Ever since Google came along and Panda-spanked article websites into oblivion, guest blogging has been the preferred choice for the internet marketer who is looking to squeeze a little more link juice from their articles.
Guest blogging can be an effective way of getting a link, but could you get a lot more bang for your buck by making just a few small changes to your strategy? Here are a couple of tips to make sure that your efforts are not wasted.
Relevant Links
The subject of relevancy is always hotly debated in SEO circles. Just how can Google tell whether a referring site is relevant to the one it is linking to?
When you are a bit stretched for blogs to write for then relevancy can get a little bit blurred, but there are ways to make the page that your article is on a little more relevant to the site you are linking to.
Try and get at least 50% of your target keyphrase in the title of your article. The chances are that this will make up most, if not all of your title tag so it provides a good relevancy marker for Google to follow. Also try and use a few relevant phrases or words scattered throughout your article, but remember to always write for the audience rather than for Google or your success rate might take a turn for the worst.
Engage with your Audience
It can take hours to find a few good sites to guest post on and even longer to convince them to take your stuff. Engaging with the people that leave comments on your article can be a quick and easy way of getting a writing gig on someone else’s site. If they are interested in your points of view and like you enough to leave a comment, make sure you strike up a relationship as you never know whether they might like you to come and write an article for their site.
Do your Homework
Many blogs that accept guest posts will only allow in-context links in the body of the article, which can often lead to links to your site being buried in the author bio. So why not place a relevant background article on your own blog to link to from your guest post? If you feel there is an aspect of your article that would benefit from a little background information, why link out to someone else when you can write about it yourself and get an extra link?
If you use this method, make sure that that what you write on your own blog is worthy of a link and genuinely adds value to your guest blog. It might mean a bit more work but can result in a load more links.
Guest blogging can be an important part of any link building campaign, and with a few small tweeks you can really make the most of this method and get some long standing, authoritative links back to your site.
