How to use guest blogging to grow your traffic

Using guest blogging to grow your traffic

Although I haven’t used guest blogging to grow my traffic much, I know it has great potential. It’s just that, I’m obsessed with my own blog and with the limited amount of time that I have, I prefer to spend it writing content for my own blog.

Even when guest blogging can help me increase my website traffic in a meaningful manner, some psychological hurdle has been blocking me.

In this blog post I’m going to talk about how to use guest blogging to grow your traffic in the hope that, it may also inspire me to do the same.

There are multiple ways you can use guest blogging to increase your website traffic.

The inspiration to write this blog on how to use guest blogging to grow your traffic came from the email update I received from LinkedIn promoting one of their posts: The State of Guest Blogging: How to Guest Post and Grow Your Traffic.

What is guest blogging? Does it really increase your traffic?

Guest blogging explained

Guest blogging means writing for someone else’s blog to get exposure from an entirely new audience.

Whether it can actually increase your traffic depends on the quality of your writing and also the quality of the blog or the website where you are guest blogging.

There was a time when guest blogging was used mainly to get inbound links – publishers who publish your guest blog, attribute it to you and along with the attribution, they also link to your blog or website.

Those days, most of the people who were seriously trying to drive traffic to their websites, resorted to guest blogging.

Then people started using the “nofollow” tag and many blogs and online magazines these days give you no benefit in terms of backlinks.

If you want to write for them, they say, write it for pure exposure, and nothing else.

There are still some websites and blogs that give you “follow” backlinks, but their count is decreasing fast.

What is the difference between “nofollow” and “follow”?

Every website or blog has a page rank. It’s some sort of a ranking power or a ranking fuel.

It’s kind of a currency.

All the external links published on that website or blog get a small portion of this currency based on how much currency the website or the blog has.

Naturally, if a website or a blog has lots of page rank currency, it can distribute this currency to multiple links, but at the cost of losing some of it.

Webmasters who want to drive traffic from search engines need “follow” backlinks from these currency-rich websites and blogs if they want to increase traffic from search engines by improving their SEO.

Actually, there is no thing as “follow” backlinks. By default, every backlink is a “follow” backlink.

Since lots of people were trying to improve their SEO and consequently, drive search engine traffic to their websites, Google came up with the option of “nofollow”.

A blogger or Webmaster can use this attribute with every href tag to save his or her page rank currency but at the same time be able to link to external websites and blogs.

Coming back to guest blogging and how it can drive traffic to your website or blog.

How it can help you increase traffic.

Guest blogging helps you in two ways: gets you exposure on other websites and blogs, and gets you free, quality content for your own blog.

If things go well, I will be publishing a blog post from a guest blogger today.

Of late, as an increasing number of people are able to find my blog on search engines, I have been getting lots of queries from people interested in writing for my blog in exchange of a link to their website or blog.

Obviously they want to increase traffic by getting a link from my blog which enjoys better search engine rankings.

I use a plug-in that attaches a “nofollow” tag to every external link that I publish on my blog or website, but the plug-in also has a provision to make exceptions.

Being an experienced content writer and blogger, I can make out whether a guest blog has been written purely for the purpose of getting a backlink or the writer has invested some good amount of time and intention into writing the blog post.

When I feel that the writer really deserves a “follow” backlink, I make an exception.

Anyway, this was just to explain to you what is guest blogging.

Whether you are guest blogging or you are publishing blog from guest bloggers, provided you maintain a level of quality, you can increase traffic, you can drive more traffic.

Using guest blogging to grow your traffic

Traffic growth with guest blogging

As I have explained to you, guest blogging helps you in two ways:

Gets you exposure and traffic from other blogs and websites where you publish your guest blog post.
Gets you fresh and regular content for your own blog and in return, increases your search engine rankings, and in return, grows your traffic.

Hence, whether you guest post on other blogs or you allow other writers to guest post on your own blog, you can use guest blogging to grow your traffic.

How to approach online publishers and bloggers for guest blogging opportunities?

How to approach publishers for guest blogging opportunities

If you want to know how to use guest blogging to grow your traffic, one of the most important things to learn is, how to approach other online publishers and bloggers for guest blogging opportunities.

Guest blogging needs to be a full-fledged strategy.

It’s a sustained effort.

