Tag Archives: Guest Blogging

How to write an email for a guest blogging proposal?

How to write a guest blogging proposal email?

A typical guest blogging request email reads like this:

Hello and greetings!

I’m a great fan of your blog. Your posts are wonderful and highly useful. Do you accept guest blog posts? Then I would like to contribute. Here are some suggested topics:

At the first glance, there seems to be nothing wrong with this message. That is, if you get such messages once or twice a month and you are eagerly looking for people to write guest blog posts.

But, if you get such requests regularly, it often becomes difficult to reply to messages that have not been specifically written for you. I will explain what happens.

On and average I receive 3-4 messages offering to write guest blog posts for my blog that is, I won’t say very popular, nonetheless, decently popular.

A majority of the messages are not personal. I can immediately make out that they have sent out a mass email without even going through my blog. I normally don’t reply to such messages unless there is a compelling reason.

On the other hand, there are certain messages that are quite direct and targeted. Take for example a message like this:

Hello Amrit

While doing research for a blog that I’m working on I came across your link {the link is mentioned} and I was thinking of writing something that can add value to your blog. If you’re open to the idea, I can send you some topics.

Here are some links to give you an idea of how I write:

{links are mentioned}

Best,

Such a message shows that the person has actually gone through my blog, and even if not the blog, then at least the link he or she is talking about. He or she has got a basic idea of what sort of content I publish.;;;

Obviously, I reply to such messages.

How to write an email when you’re offering to write a guest blog post?

Make it personal. Begin with the name, something like “Hello Amrit”.

Quickly go through a few blog posts on the blog to get an idea of what type of content is published on the blog and how you can add value with your guest blog post.

Then mention it in the email that you have gone through a few blog posts and you have gotten the hang of what sort of content is accepted and published. Accordingly, make some suggestions.

Keep your email conversational. Don’t try to impress because a successful blog publisher receives anywhere between 10-20 (even more) guest blogging proposals. There may be plenty of people trying to impress. Just be original. Just be yourself.

Make sure the topic suggestions that you have made are in sync with the content being published on the blog.

For example, my blog is about content writing, copywriting and sometimes, content marketing & SEO. These are the topics I’m interested in. Not how to sell real estate in Tokyo.

Of course, if you can write on a topic like “How to promote your real estate business in Tokyo through strategic content writing”, this is quite acceptable.

In the case of my blog, one of the main topics (content writing, copywriting, content marketing, and SEO writing) must be there in your guest blog post idea.

Don’t blast off a template message to multiple blog publishers. It is immediately clear that you haven’t even visited the blog you are proposing to write a guest blog for.

How to use guest blogging to grow your traffic

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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.

Want to write for the Credible Content blog?

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Write for the Credible Content blog

As my Credible Content blog is picking up on search engines and social media, lots of bloggers are asking if they can publish guest blog posts on the blog.

On-and-off I do publish guest blog posts. Since these queries are increasing, I thought, why not prepare a separate page with some guidelines?

Both English and Hindi blog posts accepted

I don’t want to prepare a comprehensive guidelines-set. I believe that every writer has his or her own way of writing and that is fine with me. As long as your writing is interesting, informative and without errors, there is no specific stylesheet that I follow.

Anyway, keep the following in mind:

I accept blog posts on the following topics:
1. Content marketing
2. Content writing
3. Email marketing
4. SEO
5. Digital marketing
6. Copywriting
External links have the “nofollow” attribute within the body text, but you can have a link to your website or profile in the author box with a “follow” attribute.
Use lots of headlines, subheadlines and bullet points.
Keep your blog posts between 1200-2000 words.
You can submit blog posts in the following languages:
1. English
2. Hindi
Goes without saying: no plagiarism and copy/paste.
Goes without saying: proper proofreading and Grammar check.

I will update this page if something else comes up in my mind. Use my usual contact form to contact me if you are contacting me for the first time.

Guest blogging opportunity on the Credible Content Writing blog

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I’m offering guest blogging opportunity at my Credible Content Writing blog. If you are a content writer and you want to promote your skill on my blog you can do it by writing a guest blog post on the suitable topic along with your resource box. Suitable topics are:

Content writing
Content marketing
Email marketing
Web copywriting
Search engine optimization with content writing
Content marketing strategy

Basically, anything related to the above topics. Writing should be crisp, error-free and non-promotional. You can promote yourself or your link in the resource box, but kindly refrain within the blog body unless it is a part of what you are writing. Try to use the keywords of your main theme and try to follow the following convention (flow, organisation, or whatever) while letting the guest blog post:

Use the main keywords in the title of your guest blog post
Use subheadings and use keywords and alternatives in the subheadings
Use bulleted points

I will be very pleased if you can also link to one of my blog posts from your guest blog post (search for site:credible-content.com and the keyword on Google.com). For example, if you want to be convinced about the benefits of guest blogging, you may want to read 5 ways to generate more business with guest blogging. You can also read How to pitch for a guest blogging assignment.

You may already be having your own content writing and content marketing business or you may be promoting yourself as a content writer – I don’t mind as long as the writing is good and delivers value to my visitors.

What are the benefits of guest blogging for my content writing blog?

Exposure. Association with an already established content writing and content marketing blog. Back links to your own website. Making good use of your spare time by honing your writing skills. There can be plenty of reasons for guest blogging on my content writing blog.

I also have a history of giving content writing assignments to content writers who avail the guest blogging opportunity on my blog. This is because I’m more comfortable working with content writers who are already working with me and I have experienced their writing style rather than working with total strangers. Besides, I’m biased towards content writers who help me promote my content writing service which in turn, gets me more work, which in turn, enables me to give freelance content writing assignments to my guest blogging content writers.

