How To Get Leads Through Guesting Posting On Influential Blogs
If you’re looking for a free and effective way to drive traffic to your landing page or blog, look no further than guest posting.
A blog that gets a lot of traffic and has a high page rank, usually has a large and loyal audience which you can leverage in the form of a guest post.
But to really get the most out of guest posting, there are some important principles that you must follow for it to be worthwhile. You must have a strategic plan in place to get the most of out it.
So, let’s take a look at how to make it work.
STEP 1 – Make a list of the blogs that you are going to target
To keep track of everything you really need to make a list of all the blogs that you are going to target, and keep notes on each one. I would recommend using a spreadsheet, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets (which is free).
Start by running some targeted searches on Google.com using keyword phrases that are closely related to your niche or industry. A classic example of a keyword you could use for MOBE would be “online business blog” or “make money online blog”.
Start adding websites or blogs to your list that look like they would be worth guest posting on, but you only need to look through the first page of search on Google – anything not on the first page is generally not worth bothering with.
One you have about 20 (or preferably more) sites on your list, it is time to look closer at the statistics for each site to see if it is worth your time.
STEP 2 – Check the Alexa ranking and Page rank of each site on your list
The easiest way to do this is to use your Firefox browser and download the SEO Status PageRank/Alexa Toolbar from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/seo-status-pagerankalexa-toolb/
(If the link above doesn’t work simply do a Google search for “Alexa and Page Rank Toolbar” and you will find it at the top of the list)
Download the toolbar and it should appear at the top of your Firefox browser and look something like the image below
Now, whenever you visit any of the sites on your list you simply have to hover the mouse over the PageRank section (on the toolbar) to get the page rank, and then hover over the Alexa section (on the toolbar) to get your Alexa ranking.
For those that don’t know what these rankings are, the Alexa ranking shows an indication of how much traffic a website gets (and also how popular it is) and in this case the lower the number the better. So, a website with an Alexa ranking of 1 means that the site is ranked as the most popular website on the whole internet.
The Page Rank is derived by Google’s algorithm, and measures the quality score of a website in the eyes of Google. Rankings are scored from 0 to 9, and in this case the higher the number the better the ranking. So, a website with a Page Rank of 9 means that Google rates this site as an extremely high quality site based on its algorithms.
In summary a targeted website, with a really good Alexa ranking, and a really good Page Rank is what we are looking for ideally. You can also get more information about a site, if you wish, by going directly to Alexa.com and typing in the web address. Alexa.com also shows the amount of incoming links as well, which is another important factor in a website’s suitability to guest post on.
The more incoming links the better, particularly if they are high quality incoming links.
In my opinion you should only bother with blogs that have at least a page rank of 3, and an Alexa ranking of under 500,000 (ideally under 100,000 if you can). The screen show below (taken from Alexa.com) shows a perfect website for guest blogging on, with an extremely high Alexa ranking, and thousands of incoming links.
STEP 3 – Write up a script that you can use to contact each blog owner
So by now you should have updated your list to show which sites you are going to approach to request a guest posting opportunity. If you have never written a guest post before, it would probably be a good idea to start by approaching some of the smaller sites, because you will have a much better chance of being accepted.
If you approached Copyblogger.com (which is shown in the image above) as a newbie, your chances of even getting a reply will be extremely slim as they have their own in house professional writers that actually work for them. The point is that you should be realistic with who you approach based on your past experience.
But, having said that, you should also not be shy or timid to approach people. The worst that can happen is that you get a “no thanks”.
The very first thing that you need to do is to decide on a headline (or title of the post) that is related to the site that you want to guest post on.
Try to find the posts on the site you are targeting that have attracted the most traffic, comments and shares on social media (Facebook Likes, Tweets etc). By doing this you will get a feel for what topics the readers of the website are interested in, and from there you can come up with ideas to write about.
From your point of view, the best idea is to come up with an idea that combines your niche with the popular topics of the site you are interested in. That way every body wins.
Find an idea that crosses over with your audience and the bloggers audience and you can’t go wrong. My suggestion is to come up with a headline for the blog post that is going to create curiosity and stand out, instead of the standard boring headlines that have already been used a thousands times before.
