whilst you can always chance your arm and try to strike up a
rapport with bloggers by simply reaching out to them, they are likely to be far
more receptive if you have done something for them.
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Relationship building, or “networking”, can lead to numerous indirect benefits –
traffic, subscribers, links, brand exposure, and more. That’s right – guest posting
effectively offers the potential for you to “double up” on your exposure – through
the post itself, and then through the relationship that you build with the blog
author.
To put it more succinctly, guest post is worth doing. But it is only worth doing
well. And that is what this guide is for.
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How To Find Guest Post Opportunities
The first step in guest posting is finding opportunities. If you are brand new to
guest posting, this step may seem rather intimidating, but there are in fact plenty
of methods you can use. Let’s explore them.
Google
Good old Google – seemingly the first port of call when you want to achieve
anything on the Internet. It only takes a sprinkling of search-parameter wizardry
to unearth some golden guest post opportunities with Google.
Just type any of the following into your search bar:
•
“your niche” + inurl:guestpost
•
“your niche” + intitle:”write for us”
•
“your niche” + intitle:”guest post”
Let’s break these search queries down. The first part (before the plus sign) tells
Google what niche you want to find results for. If I had a gardening blog, the first
part of my search parameter would be “gardening”.
The second part (after the plus sign) is asking Google to look in a specific place
for a specific phrase. For instance, the first example above asks Google to check if
the phrase “guestpost” is included in the URL of any given page. The second
example asks Google to check if “write for us” is included in the page title.
You can make these searches as simple or as complicated as you like. Simply
typing “gardening + guest post” would tell Google to find any pages relevant to
those two queries.
Your Network
If you have been blogging for any length of time, you probably already know of
blogs where you can guest post. So don’t be shy to tap up your existing
connections. Even if their blog doesn’t represent an ideal opportunity, they may
know some that do.
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Social Media
You can use Twitter’s search engine in a similar way to Google in order to see if
anyone is actively requesting guest posts. Additionally, Facebook and Google+
are great (not to mention informal and non-pushy) ways of reaching out to
bloggers to see if they know of any opportunities.
Tell People!
When it comes to promoting your blog, don’t be afraid to get straight to the
point. Why not publish a post on your own blog making clear the fact that you
are actively looking for guest posting opportunities? Many of your readers
probably own blogs themselves, or know of opportunities that you can exploit.
Befriend Serial Guest Posters
There are guys out there who seemingly guest post for a living. I have already
mentioned Danny and Oni, but Greg Ciotti is another great example. He
seemingly has a fetish for guest posting, and has had more posts published than I
could possibly dream of. If you are serious about guest posting, you should get to
know such people in your niche. They probably have a big fat list of sites that
accept guest posts, and might be happy to offer you free advice.
Craigslist / Job Boards
Sites such as Craigslist and the Pro Blogger Jobs Board are a fantastic resource
for potential guest posting opportunities. Advertisers are typically offering paid
positions, but you can take the initiative and offer them free posts for links.
Blog Lists / Directories
A lot of blogs offer guest posting opportunities, even if they don’t advertise the
fact. Leaving Work Behind is a great example of that – I have not turned down a
single quality guest post application yet, but I do not advertise that fact.
So don’t be afraid to make enquiries with any and all blogs in your niche. There
are huge blog directories and lists out there – just typing queries such as “top
[your niche] blogs” will probably return plenty of results. A good example is my
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upcoming LWB 100 List – featuring the top 100 blogs in my niche. Lists such as
that are a fantastic resource for finding guest post opportunities.
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How To Get Your Guest Posts Approved
This topic gets a lot of coverage, and proves to be a stumbling block for some. But
getting guest posts accepted is not that difficult if you go about things in the right
way. I have only ever had one guest post rejected, and it was immediately
accepted by the next blogger I submitted it to.
If you follow the advice below, you should have no problem in getting the vast
majority of your guest post applications accepted.
