The Holy Grail for any link builder is to acquire a link on an authoritative website in their industry. Unfortunately unless you have a huge SEO budget then the likelihood of you landing one of these is remote, the authoritative websites in our industry are often way to busy making money through affiliate and pre-paid media deals to risk their
reputation by selling links – who can blame them?
In order to acquire links from these sources you need to look further into ways you can not only save these websites time and money, but to also benefit their usually large and demanding user base. The answer through my experience lies in providing content in the form of a guest post. This generally provides advantages to both parties involved as shown below:
Authoritative website benefits
- Saves them time/money on a writer.
- Establishes themselves as more of an authority, with more writers and varied angles of opinion.
- Consistent new content updates for search engines and user base.
Your benefits
- Content which people will actually read and could potentially convert for you further.
- A great link which money can’t often buy.
I’m sure you get the picture; it is simply an exchange of services that everyone benefits from. From the writer, to the website receiving the content and then further to the users who often read the content – everybody gets something from this form of exchange.
How to find guest blogging opportunities
If you don’t have a relevant industry presence or experience to back it up then finding websites that are willing to take your posts is hard. I go down the below routes in order to gain more guest blogging opportunities.
- Be present on industry related forums. If you’re around the forums then you’ll meet people in the same world as you, including webmasters and editors. It is also an excellent way for you to show people that you write well and with sense. If a website owner knows that you are influential with others in the industry then they are much more likely to give you a guest blogging opportunity.
- Take the direct approach. Finding the authoritative sites in your industry and sending them an email is a great way to make sure they know about you straight away. I’ve found that the best way to get a reply is by taking the time to tailor your email with suggestions for the guest topic. For example I’ll look through a site and note user beneficial articles that are either missing or could be expanded on further, it gives them something to think of and shows that you know already have consideration for their current content.
- Open up your site for guest blogging. By opening up your site for guest blogging you will not only reap the rewards of a more diverse content range for your users, but you will also automatically enter yourself into the guest blogging community. You can research the people who approach you and find where else they have posted. As well as this you can ask them to return the favour by allowing you to guest post on one of their sites in the future.
You’ll find that once you have started to write guest posts then finding new places to write is a lot easier. Not only will people be happier to allow you to write for their website, but you will also have people approaching you directly.
Tips on writing a good guest post
Finding a website to accept your guest post is only half of the work, the rest of the process is taking the time to write an article which is of a high enough standard to be published. I’ve given a few guidelines on how I approach this below:
- The first step is to work out your skills and strengths. There is no point approaching a roulette strategy website if you know nothing about strategies, you’ll simply end up wasting your time on a post that doesn’t get published. List down everything you feel that you could write about and subjects around them.
- Write a lengthy post. I’ve had guest post applicants who I’ve accepted then they have sent me through a 200 word post that I could have done myself in 20 minutes. Don’t drag a post on unnecessarily, however I’ll always aim for a minimum of 700 words.
- Make sure that you target it towards the publishing websites user base. If you’re writing it like it will be on your own website then the chances are it won’t fit, look at the style of the websites writing and try and match it. Is it casual, stern, funny, official etc.
- Don’t be over-promotional. Anyone who accepts a guest post realises that the writer has to benefit to an extent with an advertorial or a link, however if you take this too far then the chances are it will end up never being published.
- Provide an opinion/angle which others might not see. If you’re simply regurgitating other peoples’ information then the chances are you won’t be writing for them again. Provide a viewpoint and try and help the reader learn something, this isn’t always possible, however it is what you should aim for.
To finalise, I’ll give you a great example of a guest post, this article right here. Sure CAP may have been swayed over time with our charm and money to give us a direct text link, but then the likelihood is no one would have ever clicked it. This way, CAP wins, they are getting regular content updates which engages there user base and furthers there reputation as the leading industry authority. And on the other site, we win, we get a link and we get to give casino affiliates some genuinely helpful advice. It is a simple exchange of services which mutually benefits the community – give it a try!
What are your thoughts on guest blogging? Have you ever tried it?
About David Merry
David Merry spent the first part of his professional career in the link building strategy team at London based search marketing company Greenlight Search.
He now heads the online marketing team at CastleCasino.com and focuses the majority of his time on SEO and their affiliate program. You can learn more about Castle Casino’s affiliate program at CastleAffiliates.com.