How to Successfully Guest Blog to Multiply Your Traffic

Talk to anyone website owner and you’ll hear one question repeatedly:

How can I get more traffic?

More specifically, website owners want to know:

How can I get more traffic for free?

There are hundreds of ways to increase your traffic, of course.

You can pay for traffic, spend months creating valuable content and optimizing for SEO, spend hours every day posting to the various social media platforms, etc.

But nothing beats guest posting.

What’s So Wonderful About Guest Posting?

If you’re not familiar with the term, guest posting is simply writing valuable, helpful, and possibly entertaining content and getting it published on someone else’s website.

Why should you spend your time crafting content that benefits some other website owner, though?

Because it doesn’t only benefit them. It benefits you, too.

When you get your article published on someone else’s website, you typically get to include a short bio at the end of your article. Usually, you’re allowed to include a link to your site there, too (but not always).

Check out some of the ways this helps you:

1. More Traffic

When you get an article published on a site with a lot of traffic and domain authority, a LOT of people will be reading that article and a certain percentage will click on your bio’s link and visit your website.

Hence, you instantly get more targeted traffic that continues as long as your articles remain published.

For example, Business Insider has a DA (domain authority) of 93. More than 160 million people visit that website every month.

Hypothetically speaking, if one of your guest posts got published on that website, and a measly 0.5% of their monthly traffic read your article and just 2% of those readers clicked on your bio link, that one guest post would bring 16,000 new visitors to your website every month!

The best results, then, from guest posting is to be able to get published on authoritative, high-DA sites with plenty of traffic.

Of course, you can get results from lesser-known sites with lower DAs, as well.

However, there’s a strategy and a technique to learn (as with anything) to be truly successful with guest posting.

2. Credibility & Authority

When your articles appear on other credible websites, your authority and credibility climb exponentially.

And credibility is the most valuable currency you can get in the online arena.

Without credibility and authority, you will not get customers to pull out their wallets and hand you their payment information, no matter how wonderful your product or service is.

Instead of an unknown solopreneur or businessperson-wanna-be, you begin to establish yourself as a credible leader in your niche.

3. Network with Influencers

Let’s face facts.

The big names in your industry are very busy people.

They get hundreds, if not thousands, of emails, comments, and requests every single day.

You’re probably not even close to getting on their radar.

A well-crafted guest post can change that, however.

There’s a little more to connecting with high-profile people than getting your article published on a high-profile site in your influencer’s sphere, however, but guest posting is one way to get on their radar.

Suddenly, they’ve heard your name. You become recognizable. If your article presents an interesting new angle or innovative ideas, they may very well reach out to you.

The days of chasing them and trying to get through their gatekeepers are over. The walls come crashing down and now you’re in the “inner circle”.

How Do I Start Guest Posting?

Are you ready to step out and start guest posting?

Where Do I begin?

First, you have to invest time into research and preparation.

Start with the websites you know about that deal with your business or website’s topic.

Open a spreadsheet and list all the URLs of websites you already know about.

Install Moz’s free MozBar browser extension. Visit each website and write down their DA in a column in your spreadsheet.

Add a column to record contact information, as well. (Name, email address, contact form URL).

Then research to see if they accept guest posts.

Sometimes websites will openly have a “Write for Us” page, so look through their header and footer menus and see if you can find one.

If you can’t find one, do an Advanced Search.

In Google, type site:somewebsite.com “guest post”.  If they have published guest posts, it should say so at the top of the guest article. There’s usually a sentence at the top or bottom of the post that says “This article is a guest post by ____”.

If you find some, you can bet they will accept at least some guest posts, even if they don’t openly advertise that they do.

You can also modify your advanced search to include other related terms, like “guest author” or “guest submission”.

If you don’t subscribe to AHREFs, SEMRush, BuzzSumo, or other SEO and social media research tools, use Google and Similarweb.com to research your main topics to find other websites in your niche.

Add those websites to your spreadsheet, determine whether or not they’ll accept guest posts, note their DA, and contact information.

Beware

Many websites charge for guest posts, especially if the website you’ll be linking to in your bio sells something.

Of course, you can choose whether you want to pay or not, but most websites that accept money to post an article will openly label that article as a “sponsored post”.

That does not add to your authority and credibility. It tells everyone who comes to read it that you paid to have this article put there.

I refuse to pay to have my articles published, but again, it’s up to you.

Many website owners won’t even tell you up front that they charge for “guest posts”.

Therefore, always reach out and inquire about guest posting before you put in the time and effort to craft a great article.

Don’t think, “I’ll write this great article and send it to them and ask them to publish it”.

It’ll all be for naught if their first response is “We’ll publish this if you pay us $300!”.

Some Notes About the Process

If you’re going to pursue guest posting, there really is a fine art and science to it.

Most people think, “Eh, I just write a ‘good’ article and contact 20-or-so website owners until I find one who will publish it’.

Not the best approach!

You need to spend time learning how to write well for the web.

That means captivating intros, emotional content, creative or unique angles and ideas, short paragraphs, transitions that pull people in to make them keep reading til the end, etc.

There’s a lot to learn about pitching your guest post, too.

There’s a data-driven process for how to select the right websites to pitch, as well.

When you first start guest posting, you’ll want to start with smaller sites as you gain experience with your pitches and writing.

Once you’ve built your “portfolio” with several published guest posts, though, you’ll know better how to write and pitch the higher-profile websites that will bring lots of traffic and credibility.

My Recommendation

I’ve spent years (yeah, literally years!) studying writing, copywriting, the science of persuasion, guest blogging, marketing, web design, etc.

I can honestly say that if you want to guest post the right way and get your content accepted for publication on those high-profile sites (remember the stats on Business Insider?), you should invest in a course.

I recommend Jon Morrow’s Guest Blogging Course.

I paid for this course and went through it, and it is by far the most concise, in-depth instruction on how to successfully guest blog that I’ve found in one place.

Instead of reading this book and getting some information, and then watching that video and gleaning a bit more of the puzzle, and then….  Well, you get the idea.

This one course gives you ALL the information you need in one place, and it’s perfect whether you’re brand new to guest blogging or if you’ve already published several guest posts.  There’s still more you can learn from this course.

I am an affiliate for Jon’s course, so if you click above and enroll, I’ll earn a small commission.

However, I’m only recommending it because I took the course and found it invaluable.

In fact, I’m such a fan of Jon’s instruction that I pay monthly to subscribe to his membership site, as well.

I’ve been studying for so many years, day in and day out, that 95% of the stuff I find in books and online these days is just some re-hashed version of stuff I’ve read elsewhere a hundred times.

It’s frustrating.

Jon’s content, however, is a refreshing oasis in an endless, barren desert of mediocrity and copycat content.

Jon has the credentials and experience of a leader in this arena, but what I like most is how comprehensive and in-depth his instruction is.

There’s no fluff.

There’s no repeating what 100 other articles and websites are saying.

Check it out by clicking the button. There’s a video, so you have to click “Play sound” to hear it (in the top right corner of the video).

CHECK OUT THE GUESTPOSTING COURSE