I started blogging in January of 2010, and I’ve decided to give what it takes to make my blog successful. This great desire and determination of mine has led me to do a lot of things, some quite surprising, which includes writing almost 300 guest posts in one year. After writing tons of guest posts I’ve learned a lot of lessons, and I wanted to share them with you.
1. Having Goals Matter
You probably have heard many bloggers say that having goals is critical to succeeding as a blogger; this same principle applies to guest blogging.
When I started guest blogging, I used the work hard approach instead of the work smart approach, I didn’t have a specific goal in mind and this led me to writing so many guest posts without tracking the results, it was after I have written so many guest posts that I discovered I’m not getting results.
Right from the onset, make sure you know what your purpose for guest blogging is because it will determine your approach. If your purpose for guest posting is to improve your search engine rankings your approach will be different from that of someone who wants to increase his/her blog subscribers.
2. Quality Beats Quantity
I wouldn’t have agreed with the above statement when I was still new to guest blogging, no wonder they say “experience is the best teacher”.
There were days I wrote as much as 6 guest posts and I write guest posts almost every day of the week, my main aim was to get my guest posts published on many blogs, which led to the quality of my guest posts suffering. I submitted most of these guest posts to small blogs and they ended up sending me very little traffic, some blogs didn’t even send me any traffic.
I didn’t discover the truth until one day, my guest post was published on an A-list blog which sent me thousands of visitors; it was then that I realized that quality beats quantity.
The bitter guest blogging truth many people might not want to hear is this, “submitting 5 guest posts to 5 “big” A-list blogs is better than submitting 100 guest posts to smaller blogs”. Most A-list blogs will send you thousands of visitors depending on the quality of your guest post while the majority of the small blogs will send you very little traffic, if at all.
3. Your Guest Post Will Determine How Much Traffic You Will Get
From my experience with telling people the benefits of guest blogging I’ve seen a lot of people who believe that writing valuable posts for other people’s blogs is a waste of time. They believe it’s better to have all their best posts on their blogs only.
The truth is, if you write an exceptional post on your blog it can go viral, but as far as blogs with little traffic are concerned, luck plays a very large role,
In order to get good results from your posts you must have a big audience, and one great way to do this is by writing for other, larger blogs. A guest post on a big blog can send you far more traffic than you’ll ever get in a week, no matter how great you think your blog posts are.
Another thing is that many people make a mistake of writing low quality guest posts for other blogs, as this ends up affecting them because it is either rejected or it underperforms on the blog they submit it to.
The better your guest post, the more traffic you get – and this factor might be even more important than the size of the blog you as publishing your post on.
4. It is Very Important to Work on Sustaining Your Traffic
When I wrote a guest post for an A-list blog that sent me thousands of visitors, I was so happy and I began to think I would be getting so many visitors from that period onward. How mistaken I was. A lot of factors will determine the percentage of visitors you’ll be able to sustain from your guest posts, some of these factors include the quality of your own content, your domain name and your design/user experience.
It is very important to work on getting as many visitors from your guest posts to subscribe to your blog because that is the best way to keep them returning over and over again.
5. Rejection Is Inevitable
One thing many people are afraid when they consider guest blogging is rejection. They wonder what will happen if the other person doesn’t like their posts. That is a pretty good question, but you should also know that being rejected is not the end of the world – as long as you will be guest posting you should always be prepared for rejection. What matters most is not the rejection but how you deal with it.
If a blogger rejects your guest post, try to face the reality and find out what can be responsible for your guest post being rejected. It can be because of your guest post’s quality, it can be because of too much grammar errors and it can be because your guest post is not in line with the style of that blog. If you can’t figure out what is responsible for your guest post being rejected try to get in touch with the blogger and ask him/her politely to tell you why your guest post was rejected so that you can improve on it in the future.
Share Your Thoughts
What do you think about guest blogging? If you were to start guest posting again what would you do differently? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
About the Author: Onibalusi Bamidele is a 16 year old entrepreneur and founder of YoungPrePro, a site with practical tips on achieving online success.
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