Before you move forward with your guest blogging strategy to grow your traffic, you must know why you want to guest blog (assuming for the time being that you are planning on writing for other blogs and websites).

First decide why you want to publish guest blog posts

This Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging by Neil Patel gives you every information you are ever going to need to learn about how to use guest blogging to grow your traffic.

He says that there are three reasons why you may choose to guest blog:

You want to position yourself as an authority in front of a new audience.
You want to leverage a high traffic website or blog to get traffic.
Generate backlinks to your website or blog.

Keeping these reasons in mind will help you come up with appropriate guest blogging ideas and also approach the most suitable publishers for your guest blogging campaign.

Make a list of industries you would like to use guest blogging to grow your traffic

Randomly picking websites and blogs for guest blogging opportunities is going to be labor intensive as well as ineffective.

There is no need to approach every blog or website looking for writers.

You want to focus on your niche.

Make a list of niches you would like to focus.

Your competitors won’t publish your guest blog posts for obvious reasons unless you offer them something really irresistible – some sort of insight that you haven’t published on your own website.

If you are an app developer you would like to find websites and blogs on app development and ancillary technologies.

If you are a fashion designer, you may look for websites and blogs on lifestyle, celebrities and clothing.

If you are a content marketer, you may like to approach websites and blogs offering content marketing tips and tutorials.

The basic idea is, make a list of websites and blogs who would publish your guest blogs, and who will be directly or indirectly related to your industry or subject matter.

Finding the right publishers for guest blogging opportunities

This is very important. It’s given that whichever blogger or website owner you approach accepts guest blogging.

To begin your search, you can search for terms like

“looking for guest bloggers”
“submit guest post”
“we accept guest bloggers”
“guest post by”
“guest post guidelines”
“write for us”

You can combine these search terms with your industry, something like “content marketing write for us”.

You can use different search engines to prepare a nice list.

I would use Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.

You can prepare an Excel sheet of all the links you have discovered.

Create different columns for the URL, industry, contacted/not contacted and response.

Prepare a message to offer your guest blog

When I receive offers from other guest bloggers, 90% of the offers I ignore.

This is because I know they have simply sent out a generic message to multiple publishers without having a look at my website.

Those messages that don’t have my name are immediately consigned to the trash folder.

Finding guest blogging opportunities to grow your traffic isn’t something that you want to do in a hurry.

If you don’t have much time, just study 1-2 links everyday.

Try to find everything about the blog including the owner of the blog, the person in charge of publishing and most importantly, what type of content is published.

Carefully study the blog

Go through different guest blog posts on the blog and see what topics guest bloggers cover when writing for that blog.

Pay close attention to the quality of the content.

If the blog is indiscriminately publishing guest blog posts, stay away from such a blog.

You don’t want to publish your guest blog on a blog that easily accepts blog posts from other bloggers.

Once you have gathered enough information that will help you write a personal message to the person concerned, you can write something like this:

Hello {name}.

Having great interest in {mention the field} I have been closely following your blog for some time now.

Your blog post on {mention the blog post} was especially insightful, especially the part where you say {mention the part}.

Of late I have been searching for guest blogging opportunities and your blog immediately came to my mind.

One of the greatest reasons why I would like to write for your blog is that I have noticed you’re a stickler for quality.

So, when I send you my submission, I know that you will publish it only if it is worth publishing.

I look at it as a positive challenge.

Here is the topic I think that can add some value to your blog {mention topic}.

If you’re interested, let me know and I will send you a draft.

Not interested?

No need to worry. I won’t take it personally.

Looking forward to hearing from you, and well done for all that great content!

Cheers!

{your name}

You don’t have to use the exact words, but if you use the underlying philosophy your message will be better received.

How to use guest blogging to grow your traffic even when you don’t want to ask other bloggers?

Sometimes you’re not comfortable with approaching other bloggers.

I can understand.

It doesn’t mean you cannot use guest blogging to grow your traffic.

There are many high traffic websites where you can create a presence for yourself and in return, use the platform for guest blogging.

You can use the LinkedIn publishing platform, for example.

The professional social networking platform allows you to publish blog posts.

When you publish a blog post on LinkedIn, all your contacts are immediately notified.