Write Epic Shit
I love referencing Corbett Barr’s infamous line, and will always take any
opportunity to do so!
Most people will get their guest posts accepted the vast majority of the time if
they adhere to just one simple principle – your guest posts should be your best
posts. Whilst I am not saying that your blog should be full of crap content, you
really need to shoot for the stars with your guest posts.
That may initially seem counterintuitive to you. But the logic is simple – you can
only make a first impression once, and first impressions count for everything
when it comes to blogging. If you hook a reader in with a superb guest post, they
are likely to be more accepting of whatever they read next.
Read The Blog
If you want your guest post application to be accepted, you must know the blog,
and you must have a solid understanding of what its audience wants.
There is absolutely no point in writing a guest post about iPhone apps that you
send to the owner of a car blog. That example is extreme, but the principle
applies across the board.
So read the blog that you plan on applying to. Check out their most popular
posts, and try to dissect what worked, and why. Seeking to emulate the success
of a blog’s most popular posts not only gives you a great chance of being
accepted, it also gives you a great chance of attracting plenty of traffic.
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Take my blog as an example. By far the most popular posts are my income
reports and niche site updates. If I were submitting a post, it would be some kind
of niche site case study. I can guarantee you that such a post would do really
well.
Write The Post
This may sound like a rather obvious point, but bear with me. Rather than
submitting suggestions to a blogger, take the initiative and write the post
beforehand. Send it straight to them.
Whilst some frown upon this strategy, I have used it with a near-perfect success
rate. There are two reasons why I like this approach:
1. It demonstrates initiative
2. It is likely to make the blogger feel more compelled to publish your post –
after all, you’ve gone to all that trouble…
Worst-case scenario, if your post does not get accepted, you can repurpose it for
a similar blog.
Read The Guidelines!
There is no quicker way to get a post rejected than by demonstrating that you
have paid no attention to the blog’s guest posting guidelines.
Please – if you are applying to a blog with guest posting guidelines, read them
thoroughly and follow them to the letter. Anything less will demonstrate a clear
lack of consideration.
There is one potential exception to this – when bloggers request that you submit
suggestions, rather than full posts. I’m a bit naughty and ignore that instruction
when I see it. I’ll usually email the blogger with something along the lines of, “I
know you typically like to see a few suggestions ahead of time, but I thought this
article would suit your readers perfectly!”
Don’t Go Over Old Ground
You might write a truly epic guest post, but it is going to be rejected if there was
a similar article posted on the blog last week.
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Keep It Punchy
When it comes to writing your post, err on the side of efficiency. Blog readers are
an impatient lot, and want information delivered in concentrated shots.
Please note that I am not suggesting that you should keep your posts short. By all
means, write a 2,000 word blog post if you have a great deal of value to offer. But
cut the fluff.
Make Sense
Never submit a guest post until you are 100% happy with its structure, and the
spelling, punctuation and grammar. If you want your guest post to be accepted,
make it obvious that you have ensured it is well-edited and proof-read.
Don’t let silly errors detract from your epic content.
Keep Your Application Straightforward
Any blogger with even a relatively modest readership will deal with a lot of
emails on a daily basis. So make your email easy to handle.
I like to draft my posts in WordPress, then copy and paste the HTML code into a
text file. When I send this text file via email, it can essentially be posted into the
blogger’s HTML editor (assuming they are using WordPress), with no further
work required.
With regards to the email itself, there is no need to give the blogger your life
story. Keep it short and sweet. You like what they do, you think that the attached
post is perfect for their audience, and you hope that they like it.
Make Sure That Your House Is In Order
You could write the best damn post in the world, but it will probably not be
accepted if your blog looks a shambles.
Any blogger worth his or her salt is not going to want to look “shabby by
association”, and won’t want to link to your blog if it might reflect badly on him
or her. In order to best your chances of getting guest posts accepted, make sure
that your blog is well presented and well populated. If it isn’t, you have more
important priorities than guest posting to address.
