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17 May 2011

A Beginner’s Guide to Guest Blogging

Author: Jamie | Filed under: Blogging, Guides for Beginners

How to Become a Valued Visitor

Good guest blogger

I’ve mentioned guest blogging in a few of my posts as a way of getting traffic and incoming links to your site, but how do you go about it?

Read my beginner’s guide to guest blogging below to find out more.

What is guest blogging?

Guest blogging is when you write an article or blog post as a ‘guest’ of someone else’s website. An example is this article I wrote for Danny Brown’s blog.

The benefits of guest blogging are two-fold; you can drive more relevant traffic to your site and also get a valuable link or links back to your own website which is good for SEO.

Initial contact

The first part is deciding which blogs you want to contribute to.

The initial step is to choose a site or sites relevant to yours. For example, if you run a local letting agents there’s no point approaching websites that are focused on something unrelated such as mobile phone technology.

The reason for this is Google places a lot of importance on relevance when it comes to the search engine rankings. Also, the likelihood of you getting interested visitors to your letting site from one on mobile phone technology is slim.

There are two main ways to find guest blogging opportunities; do a search online for ‘guest blogging’ followed by your industry or contact blogs you want to contribute to directly.

Writing your post

Nearly every site that accepts guest blog posts will have their own guidelines. These can cover number of words, links within your article, structure and more.

Make sure you follow any guidelines to the letter in order to give your guest blog post the best chance of being accepted and published.

It’s vital you check and double check your article for any spelling errors too.

After your article goes live

A lot of guest bloggers get their articles published and disappear into the sunset.

It’s common courtesy to subscribe to any comments made on the post and reply to these yourself, after all it’s your opinions and thoughts people are responding to, not those of the blog owner.

I use guest blogging a lot myself to bring more traffic and links to my site as well as raising my profile as a small business blogger.

If you’ve got any questions or thoughts, please leave a comment below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Blogging, Guides for Beginners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

18 Responses to “A Beginner’s Guide to Guest Blogging”

  2. “It’s common courtesy to subscribe to any comments made on the post and reply to these yourself, after all it’s your opinions and thoughts people are responding to, not those of the blog owner.” – I couldn’t agree more ;-)

    A bit like we discussed here – http://ariherzog.com/guest-blogging-importance/#comment-body-5520

    Thanks!
    Christopher
    Christopher Roberts recently posted..Badby Woods Bluebells

  4. Hi Christopher, I wonder what wise person wrote that particular comment? :-) Thanks for stopping by!

  6. There is nothing more frustrating than to find the guess blogger vanished in sunset immediately after the post goes live. I will never entertain the same author, never again.

    If you allow guest authors, I guess it is time to think again and check if you have started to lose your color.
    Suresh Khanal@SEOMMOTips recently posted..Enough is Enough Please No More Guest Post

  8. Hi Suresh,

    Thanks for your comments. I read your post and agree with what you’re saying. I don’t see the point in having a blog and then allowing it to become over-populated with other people’s articles. The odd quality guest post here and there that adds value is fine but they shouldn’t take over completely.

  10. Hey Jamie,

    Great advice. There is no doubt that guest blogging is a fantastic additional way to reach a whole different audience and enjoy the benefits that go with this.

    What you say about choosing your guest post blog sites carefully is very important when it comes to credibility. Nothing annoys me more than to read a guest post that is totally non related to the blogger’s niche. Immediately they lose credibility.

    ~Marcus
    Marcus Baker recently posted..3 Tips to Blog in a Way That Will Captivate Your Readers Every Time

  12. Hi Marcus, good to have you over here again. Yes, I’ve had one or two requests from people wanting to write for SearchBlogger none of which had anything to do with online marketing.

    If a blog owner is struggling to find the time to write new content I’d rather they didn’t publish anything than put up an article that’s completely irrelevant.

    Cheers

    Jamie

  14. Guest Blogging is not good if the author is only trying to get a link from your blog. That is why, I only select nice quality posts and inform the author already that you will have to reply to the readers if they ask any question

  16. Hi Shaan, You’re right, I don’t think some people put enough effort into their guest posts. They have to be of an equal or higher standard than is normally on the blog to add any real value – chasing an easy link is not the way to go.

  18. Hi Jamie,

    Great tips on guest blogging and it is a good platform to launch your own blog. Of course when a guest blogger replies it means your comment is noticed and appreciated and it is great way to build relationships too.

    Lali
    lali sandhu recently posted..How To Deal With Rude Prospects!

  20. Hi Lali,

    Thanks for your comments. You’re right, it is a good way to build relationships and it’s something I’ve done and met a lot of other bloggers online.
    Jamie Fairbairn recently posted..Checkout Checkmate

  22. Great tips, thanks. I just would like to say from my own experience that an experienced online marketer can gain the maximal benefits from guest blogging. Making posts at popular topic related blogs you will manage to gain additional backlinks and high ammounts of targeted traffic. Following these helpful instructions you will manage to improve effects of guide guest blogging signifficantly.
    Terje Sannarnes recently posted..Email Notifications as a Powerful Tool of an Entrepreneur

  24. Hi Terje, you’re welcome. Yes, it’s very important when guest blogging to choose relevant sites rather than just posting anywhere to try and get a link. Thanks for stopping by.

  26. Thanks for sharing this post Jamie; I heard about guest blogging yesterday for the first time – but have struggled to find out the in’s and out’s – and your post clearly answered my questions (having looked at the example you did on Danny Borwns website). You mentioned that you do guest blogging yourself – may I ask how often you do this?

  28. Hi Dave, thanks for commenting. I’m glad you found my article useful. I usually write one guest post per week for one of the different sites I guest blog for.

    I’ve written a few at technorati.com and businesszone.co.uk

    Cheers

    Jamie
    Jamie Fairbairn recently posted..Startup Online – A Step by Step Guide to Outsourcing

  30. Hi Jamie, Indeed it was interesting. I notice that you have a couple of categories that fall under our expertise (website design & SEO) – would you be interested in any blog contributions for your website from myself?

  32. Hi Dave, at the moment I’m not accepting any guest blog posts but will be reviewing this in the near future. It’s mainly due to time constraints as I run a marketing company as well as maintaining this blog and at the moment can’t fit any extra work into my schedule in terms of proofreading/editing additional articles.

    Sorry about that, but I do have a list of people who’ve asked and have added your name to it for when things change.

    Thanks

    Jamie

  34. Very useful article. Just learning about the whole concept of guest blogging and will definitely take your tips into consideration.

    Cheers
    Moe recently posted..Leaflet Distribution

  36. Thank you Moe, if you ever have any questions, just let me know.

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