If LinkedIn features your blog post in one of its newsletters or in the “featured posts” section, it can generate massive amount of traffic for your blog or get you great visibility.

You can use Medium.

It is a great blogging platform with its own audience.

Both LinkedIn and Medium enjoy good search engine rankings and when you publish your content on these publishing platforms, it will be quickly crawled and indexed by all major search engines, helping you grow your traffic in the process.

Similarly, there are many niche platforms, HackerNoon, for example, where you can publish your guest blog posts to grow your traffic if you don’t want to approach independent bloggers.

If you want to use guest blogging to grow your traffic please remember that it is not a quick fix approach.

Just like any other content marketing method, it is going to take strategy, patience and lots of hard work.

There is no benefit in publishing your guest blog posts on websites that accept inferior quality content.

But, websites that accept quality content will not easily publish your post.

Hence, it takes time, patience and hard work.

It is an ongoing process.

Always be on the look.

Increase your expertise.

Improve your writing style (or work with an experienced content writer).

Expand your network using social media.

You can definitely use guest blogging to grow your traffic, provided you know what you want to communicate and which blog audience is the best for you.

Here is a nice list of 100 places where you can submit your guest blog posts.

Why aren’t your customers paying attention to your content?

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Why aren’t your customers paying attention to your content?

No matter how many blog posts you publish, no matter how many videos you upload, no matter how many updates you share on social media and social networking websites, your customers don’t pay attention to your content.

It’s frustrating.

Unless they pay attention to your content, how are you going to draw their attention and consequently, lead them to your website, blog or landing page, and unless that happens, how are they going to buy from you?

This Forbes article rightly says that for your customers to pay attention to your content, you must first understand who your customers are:

Defining exactly who your consumer is — and I mean truly knowing the consumer persona you want to speak to. Maybe for your brand, this includes multiple personas, and in that case, great!

I also face this problem when writing content for my clients.

Many clients simply want to focus on the keywords they think are important for them rather than providing meaningful content to customers and clients.

And when people don’t pay attention to their content, they wonder what’s the problem.

Fortunately, after playing around with their own ideas, they agree to try out some of my ideas.

Take your personal example. Do you give your attention to everything that comes by?

Or do you pay attention to only those things that interest you?

Similarly, when you want to use content marketing to attract people to your website – especially those people who will become your paying customers and clients – do you make sure that you know what they’re looking for in terms of content consumption?

When you publish a blog post, what objective do you have?

What persona have you defined find?

This brings me to another point: don’t try to please everyone when writing your content, or when getting your content written by a professional content writer.

This dilutes your message and content density.

Take a problem, and solve it.

This blog post, for example, tries to tell you how to make your prospective customers and clients pay attention to your content, and consequently, your business offers.

It does not teach you about content marketing.

It does not try to sell the idea of regularly publishing quality content.

It does not talk about SEO.

It talks about getting the attention of your audience.

What makes people pay attention to your content?

When I say content, I mean web content.

The way people read content on the web is totally different from the way they read it in a magazine or in a newspaper.

A magazine or newspaper is not a multimedia experience.

You are not constantly getting notifications. The area that you are viewing is considerably large.on

The consumption of web content happens mostly on a computer screen, on a laptop screen, on a tablet, and mostly, these days, on the mobile screen.

So, whatever attention they are able to pay to your content, you need to make the most of it.

Since I’m a content writer, when it’s content, I mostly talking about written content.

But you can apply the same philosophy to video content, audio content and images and graphics.

How to make people pay attention to your content writing?

Here is a small list of things you can do to get the attention of people when writing content:

Be relevant: Tell them something they can really use to improve their lives.
Be timely: Don’t suddenly wake up and talk of something that happened back in 2003, unless it is relevant right now.
Be trendy: People pay more attention to what’s trending right now.
Deliver what you promise: If you are promising a solution, then deliver a solution.
Write shorter sentences.
Use line breaks after every sentence – makes it easier to absorb one idea at a time especially on a small screen.
Use headings, subheadings and bullet points to make your text scannable.
Use images wherever possible.
Apply law of copywriting – the previous sentence must make the reader read the next sentence.
Use data to make points.
Back up your claims with authoritative references and links.
Write sincerely and with enthusiasm.
Focus less on keywords and more on value.
Personalize as much as possible – this can be achieved by narrowly focusing the subjects of individual web pages and blog posts.
Make yourself familiar by publishing regularly.