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Do It For The Right Reasons
This is bound to be the least popular recommendation, but that makes it no less
important.
When submitting a guest post, you shouldn’t just have the benefits to you in
mind. I am sure that you don’t write your own blog posts like that, do you? No –
you think about your audience – about how what you are writing can benefit
them. That is how you build a successful blog, so why should it be any different
for guest posts?
It will be apparent the blogger if you are self-centered about the positives that
can come out of your guest post application.
Any guest post should be beneficial to both parties, so make sure that you are
writing it for everyone – not just yourself.
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Guest Posting For SEO
Writing guest posts for SEO is an extremely powerful tactic, and is something you
absolutely must not ignore.
A guest post will only offer you significant “passive” traffic if you write it with
SEO in mind. If you can get a guest post to rank for a well-trafficked keyword in
Google, you will reap the rewards for months and years to come.
It doesn’t take much for a guest post to offer you long-term search engine traffic
benefits. If you target 10 keywords across 10 guest posts with just 1,000 exact
searches a month and they are ranked, you can attract up to approximately 4,000
extra visitors a month. Not bad, right?
It is not the purpose of this eBook to delve into keyword research, competition
analysis, and onsite SEO. You can learn a lot more about those topics by
downloading my free eBook – Keyword Research & Competition Analysis
Mastery. But considering how important SEO is for guest posting, it is certainly
worth going over the fundamentals.
Keywords
Before you write a guest post, you should know what you are going to write
about. That should go without saying. But you should also know which keywords
you are going to be targeting.
I am not saying that you should be “writing for the search engines”. But I am
saying that you should craft your article in such a way that it is easier for search
engines to rank you accordingly. There is nothing wrong with ensuring that your
main keyword is prominent in your article. To be honest, it should happen
naturally.
So before you write your guest post, do a little research. What keywords can you
target that will bring in traffic? Remember – you are not writing for your blog –
you may well be writing on one of the most influential blogs in your niche. With
that in mind, you can potentially look to be quite aggressive with the keywords
you target. Don’t be afraid to go after more competitive keywords if you think
that the blog you are writing for can handle it.
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Anchor Text
When writing guest posts, you should have in mind what keywords you are
trying to target. Not only can you drive traffic to the post itself (and therefore
indirectly drive traffic to your blog), you can use guest posts to build your own
blog’s backlinks portfolio.
If you follow the advice in this book and write your guest posts in “groups”, all
targeting the same specific conversion mechanism (such as a free product on an
email list), they should all have the same related anchor texts.
Let’s go back to the gardening example I used earlier. Say that I wanted to
promote a section of my site that focused on lawn care. I might write 5-10
related guest posts, and the byline in every single one would feature the anchor
text “lawn care”. Google is going to love this – relevant links from relevant, high
authority sites? Yes please!
Don’t be afraid to mix it up either. You might choose to include some “phrase
match” anchor texts within your bylines – like “quality lawn care”, or “how to
care for your lawn”. Research by the very clever guys over at SEOmoz has
demonstrated that Google likes to see a diverse range of anchor texts.
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Writing Guest Posts That Convert
Producing a successful guest post is not just about getting it accepted. A guest
post can bring you tens of visitors, or thousands. And more importantly, it can
bring you one conversion, or hundreds. It all depends on how well you craft it.
As a blog owner, you should be obsessed with conversions. It should be your
primary goal. A huge proportion of any blog’s value is determined by its
associated email list, RSS feed, social media followers, and so on. You don’t want
to leave it to chance that a visitor will come back again – you should be making
calculated efforts to “hook” them into your content.
Make no mistake – this is the most important part of guest posting. Getting a post
accepted is all very well and good, but if it only produces a handful of
conversions, was it worth all the effort? Do not spend hours on a guest post for
little to no return – work smart and produce conversion machines.
