What is the Best Way to Become a Guest Blogger?
-
What have you found to be the best way to convince quality blog sites with authority to let you become a guest blogger for their site?
I know that providing samples of quality writing is key. But other than that, what is the best way "in"?
I have a handful of quality writers at my disposal and also write myself, but I'm trying to find effective ways of convincing established blogs to let me write for them.
Please send me your best, most creative suggestions! What has worked for you?
Thank you,
Afshin
Apples of Gold
-
In regards to mentioning you are going to link to your site, I like this quote a lot: http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/graywolf-tweet.png
-
I tend to be as upfront as I can. In most niches there are masses of guest writing opportunities, so the costs are largely outreach time. The less of everyone's time you waste the better - you get to contact more opportunities and they don't get annoyed!
I'd tend to include sample links in the articles I send, if that is the route taken. If not I'll mention it in the email.
However the approach depends a little on the overall approach you are taking. If you are targeting sites that already have guest blogs there is no need to spell it out. If you are targeting people you have already built a relationship with you can often be more blunt, etc.
-
Hi applesofgold,
Some good advice here. I would agree with EGOL that the best approach is to find people who are already open to guest bloggers.
The easiest and most productive way of doing this is to use a service whose aim is to provide connections between those producing content or leads and those who need them.
Some of these are mentioned in Mike Scanlin's blog post How To Get The Equivalent Of $100K In PPC Ads For Free (and the comments). Those mentioned in the post include Blogger Link Up, My Blog Guest and Haro. I also like Source Bottle and find it really convenient that calls for articles and sources are easily accessible via their Twitter feed.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Here is an observation and then a suggestion....
**Observation: ** A person who owns a successful blog or website get lots of crappy articles sent to her by people who are simply trying to market their crap to her audience or take advantage of her success in some way.
That's just a warning to let you know that your offer to this person better be mighty good and look like she is going to gain a lot more out of the deal than you will. That means your content better be spectacular.
**Suggestion: ** Find someone who already accepts guest bloggers or who has multiple contributors to their blog. If a blog or a website does not already have guests or multiple authors there is probably a reason. Don't waste your time trying to change people's thinking.
When you find some potential blogs or websites send them an article or an infographic or a blog post that they can publish and know that it will not be duplicated anywhere else on the web. Be sure it is good enough that the blogger will get more out of the deal than you will. If you don't have that you will not get a deal because other people are not going to go on a crusade for your brand.
-
Thanks, Mat. I sent out 4 requests yesterday to quality related blogs by simply emailing them and showing them a sample of my writing and letting them know what I had in mind.
I did mention that I would put our link in the "author bio". Is this is a turn-off for potential blogs to mention right away? Or should I try to "hook" their interest before mentioning this. I've noticed that guest bloggers that have approached me have not mentioned this until after I ask them what their terms are.
Thanks,
Afshin
Apples of Gold
-
This sounds trite, but the best way is "try".
People are more receptive to guest blogging that you might imagine. If you can initially hook their interest and stand out from the offshore junk peddlers, and have some decent content at hand then you are heading the right way.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Product descriptions, when do they become classed as duplicate content, how different do they have to be?
I look after 3 sites which have a lot of crossover on products. We have 1000s of products and I've made it a requirement that we give each it's on description on each of the sites. This sounds like the right thing to but it's very hard for our content writers to write three different versions descriptions, especially when we have variations on the products so potentially writing unique product descriptions for 4-5 very similar products on three separate sites. We've worked very hard to create unique content deep through the site on all categories, subcategories and tag combinations and along with the other SEO work we've done over the last couple of years is producing great results. My question is now far do we have to go? I'm busy writing some product descriptions for a 3rd party site for some of our products, the easy thing to do is just copy and paste but I want Google to see the descriptions as unique. Whilst all SEO advice will say 'write unique descriptions' from a practical point of view this isn't especially useful as there doesn't really seem to be much guidance on how different they need to be. I gather we can't just move around the paragraphs or jumble up sentences a bit but it is easier to work from a description and change it than it is to start from a blank slate (our products range form being very interesting and unique, to quite everyday so sometimes tough to create varied unique content for). Does anyone know of any guidance or evidence of just how clever the Google algorithm is and how close content has to be before it becomes classed as the same or similar? Thanks Pete
Content Development | | PeterLeatherland0 -
Guest blog on my web site.