Whereas many of the things mentioned above are cosmetic, two things that are very important for the success of your content marketing, to make people pay attention to your content are

Focus on delivering value by clearly understanding your audience.
Be regular.

With so much content being available round-the-clock, it becomes difficult for your target customers and clients to remember you.

If you’re talking about the same old stuff repeatedly then also, it will put people off.

Seth Godin is known to publish a blog post every day, even on Christmas.

He is among the most known people on the Internet, at least among those who take interest in doing business online.

The point is, if you want people to pay attention to your content, offer them something they are interested in.

Offer value regularly.

So regular that they begin to remember you.

It’s easy to pay attention to people you are familiar with.

Cold emails: How to write effectively

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Cold emails – how to write effectively

Just like people make cold phone calls, they also send cold emails. A cold email is an unsolicited business proposal that you may send to an individual.

You might be receiving lots of such emails as spam, but there is also a proper way of sending them.

Have I ever sent cold emails? Never.

But I write emails for clients. There is a client in Itarsi, India, for whom I have been writing business correspondence since June 2016. Then there is another client from Egypt for whom I have been rewriting emails since the beginning of 2019. There is a client in the Philippines whom I have been helping write general communication emails since January 2018.

Then of course, I regularly provide copywriting services for email marketing campaigns.

Writing cold emails

The idea of writing on the topic of writing cold emails came to me in the morning today when I was proofreading an “email template” sent to me by one of my regular clients. I normally don’t charge for proofreading such small messages but it doesn’t mean I don’t take active interest in them.

I not only proofread the content, I also made suggestions and made changes. The cold email had been written in such a manner that if I receive it, I will immediately consign it to the Trash folder. I will also mark it as spam.

Some insights on email marketing

Email marketing is a serious business and in fact, one of the most effective forms of digital marketing. Email marketing is so effective that for every dollar that you spend on it, you get an ROI of $40. It is highest among all the forms of digital marketing.

Here is a graph that I generated recently

Email marketing has the maximum ROI

Many naysayers have been saying for more than a decade that email marketing is dying.

Totally the opposite has been happening.

According to Statista, we are already sending and receiving 293.6 billion emails everyday (2019). By 2022, we will be sending and receiving 333.2 billion emails. By 2017, according to Radicati, there were 4.9 billion email accounts worldwide

Even if 90% of them are spam, the remaining 10% are a lot.

A Marketing Sherpa report has revealed that 72% consumers prefer to receive promotional messages through email, especially from brands they trust.

If somehow you cannot relate to these stats, think of how many times you have to use email. For every online purchase, you get an email notification. Whenever you open up an account with an online service, these days even with an off-line service, you enter your email.

Lost login details? They are sent to your email account. Your domain expiring? You get a notification email. Carried out a bank transaction? The details are sent via email. Your kids homework is sent via email. Someone sends you a message on LinkedIn? You get notified on email. Even terrorists send threats via email.

All your official correspondence happens via email.

The point is, you are checking your email multiple times in a day. So, email is still happening.

Wary about spam?

The various spam restrictions and antispam features in most of the email clients is bad for spammers but good for legitimate email marketers.

Spammers are lazy. They cannot work hard enough to build their own mailing lists of people who would actually like to hear from them. They also don’t know how to write better messages. Whether they send out 10,000 messages in one go, or 1 million messages, the response rate is hardly a little over 0%.

Hence, the field is wide open for people who actually want to use the power of email to not just grow their businesses, but also provide better products and services to their customers and clients.

Now, coming back to…

Writing effective cold emails

What is a cold email?

It is a business proposal email that you send to a person who is not expecting to hear from you. He or she doesn’t know about your existence. In many cases he or she isn’t even aware of the fact that he or she may need your service.

A good example is the InMail function in LinkedIn. You come across a profile that can be good business prospect. You do some study, carefully go through the profile and decide to introduce yourself to that person. You will be sending a cold message because the person is not expecting to receive a message from you.

Whether you like sending cold emails or not is beside the point. I’m not comfortable sending cold emails but it doesn’t mean if a client asks me to write one, I’m going to refuse. I’m going to write it with full enthusiasm as if I myself am sending it.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when writing a cold email

Have a clear understanding of the need of your segment

What are the problems being faced by your recipient for which you are sending a proposal to solve? This will help the recipient to immediately relate to what you’re trying to convey and then possibly, respond.