There are six key things you need to consider when it comes to producing guest
posts that convert. Let’s look at each one in turn.
Relevance
People get hung up on the size of blogs that they plan to guest post on. It is not
unusual to hear "I'll only write for a blog if it has more than 3,000 subscribers",
along with similar statements, based upon arbitrary numbers. But the size of the
blog is not nearly as important as its relevance.
When targeting blogs for which you can write a guest post that converts, you
need to find common ground. There needs to be a point at which the majority of
the combined readership intersects. This is far more of an art than a science, but
there is a sliding scale when it comes to selecting the right blog to guest post on.
You could argue that it is better to write on a huge blog with less relevance than
a small blog with high relevance, but I don't think that debate can be resolved
one way or the other. You may as well ask how long a piece of string is. Having
said that, I am personally far more comfortable writing for a blog where the
subject matter aligns closely.
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There is in fact a whole other side to relevance that I have not yet covered. More
on that later.
Quality
You may never have considered this, but the quality of the blog upon which you
guest post can make all the difference. I once wrote a guest post for a particular
blog that was highly relevant to my niche. I felt very confident about its ability to
offer me a solid number of conversions.
Unfortunately, the blog was somewhat unloved (I'm being kind here), with a
completely inconsistent posting schedule. Not in a Social Triggers "the post will
come when it will come, and it will be awesome" kind of way, but in a "I have no
idea when the next post is coming, and I don't really care" kind of way. The blog
author was clearly too preoccupied to put any effort into the post, and threw it
up at completely the wrong time of day with little to no active promotion
whatsoever.
That guest post offered little traffic, and by extension, few conversions. Just to
give you a bit of context, the blog in question has an Alexa traffic rank of around
50,000, and its Twitter account has over 10,000 followers.
The lesson is clear - only post on blogs that are well loved. If a blogger doesn't
love their blog, its subscribers certainly won't. And by extension, you will receive
little to no traffic.
Engagement
This point takes me back to the typical argument that states you should only post
on high-traffic blogs, and reminds me that as an absolute statement, it offers no
value. A defining factor in how successful your guest post will be is how active
the blog's community is. Blogs with a relatively high comment count usually
indicate a high level of engagement. If a blog's community is highly engaged with
the owners' posts, they are far more likely to take interest in a guest post.
On a blog with a readership that respects its author, your post will carry a level
of preordained value. The reader likes what the author does, the author likes
what you do, and therefore the reader should also like what you do.
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I was taught this lesson in a big way with one of my more recent guest posts. I
wrote a post that was highly relevant to both audiences, submitted it and waited
to see the results of my labor. The results were a six-fold increase in visits over
my average guest post and an elevated conversion rate. This blog was in fact of a
similar size in terms of readership to the one mentioned above - the difference
was in the quality, and in the engagement. Each of the author's posts attracts
numerous comments, and you can see that his readers hung off every morsel of
advice handed out. That passion transferred nicely to my post.
But that post wasn't successful solely because of high engagement levels. As I
already mentioned, the quality of the blog was high, but there was another
beneficial factor at play. Which was...
Volume
Generally speaking, a high volume of posts is beneficial to a blog. The more posts,
the higher the exposure. However, that does not prove to be the case when it
comes to guest posting.
If your guest post gets lost below the fold within a few hours, or just a day, its
exposure will be highly limited. And even a high-quality post can't fight against a
lack of exposure. Content may be king, but marketing is its overbearing queen.
There are of course clear exceptions, but the relative lack of exposure must be
married with a high readership.
You can suffer from a lack of exposure even when volume is relatively low. If you
come across a poor-quality blog, you may well find that a blogger has no problem
with publishing your guest post literally hours before publishing his own post,
almost as an afterthought (yes, this happened to me).
Part of a guest post's success relies upon its exposure, so make sure that the post
you have put a great deal of work into actually appears above the fold for a
reasonable amount of time.