Something bizarre like “How Yoda Increases His Sales Conversions” is going to stand out a lot more compared to “7 Ways To Increase Sales Conversions”. This is just an example – you get the idea…
Once you have come up with a great headline, it is time to contact the blog owner.
I would recommend sticking to a standard script when contacting them. Something like this would be OK to use (just fill in the blanks to suit your particular situation):
Hi *******
I’m going to write a post about *********, and in my opinion it would be a great fit as a guest post for your blog. The title for the post would be ******** (I can always change it around it if you like).
To get a feel for my writing style, you can check out a sample of my work at http://****** – it got *** retweets and *** comments.
Would you like me to send you a draft?
Regards,
Your Name
Now if you have never guest posted before and have no examples to show off, then you could either point them to a post on your own blog that has been successful – or you could even leave this part out.
The point is that you should try to sell yourself as best as you can, but keep it short and to the point.
STEP 4 – Now go to each blog and find the link to the contact us page, and send your guest posting message
This part is easy.
Simply go to each website on your list and look for either a “Contact Us” page or something like “Guest Posting”. You can see in the example below this blog has both a “Contact” page and a “Guest Posts” page – in this case always go to the guest posting page.
Some blogs have certain guidelines or special forms to fill out, but most of them will just have a standard contact form. Copy and paste your script into the contact form and check that everything is written properly. Be sure to only send them a suggestion of the headline for your post, don’t send the entire post just yet.
STEP 5 – After your post suggestion has been accepted, get to work ASAP to submit it
If you don’t hear back from the blogger after a week, then it is a good idea to send them a follow up message, just in case they have forgotten about it.
Once you do get a reply from the blogger letting you know that they would like you to send them a draft, you want to get the post written as soon as possible. If they give you a deadline, make sure you don’t submit it late.
You already have your headline, so now it is time to write the content.
Here is a very brief outline of the skeleton of a well written blog post:
- Headline
- Hook (to grab the readers attention)
- Problem
- Solution
- Your by-line with a link back to your website
Usually the best blog posts highlight a problem, and then provide a solution. Remember, if you can make it entertaining to read as well, you could be onto a winner. Try to use your creativity as much as possible, and let the ideas flow freely.
The best word to describe what I am talking about is “infotainment” – which is a combination of both information and entertainment. To find out more about this I would suggest doing a Google search for “infotainment”, and this should give you loads of ideas on how to stand out.
And lastly, don’t forget to include your byline with a link back to your website offering the readers something of value. Without adding a link in your byline all of your efforts are wasted as the readers can’t click through to your website.
Here is an example below of a byline in a guest post that I have written. In this example my byline is shown above the post in its own content box, but usually the byline is found right at the bottom of the post.
STEP 6 – Once the guest post has been published, subscribe to the comments feed – so that you can respond to the questions asked and introduce yourself to people.
Once you have submitted your finished post to the blog owner, you want to find out what date the post is scheduled to be published. This is very important, because you want to be able to quickly respond to the comments and questions, and also to connect with the visitors of the blog.
Quite often this will start a conversation on the blog, and will result in a lot of leads.
You only need to subscribe to the comments feed once, and this is best done the first time you post a comment. You can see where the comments feed subscription box is (on most websites) in the red rectangle in the image below.
Subscribing to the comments feed will send you an email each time a new comment is posted, and this makes it a lot easier to keep up with new comments as they are posted. Ideally you should attempt to reply to all comments in the post as soon as possible – and to be friendly with those that have left comments.
And if your post gets really popular you will find that you will get a lot of comments and retweets, which will definitely increase your exposure -as well as driving traffic to your website promoting MOBE.
In my case I offer a FREE copywriting course to get people onto my list and then send them daily emails which include useful tips – but also links to MOBE products that are relevant.
You can either choose a similar strategy or send people directly to your MOBE squeeze pages – that choice is yours.
Here is a couple of examples of guest posts that I have written that have done really well, and resulted in a lot of leads.
To sum up, the more guest posts that you can do on relevant blogs that get a lot of traffic, the better your results will be. A lot of guest posts creates a snowball like effect, where you will find that you start getting leads on a daily basis. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but like any another traffic method – you either pay by money or your time.
Best of luck,
No comments:
Post a Comment