A guest blogging opportunity also allows you to sore in the skies of creativity without worrying about meeting a particular client’s requirements. In that sense I would like you to be a free bird. Write with an open heart. You can even write poetry if you want, as long as it is about content writing and content marketing.

Why am I offering a guest blogging opportunity on my blog if I can write on the topics of content writing myself?

Frankly, when it comes to writing content for your blog, there is never enough (I don’t mean you should spam). Although I do write, occasionally, on my blog, these days I’m quite busy on other assignments. So, instead of leaving the blog as it is, I thought, well, why not offer guest blogging opportunity to other content writers? Who knows, we can build a solid network of content writers and in the process help each other get more work? The guest blogging opportunity is not a temporary one. I will keep on accepting guest blog posts for my content writing blog even when I can actively contribute myself.

Do I pay for the guest blogging opportunity?

I’m afraid I don’t . Guest blogging means, well, guest blogging. You get to promote yourself. You get to showcase your writing skills to a wider audience and possibly even my newsletter (more than 1700 subscribers). Though, when I give content writing assignments to my guest bloggers then of course I pay, that goes without saying .

So, if you have confidence in your content writing skills and if you think that guest blogging opportunity on this blog can help you further your cause, do get in touch using the Contact link above .

5 ways to generate more business with guest blogging

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Guest blogging is a great way to generate fresh traffic to your blog and website, provided you make the right moves and you have crossed a certain threshold level. I repeatedly talk about this “certain threshold level” because unless you have crossed it, nobody is going to bother with approaching you for guest blogging opportunities.

Guest blogging has two sides:

You offering guest blogs to other high traffic-blogs
People offering to write for your blog to get exposure for their own website or blog

As rightly mentioned in this Copyblogger blog post on the power of guest blogging and how it frees you from the clutches of search engines like Google, guest blogging can be a double-edged sword. To understand this, you first need to understand

Why do people guest blog and invite guest bloggers?

Why do you want to guest blog on other blogs and why do people want to guest blog on your blog? You can achieve the following by guest blogging:

Get more direct traffic by publishing your blog post on another, high-traffic blog and getting your byline included.
Expose your ideas to a different, wider audience.
As a person or as a brand become known to more people.
Get fresh content for your own blog by letting others write for it.
Get yourself some respite by not having to continuously write yourself and instead, allowing others to generate quality content for your blog.
Increase search engine rankings.

Unfortunately, it is the last, 6th reason for which people mostly guest blog and this is how you can become a victim of spamming if you are not careful about for whom you write and from whom you accept content. If you can take care of both these aspects guest blogging is one of the greatest ways of getting access to a wider audience as well as continuously getting new content for your own blog.

How do you generate more business with guest blogging?

Yes, ultimately you want to generate more business. How does guest blogging contribute? Here is how…

You get exposure: If yours is a relatively new business or if you are looking for a bigger audience you can either wait for your search engine rankings to improve and your social media and social networking audience to increase or you can guest blog for more famous blogs. A good thing about guest blogging is, provided you use the right sort of blogs, you can gain massive amount of traffic in no time. How does this help you grow your business? When you are guest blogging you are mostly targeting highly focused, niche blogs, read and viewed by people who are already interested in what you have to offer. Suppose you are in the business of producing biodegradable building materials. Which blogs would you choose? Maybe architecture? Alternative lifestyle? Green living? Regular visitors to these blogs will be more eager to check out your website and become your customers.
You expand your influence as an expert:
Suppose you make a living off advising people how to do a particular thing. For that you need to establish yourself as an expert. You want to be known as an expert in your field. More and more people should know about your expertise so that when they need the expertise that you can provide, they remember that you can provide it. The more you are known as an expert, the better are your prospects.
You get more targeted traffic to your website:
Generating more business from your website and blog is all about getting targeted traffic. Most of the websites face this problem that although they get lots of traffic, they are not attracting the sort of traffic that turns into business. When you are guest blogging you carefully choose the blogs. As I have mentioned in the first bullet, if you are producing biodegradable building materials you will naturally be guest blogging for blogs that attract an audience interested in nature-friendly architecture, green living and pursuing alternative lifestyles. This will send your way lots of targeted traffic and this in turn will improve your conversion rate and hence, generate more business for you.
You get quality content for your own blog: Just as you are providing quality content to other blogs as guest blogger, when you invite other guest bloggers to write for your blog, you are engaging more and more people to generate content for you. As a small business it might be difficult to produce lots of quality content on an ongoing basis over a sustained period of time. But once your blog has crossed a certain threshold level of popularity and traffic, greater number of people will be interested in writing for you. Just imagine, a single person writing one blog post every day and a slew of writers writing multiple blog posts every day. Wouldn’t that be marvellous for your content quantity and quality? The more content you have, the more content is indexed by the search engines, the more content of yours is exposed on social networking websites and the more targeted traffic you have to your blog and website, getting more business to you.
You strike up new business partnerships: It is not just about traffic and exposure when you use guest blogging to generate more business. You can strike up direct business partnerships with people who get involved with you and with people you get involved with. Many of the guest bloggers may turn out to be your customers and clients later on. Similarly you may end up doing business with people you are right now writing for.

Guest blogging is a great networking opportunity because when someone allows you to write blog posts for his or her blog he or she is allowing you to enter his or her space. This is a great opportunity for you to get close to that person in terms of establishing a mutually beneficial business relationship. The same is applied to people who want to guest blog for you.