Type
Now we get into the tactics regarding the actual makeup of your post. I am not
talking about the importance of spelling and grammar (although they are of
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course key considerations). I am talking about writing posts that stand out from
the crowd.
Let's be honest - most posts you see are a dime a dozen. But that actually works
to your advantage - you just need to work that little bit longer to set yourself
apart. Let's take a look at the factors you need to consider.
Surprise with Size
There is this strange misconception floating around the web that you must write
short blog posts. I do not subscribe to that belief. If you are writing interesting
and engaging content, people will find the time to read it. Keep it punchy, like I
said above, but don’t be afraid to write epic posts.
Make it Pretty
Since your post is going to be long, you don't want to intimidate readers with
long blocks of text. Regardless of how fascinating your insights are, you're
writing a blog post - not a book. Don't try to fight the system!
So take some time to make your post pretty. Break your writing down into short
paragraphs, and allow the reader to scan your text by highlighting important
words and sentences with bold and italics (if permitted by the blog owner).
Include plenty of sub-headers, and insert colorful and interesting images.
Write for Engagement
There are two post styles that consistently perform well, regardless of how fed
up you are with them as a writer. If you are going to guest post, you will get the
most traction from stories and list posts.
We all know why list posts are so successful - they are highly scannable, great for
sharing, and appeal to our natural desire for actionable elements. The exact same
content presented in paragraph format would tank when compared to a list post
format. People want to know what they are getting from reading your article - a
list post appeals to that desire.
Stories are good for two reasons when it comes to guest posting. First of all,
everyone loves a good story. When Darren Rowse spoke at Blog World Expo
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2011, he remarked that story-driven posts are the ones that people seem to
remember the most.
The introduction of a story to a post achieves two key things:
1. It creates a connection. With a story, you are no longer simply words on a
screen - you are a human being.
2. They arouse our natural desire for closure. If you leave someone hanging,
they are going to be far more likely to head over to your blog to find out
more.
Byline
Now we are getting down to the nuts and bolts of what will attract visitors to
your blog. The purpose of your post is to prime the reader - the purpose of the
byline is to sell them on their time investment in visiting your blog. If you write a
generic byline, expect a generic amount of traffic to hit your blog.
You need to appeal to what the reader wants in your byline. They don't care that
you are the writer of so-and-so blog and that you have a Facebook page. They
want to know what clicking on your link is worth to them. What do you have to
offer them?
This ties in closely with relevance. If the two blogs share a common topic, the
byline should write itself to an extent. Your byline also represents the first direct
step of converting a reader – which leads us to…
Entry
Despite it being the last entry on the list, this is easily one of most important
factors to bear in mind. You can do a great job on all the other points, but if
you're not ready for your visitor when they arrive, it could all be for nought.
When a visitor chooses to click on the link in your byline, they want more of
what they have just seen. If the link leads them to your blog's front page, where
you recently posted about unrelated topics, they will quickly lose interest. You
absolutely must direct the visitor to exactly what they are looking for.
With that in mind, I am a big fan of landing pages. If you have a related product
and/or mailing list, let it be the first thing they see when they arrive on your site.
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Remove all distractions and have them focus on the relevant piece of
information, which is arguably what they are looking for.
In terms of targeted visitors, you can't do much better than guest post traffic. By
virtue of the fact that they have clicked through to your site, they want to read
more of the same - all you need to do is facilitate that for them.
You have two choices, depending on how hard you want to work. The first option
is to direct them to the relevant part of your site. For instance, say your blog was
divided up into 5 categories, and you wrote a guest post relating to one of those
categories. Instead of sending your guest post readers to the homepage, you
would direct them straight to the category page (which would of course be
customized with some introductory text and a breakdown of the most popular
posts).
Whilst that is an effective tactic for "hooking" the visitor, its conversion rate will
not be too impressive. Such a reader may choose to bookmark you and come
back at later date, or they may sign up to your RSS feed. They may even sign up
to your email list. But it is all incidental - not designed.
