Guest blogging is the way to get noticed and very targeted visitors. But how on earth do you go about getting some great blogger to let you post on his/her blog?
The usual way is write a very polite email saying you love what they are saying and you yourself are an expert in their field and would love to help contribute great content, for which the only thing you want back is a simple acknowledgement by way of an Author Resource Box including a link back to your site.
They will of course want to see proof of your expertise and writing style so make sure you give them the opportunity (i.e. pro-actively say if they are interested let me know and I will send a brand new article). They will also ask to see your site so they can prove to themselves you are legitimate.
Or…..
How about this. Open a spreadsheet and enter into it every blog you come across in your niche or related niche (it has to be a blog for this to work as you will see later). To find these blogs search for your niche or related niches in Google and click on the ‘Blog’ option in the column on the left of the results page. Yes it’s that simple.
Now click on each found blog and see if they allow comments on posts. Check using a plug in like SEO Quake to see if it is ‘follow’ or ‘no-follow’. It doesn’t matter which it is, but you need to know the difference when posting if you want to maximise the effect.
‘Follow’ blogs. These are great because you will not only pick up direct traffic from visitors to the blog, you will also get link juice to your site.
‘No Follow’ blogs. As mentioned, these are also fine, but *mostly* you will only get direct traffic (however not all search engines use the ‘no follow’ flag so you may pick up a little link juice here and there).
OK. Enter these blog addresses into your spreadsheet so you can track your progress as you go along.
The next step is to add comments to the posts these bloggers are putting up. You need to do this to recent articles rather than older ones (though older ones are fine too if they are ‘follow’ types).
Great Quentin, but what do we put in the comment?
Something VERY relevant to the article you are commenting on and likely to be of great value to the reader AND author of the blog.
The length of the comment doesn’t matter too much, but obviously the more info you supply, the greater the value. And that means the greater the likelihood someone will read it and click your link to see what else you are saying.
The blog’s author will also start to take notice of you. In time you will be able to contact them with a good probability that they will accept guest posts from you.
But that is not the immediate point here! No. The best part about this is that you are going to get links on top blogs AND direct traffic from that blog’s audience. It’s laser targeted too. And best of all it wont cost you a penny. Enjoy.