Suppose you are a marble tiles manufacturer. You want to send cold emails to construction contractors in your city to let them know that you supply good marble tiles that they can use with their clients.

Now, you must know that these construction contractors are either looking for better options, or they are fed up with their current marble tile suppliers.

They may also be looking for variety to create better designs.

Hence, you must know that

The recipients are actually construction contractors.
Now and then they use marble tiles.
They may be looking for better marble tiles or better deals.

Knowing your recipient is crucial to writing an effective cold email.

Start the greeting with an actual name

The email that I was proofreading in the morning started with “Hello Sir!”. Who starts an email with “Hello Sir!” these days?

What if there is a lady at the receiving end of your cold email?

According to an article published in the Sophisticated Marketer Issue 7 (by LinkedIn) 81% consumers say that they are less interested in dealing with businesses who don’t make an effort to personalize their communications.

This is why, especially in these sensitive times, it is very important that you know the name of the person to whom you are sending your cold email.

Use a compelling subject line

You want your recipient to open your email, right?

100% of your recipients will open your message if they are drawn to it by a compelling subject line.

Subject lines are so important that 47% marketers use different subject lines to find out which is the most effective subject line for their email marketing campaign (source).

What makes your subject line compelling? You should invoke a sense of

Urgency
Curiosity
Familiarity (through personalization)
Relevance and timeliness
Profitability
Coolness.

Keep your cold email subject line short, sweet and to the point. Convey the central message of your email as clearly as possible. Make your effort irresistible.

Talk about the problem in the beginning itself

Your copy must immediately hook the person.

If I send you a cold email to promote my service, as a content writer who can help you improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, I should identify your need to run effective email marketing campaigns with a higher conversion rate in the first or the second sentence itself.

In fact, I should use a headline like “Quadruple your conversion rate”, or something like that.

I must know that you are having problems with your email marketing and you want to improve it and you are already looking for ways to improve it.

Even if you are not actively looking for ways to improve your email marketing, I must know that given a chance, you will be ready to spend some money on improving your email marketing conversion rate.

Then, and the rest of the copy, I will explain to you how my copywriting services are going to improve your email marketing conversion rate.

The biggest disadvantage faced by a cold email is the lack of familiarity. You can mitigate this disadvantage to a great extent by doing some research on your segment and then writing a message that is as relatable as possible.

When it comes to writing and publishing content, does quantity ultimately lead to quality?

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When it comes to writing and publishing content does quantity lead to quality

It is often advised that instead of relentlessly writing and publishing content on your website or blog, you should focus on quality and meaningfulness.

In his latest blog post, Gary Vaynerchuck has raised a valid question, “Who decides the quantity?”

Then the blog post further asks, can quantity lead to quality?

When it comes to filling up your website and blog with quality content, this is a pertinent question to ask.

But, as an experienced content writer who routinely comes across clients who don’t want to spend much on content writing, I know the answer.

Quantity differs from person to person. It also depends on how much effort and time you’re spending on writing and publishing your content.

When a client doesn’t have a big budget, I always suggest him to focus on quality and not on quantity.

For writing for my own Credible Content Blog, I try to maintain a balance between quantity and quality, although, I wouldn’t say that when I am shifting towards quantity I compromise on quality. No, on my blog, it doesn’t happen.

I can totally understand where Gary is coming from. And I totally understand that unless you don’t bother about quantity, you don’t know how to attain quality. As they say, it is difficult to grow your business if you are counting every penny.

Again, clients who are paying for every blog post and web page, would beg to differ.

If money is not a problem, I’m totally fine with going with quantity, as long as you are not publishing trashy content that is going to get you penalized by search engines and social networking websites.

Quantity doesn’t mean writing and publishing inferior content. It just means publishing lots of content that does not require lots of research.

Take for example this blog post. I suddenly come across a post from Gary, link to it, and share a few thoughts from my side. This post doesn’t require lots of research and time. Nonetheless, my blog has new content. I would call it quantity.

Also, when you are continuously writing and publishing content for your blog or for various channels, and if you have enough time and money, you get to play around with different ideas. This is not the case if time and budget are limited.