The really high conversion rates can be found in producing a targeted landing
page that incentivizes the reader to sign up to your list. Such an incentive would
typically be in the form of a product - like a free guide or resource. For instance,
say you wrote an article on blue widgets - your byline would link back to a
landing page offering a free guide on blue widgets in return for an email address.
Obviously, it will not be practical for you to write a new product for every guest
post you write. But you can usually produce something that aligns well with
multiple guest posts, and it can also be used elsewhere (say as a incentive for
your standard mailing list forms).
If you follow this tactic along with the other six I have covered in this post, I am
highly confident that you will see dramatically improved conversion rates from
your guest posting efforts.
Comments
Just because your guest post has been published and the traffic has started to
flow doesn’t mean that your job is over. There is nothing worse than seeing a
Leaving Work Behind
guest post where the author couldn’t even be bothered to engage with the
readers.
Think about your own blog – I am guessing (and hoping) that you respond to the
vast majority of comments on your posts. Why do you do this? Because it is good
for engagement, it engenders a sense of community, and it creates long-term
fans. So why act any differently with a guest post?
The comments section on a guest post gives you the perfect opportunity to
interact with a whole new group of people. And if you do interact with them, it
will only serve to boost the number of visitors (and therefore conversion rate) to
your blog.
In order to promote a higher number of comments, you may choose to finish
your guest post with some sort of question or challenge. Some of what I consider
to be my best blog posts have attracted relatively few comments, because people
basically didn’t have a reason to say anything. Don’t be afraid to leave the door
open for your readers to contribute.
Audience
I must credit The Blog Tyrant’s recent post on Copyblogger for this point.
Although I have typically been doing this as a matter of course, I hadn’t even
thought about it until I read the above post.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of people that will visit your blogs –
buyers, and non-buyers. Whether you are offering a product yourself, or
monetizing your blog through affiliate links or advertising, you are always going
to get more money out of the first group. That much is obvious.
So who are the buyers? They are most likely to be beginners. Those who do not
have a good understanding of the topic you cover, and want to know more.
Whilst there are plenty of beginners who are non-buyers, logic dictates that
there is a far higher proportion of buyers amongst beginners than intermediates
or experts. Unless you are selling or recommending advanced products,
intermediates and experts will not be interested. And the pool of buyers amongst
beginners is always going to be higher.
Leaving Work Behind
So write your posts for beginners. Assume your readers know nothing. Take
them by the hand and walk them through whatever process you are discussing.
Pat Flynn is a great example of how to do this effectively. He leaves very little to
chance in his instructional videos and posts. Generally speaking, even complete
beginners walk away from his content feeling comfortable with what they have
just learnt.
The Most Important Part of Guest Posting
This may seem obvious to some, but the best way to produce stellar guest posts
is to take action. The sooner you start churning out guest posts, you sooner you
will be able to assess your successes and failures (it happens) and adjust your
strategy accordingly.
If you produce guest posts with the above advice in mind, you will increase
conversions and traffic. You will also strike up relationships with influential
bloggers in your niche.
In short, if you are serious about producing a successful blog, guest posting is
something you simply must do.
Leaving Work Behind
If You Would Be So Kind, a Favor
If you have found this guide helpful, I would really appreciate you sharing it with
anyone who you feel might benefit from it. Rather than sending them the guide
directly, please direct them to http://www.leavingworkbehind.com/thecomplete-guide-to-guest-posting/.
If you have your own blog, I would love for you to review this guide and link back
to the above page.
If you have any questions or comments regarding the guide, feel free to leave a
comment on the page above, drop me a line on my Facebook page, tweet me, or
send me an email.
I hope to speak to you soon!
All the best,
Tom
Leaving Work Behind

The Complete Guide - Leaving Work Behind

Transcription

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