15 Must Dos in Effective Guest Blogging

Have you spent hours writing guest post only to find they get rejected?

Are you falling down somewhere in the process of getting your content on quality websites?

Many of us give up because it becomes a frustrating process. The fact is though that you just need to understand the best way to complete the process to ensure you get the best results.

In this article, you will find out about a formula for effectively writing and promoting your guest post so you get more yesses and better results.

Doesn’t that sound good?

15 Must Dos in Effective Guest Blogging

1. Develop a Winning Attitude

It’s crucial that you have the correct mind set when you go about writing and promoting your guest posts. There’s no point writing content that nobody wants, or content that nobody will read. You have to spend some time crafting an angle so that it is both attractive to webmasters and website owners, and to the public that they serve. The audience is the key and therefore you need to spend some time understanding the audience of different blogs before you actually begin writing.

In addition, you have to have a positive attitude throughout the process. Communicate positively and expect a positive result. It’s only through this winning attitude and selflessness that you’ll develop a good approach to guest posting.

2. Select Your Targets Carefully

In your niche there will be hundreds and hundreds of websites that are appropriate for guest posting your articles. However, many people focus on more generic websites that may offer higher page rank or perceived higher value. The reality is that you’ll get better results if you target carefully. The content needs to be related to your website but also related to theirs. It’s only by having a certain amount of synergy that you really will have success in both getting responses and getting your content up.

You should develop a list of targets and engage with them in a positive and friendly manner, talking about how you can enhance their brand through quality content.

3. Invest Time in Research before Your Approach

It’s crucial that you at the very minimum read some articles on the websites you are approaching and find out their guest posting guidelines. If you don’t do this, your approaches will be doomed to fail as you won’t target correctly and will come across as a spam approach. You should therefore invest as much time as you can to ensure that you get value through the process. Guest posts are a quality and high value activity and you should treat them as such.

4. Thrash through Different Ideas

Rather than just sending over the first idea that comes to mind, or something you’ve been thinking about for a long time, it’s worth thinking about how you can develop ideas that are in synergy with the target website.

If you are developing content for an annuity website and you’re approaching retirement villages for example, it could be that you focus on how annuity lump sum cash can pay off mortgages and provide much needed revenue for retirement homes.

It’s important that you write something interesting for the target website rather than something that you are interested in.

When it comes down to developing ideas, you should have a brainstorming session. If possible thrash out ideas with several people so that you can get the best targeted ideas for the contacts you are going to be making.

5. Make Your Content Sing and Dance

It’s no good just having generic, boring, mundane, run-of-the-mill content that doesn’t say anything much at all. You have to really target the content and also make it a little bit sexy. You should use images, infographics, statistics, and even links to videos where appropriate. The content must scream quality, but also be aesthetically appealing too.

Long chunks of content don’t work online; you need to jazz it up with snazzy headings and interesting additional features.

6. Talk about the Host Website and Big’em Up

When you’re talking to a webmaster, whether it be through e-mail or on instant messaging systems, you should always let them know that you know about their website. There’s a saying “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. This is true through all walks of life and by explaining that you like a certain article, that you like an angle that they take, or that there’s a specific aspect to the website that appeals to you, you are communicating that you have taken the time to understand their business, or their blog, and therefore you deserve the same recognition and consideration.

7. Pitch the Idea by Email

It’s often good to pitch by email rather than going through the website forms. However, by doing both, you are demonstrating that you are actually contacting them personally rather than just spamming. For some websites the contact forms work very well, for some email is better. Just ensure that you keep things personal and tailored and not generic and spammy.

The first stage of the pitch will often be a suggestion of an angle for an article. It could include several titles or it could include suggested topics. Go to the level of specifics you think will fit with the guidelines that the websites have in their guest posting sections. If there are no specific guidelines that they offer for guest posters, then you should perhaps explain a bit about the benefits of working with you.

Everything should be quality focused, from the pitch through the content ideas, through the content delivery and the follow-up conversation. You are looking to build a relationship, and if you can have ongoing posts go up to a decent website they are worth their weight in gold.

8. Alternatively Send a Finished Draft

If you are confident that you have a great idea for a specific website, you could send over a finished draft suggesting that the content be placed in a specific location on the website. This demonstrates that you really have taken the time to understand their website and pinpoint exactly where your material would fit. Obviously this takes time investment and you should be pretty confident that they will say yes if you take this approach.

It’s easy for webmasters to perceive that the content is going to be spammed to lots of different webmasters so the more targeted to the website you are focusing on, the more likely you are to get a yes. You could also talk about their website in your guest post where appropriate so that the content fits seamlessly into their website.

9. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

It’s crucial that when you’re going through the process of guest posting you understand the value in the process. If you get a high quality link from a top authority in your niche it can propel your website up the search engines. It’s important that you focus on this as it is a difficult process and can be time consuming with lots of NO’s before you get a YES.

The quality of your content will dramatically improve the results you get and it is possible to get 75% yesses if you are getting you quality content sent to top quality websites, in a top quality way.

Keep your eyes on the prize and understand the value.

10. Link to Your Own Guest Posts

By linking to your own guest post, and therefore promoting them, you’ll gain maximum benefit from them. This will help you to get more visitors from that content whilst also encouraging your partner to take more posts in the future. It should be a relationship that is continually fuelled and your links to your own guest posts really can help.

11. Read, Understand and Acknowledge the Post Guidelines

It’s crucial that you do spend time understanding what a website wants from their guest posters. We’ve touched on this before but it’s worth a special mention again. By understanding where links should be placed, how content should be focused, and who the audience is, you will get much better results from your approaches and you’ll get much better value from the time invested in guest posting.

12. Make it Copy and Paste

You should make your posts as easy as possible to put onto websites. This will mean adding h2, h3 tags, and where appropriate adding any website formatting such as “a href =”, as well as providing images in easy web uploadable format. By making the process easy, you’re much more likely to move from acceptance to completion in shorter time frames.

13. Get Your Content through Different Hands for Editing

It’s very important that your content goes through several pairs of hands before it actually goes to the website. This will ensure that typos, factual areas, and any inconsistency are picked up before the website content is sent to the webmaster for publishing. By having this process in place you will dramatically enhance the quality of the material. You will also probably get some suggestions for enhancement of the content that really make it stand out.

14. Don’t Cram Posts with Links

You shouldn’t be cramming your post with links. You should follow the guest post guidelines but also think about Google and how they operate. There’s no doubt that Google will see multiple links to your website as a potential attempt to manipulate the results down the line. You may not get away with this even if you do now. Think about the future and keep your website content natural to ensure that the long term effects of your posts are positive and they don’t become detrimental to your website.

15. Never… Never… Never Give Up: Churchill

Churchill was once asked for the secret to success at a university gathering. His key note speech was set for ten or more minutes. He simply got up and said:

“Never… Never… Never give up.”

Persistence is crucial to guest posting, as it is to so many areas of our lives. By having a process in place to ensure that we habitually do the things that we need to do, we will gain much greater success and have our websites up the search engines over time.

Website promotion is not about instant results, it’s about the ongoing relentless pursuit of new links through quality processes and quality content. By taking your approach seriously, and building day by day, you’ll end up with a website portfolio that is incredible.