My personal experience with my personal websites and blogs has been that quality does lead to quantity as long as you stick to the bare minimums. The bare minimum means not going overboard with keyword-centric content and not diluting your core topic.

For example, my core topic is content writing. Then it is content marketing. Digital marketing affects my business, so sometimes, I allow guest bloggers to write on digital marketing. SEO, yes, as long as it is related to content writing.

But, it doesn’t mean that I publish whatever content ideas that come to my mind. That I would call wasteful quantity.

What is context-based content writing?

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Context-based content writing

Have you ever heard the phrase, usually wrapped in the tinge of exasperation, “This is so out of context!”

When you cannot relate to a piece of information or an instance of interruption to your current frame of mind, it is out of context. Most of the advertising is out of context. This is why such advertising doesn’t work. Your business promotion must be context-based.

Context-based content writing can help you in this regard. Let’s see an example:

You have a severe toothache. You want to get immediate relief. You start looking for information on the Internet about how you can get relief from your toothache.

At this point, are you interested in a promo of a teeth-shining paste? Do you want to read about ways to keep your teeth so strong that you can crush cashew nut shells with them? Related, yes, but out of context. Do you want to read about how oral hygiene is so important?

No. You want to read about how to get immediate relief from your toothache. The ache has turned your life upside down, at least at this particular moment.

We live in a highly distracted world. Even busy professionals are constantly being bombarded with notifications, emails and social media updates. Yes, even phone calls. So, there is no escaping from these distractions unless you decide to move on an island and start living completely off the grid.

Context-based content writing means writing content exactly for the reason someone would want to read it at that particular moment.

If you have a toothache, to present you with contact-based content writing, I must tell you 10 ways to reduce your pain in a couple of minutes.

If you want to improve your SEO because you’re not getting relevant traffic from search engines, you want to know if I can help you with my SEO writing. You want to be convinced. You don’t want to know why SEO is good or bad or why you shouldn’t trust SEO companies. You want to know if my content writing can help you or not, and this is exactly what I should be able to tell you.

How to write context-based content?

Content is king but context is God.

Gary Vaynerchuk has rightly said, “Content is king, but context is God.”

There is a straightforward way of writing context-based content: have a clear understanding of what you want to deliver, and then deliver it.

When my clients approach me, they’re mostly interested in improving their search engine rankings. Of course, nobody wants to sound ignorant and people also say that they want to improve their conversion rate. Somehow, they think that if they can get enough search engine traffic, the business will automatically improve.

Hence, they approach the problem upside down.

Since this is not my place to teach them, although I write content based on the keywords that they have given me, my main focus is on providing the information people will find useful. I focus on context-based content writing while taking care of the keywords.

Somehow, even without realizing it, most of my clients find this approach acceptable because they keep coming back.

When I’m writing a web page for mobile app development services, for example, I think of someone who needs a team of good mobile app developers. What would be the concerns of that person? What are the problems and apprehensions that person has? How important is it for him or her to complete a mobile app development project successfully? What are the stakes?

I present the information accordingly. Without beating around the bush. Without stuffing in extra content to accommodate keywords. Still, using all the keywords.

Context-based content writing is all about providing the right content at the right time just when it can make the right impact.

In this regard, think of it as “the searcher’s intent”.

Why is the searcher looking for a piece of information? Does he or she want to be informed? Is he or she simply passing time because he or she has got nothing better to do? He or she is in some sort of trouble and needs immediate help?

Write accordingly.

Context also depends on the platform. When you talk of content writing, the platform is your website, your blog, your e-book, your white paper and your email marketing campaigns.

On these platforms people want to read. They are not expecting a literary piece of work, but they are definitely looking for quality writing that helps them, preferably immediately. Or at least eases out their concerns.

Sometimes I also do content writing for video scripts. Based on the script, videos are uploaded on YouTube and other video hosting websites.

Writing for videos is totally different because every word that you say is based on a visual. If what you’re saying is totally out of context of the visuals, the viewer will get confused and won’t watch your video.

Hence, you need to keep in mind what will be shown when you’re writing, or the video maker needs to take your writing under consideration when creating visuals.

The key to context-based writing is be true to yourself and be true to the need of your readers. The rest simply follows.