**I received this email from a lady who wishes to write articles and post them on my site under my news section . Ok, if its quality I dont mind hiring somebody to create a post. Her proposal is as follows and this is her email :-**Basically what I can offer is to write a couple of articles for your News section, something fun and interesting for your visitors which will hopefully drag some traffic your way. I could make them well suited to your site and I could include in each a link to a client of mine - one who wants to be exposed on a good site like yours - and for doing that I can offer you compensation of £33 for each client link - 1 per article. For example, one client is Watches of Switzerland, so I could write an article about ideal wedding gifts for a groom maybe, or something about a perfect Honeymoon destination like Switzerland, and slip a link in there. Other clients include Weddingsite and Lampcommerce - which could be included in something about making a matrimonial home. There are a few stipulations I would need to abide by, like - the article would need to be 500 words, it would need the link to be a 'do follow' link, it would need a picture or two, and it would need a couple of 'sacrifice links' (just links to Wikipedia or something to make it more Google friendly). Question. Is this what a guest article is ? and also is the format ok ? Sorry if this seems a dumb question but still learning guys . King regards to everyone Peter
Content Development | | weddingshoesandaccessories1 -
Whats the best way to creat a sitemap for a wordpress sitw with more than 1.000 posts
I tried to use yoast and google xml plugins but I´ve notice there are several important posts to me are not there... I´ve already checked if there was any post with noindex, and everything looks good Now I´m creating the sitemap file with screaming frog but it is not so convenient as a plugin... any suggestions or tips?
Content Development | | SeoMartin10 -
I work on a uk decorating website with five of our own bloggers all of which reside on the home page of the website on their own separete blogging urls as sub domains - is this a good idea or would google not like this from an seo point of view?
Should blogs that are part of an overall content site be on separate sites and link in or is it ok to promote them as content on the home page of the site and take users off to their own url to view the site. Is this good practise for seo?
Content Development | | Pday0 -
Google plus Rich snippets for guest posting on large websites
I work for a content marketing company and the majority of our clients are large banks looking to get their message out there. We're thinking of favouring writers with Google plus profiles and adding the rel=author tag so all the articles incorporate rich snippets and a profile image. So this is more of a discussion into whether you think this would be beneficial to a large corporation. I know it aids in search and authority but it would mean a company would have many faces and they usually have one.
Content Development | | acs111
Think of when a company makes a speech on TV its always 1 person designated as the company spokesperson. Another way would be to write on behalf of somebody in the company and have there profile image but I can imaging this is frowned upon by Google. What are your thoughts0 -
What is the Best Practice for External Links?
We are currently in the process of reviewing our site on a number of fronts, and part of that involves adding quality content to our product category pages where necessary. Our practice so far has been to add relevant content, and in this content externally link to a couple of relevant, related sites for that category (avoiding the use of keywords we are trying to rank for). Should we be doing this (externally linking)? And, if so, should these external links be NoFollow? So far, we have seen mixed results for our efforts.
Content Development | | Robdps0 -
What's the best way to include a pdf in your post?
I have some posts where I'd like to include a downloadable pdf....what is the best way seo wise to do this? I was thinking of just putting the file on my server and than just including a link to download it, but I'm thinking there's probably a better way. Any thoughts?
Content Development | | NoahsDad0 -
If you have the best sales on the weekends, when is the best day to post the content?
The Client has the best sales on the weekends and his writing a weekly blog post to help the overall site rank better and hopefully drive more sales. When is the best time to post this content? On Monday so that it hopefully gets indexed by the weekend? or On Friday so that we can leverage twitter and Facebook to increase sales.
Content Development | | anchorwave0