Maximize Your Guest Posting Efforts
The following is a guest post by Adam McKerlie of The Computer Zone (thecompzone.com). If you enjoy this post be sure to shoot over and subscribe to his RSS feed.
Guest posting is a great way to promote your blog, yourself, and invite a lot of new readers to visit your blog. Before you publish your guest post you must make sure that your own blog is optimized to accept those new visitors. Gearing up your blog after you’ve written a guest post is easy and here are a few things you can do.
Have a welcome post
The first thing you should do after a guest post is to post on your own blog welcoming in the visitors. This post should be short and sweet and include a few things.
- A link and short mention of the guest post
- A list of your most popular posts
- A link to your feed and a way to subscribe via email
- Your email for any questions
This welcome post does a number of things. It makes the new visitors welcome, gives them a number of options to subscribe to your feed and it also gives them easy access to your best posts. All three of these things will help turn one-time visitors into daily readers.
Back in July when Ben wrote for hmtk.com, he wrote a post on his own page telling his viewers and welcoming the viewers from the other blog. While I would have included the things in the list above he does demonstrate this point well.
Make sure you have content
Before you start guest posting it is imperative that you have content on your own site. Having content on your own site does a number of things. It makes your guest post have more credibility because you actually have some knowledge in the subject. This credibility will make the blogger who is publishing your guest post look good and it’ll also help you get more visitors to stay on your site.
Having content will also help turn visitors into readers. If the visitors from the guest post come to your blog and see 3 or 4 posts they’ll leave almost immediately. If they come however, and see a few years worth of posts they’re more likely to stay and view more of your articles.
Is your content the right content
Having content on your blog when your visitors arrive from a guest post means having content similar to what you blogged about. If you blogged about writing tips and techniques on the guest post and they come visiting expecting you to have more information about writing articles and posts – do you think they will be disappointed to find out that your blog is about computer games and the latest videos? Of course they will. If people see that you have a great post about writing they’ll come to your site expecting more information about writing. Give it to them.
For example, this post is about guest blogging and blogging in general and if you head over to my site you’ll find an entire category about blogging. Choose your guest blogging topics wisely. People expect you to be an expert on the subject you blog about, but if your blog says otherwise, they may not come back to it later.
Guest blogging can be a very rewarding activity. It can help you gain new traffic and readers to your blog but before you first guest post you should get your own blog ready to accept those new visitors.
I say that a lot of these guest posts have no relevance to the blog, but once in a while some are relevant.
-Mike
I disagree with having a welcome post, because I think articles on a blog and important and crowding it up with a welcome post for each guest article you’ve written on another blog isn’t a smart choice.
However, I think the thing you SHOULD have is a great new article on the homepage – when you’re expecting any kind of traffic flow (link from a big blog, guest posting, social media spike), there should be a fantastic and well-written post on display so all new visitors realize that you’re continuously putting out good content.
@ Mike, thanks for such insightful commentary… 😉
@ Tay, I’d have to disagree with you here. If you’re writing a guest post on a popular blog, you know you’re going to get an influx of people new to your site. Taking the time to introduce those people to your site properly (giving them a sort of guided tour) will help convert more of those new visitors into subscribers. Now obviously if you write several guest posts a week or you’re writing on a smaller blog a welcome post might not be needed but I don’t think that applies to most bloggers.
Ha, that’s what happen to me. I wrote a guest piece for Chris Garrett’s Dslrblog.com because there is a opportunity and I am interested in photography. Visitors who came over didn’t stay long at all. Those who came expecting some topics on photography is disappointed.
Choosing your topic for guest blogging is extremely important.
Guest posts are a great way to get new visitors to your site. If you get the opportunity to do so, you should give a brief explanation of your own site to make sure the expectations are there for the new readers. Just because you do a guest post in a niche site doesn’t mean that your site has to match it.
@Tay
I’d have to agree with Ben, Having a welcome page is the best way to convert visitors. It helps them see that you have some great content and hopefully it’ll keep them on your site longer.
Again agreeing with Ben, if you write more than one guest post a week I wouldn’t clutter up your blog with all of theses posts. Also you should replace the “welcome posts” with new content shortly after (the next day or so).
I agree with Tay, don’t have a welcome post, just let the guy post, then add something to the end of the post like, oh, this was a guest post by blah blah!
Guest posting is a great way of promoting your blog and building your audience