SEO & Web Service

Guest blogging can be a powerful way of attracting new traffic, increasing the overall SEO strength of a website and get the message out there relating to the products and services you are selling. However, it takes effort and doing it wrong frequently results in wasted resources.

Therefore, If you’re a newbie guest blogger then you’ll need to figure out the top mistakes others have made so that you can avoid repeating them yourself. This will till the odds of success in your favor. With that thought in mind, here are 6 of the top things that you must try to avoid during your guest blogging campaigns:

  1. Not creating great content

Webmasters will be less likely to publish your content if it doesn’t provide value. Content should educate or entertain, or better yet – do both. There are plenty of ways that you can improve the quality of your content, and end up with content that’s creative.

Some of these include being conversational, writing catchy titles that stand out and actually help the target audience solve a problem. Webmasters are not against you in terms of trying to deny content submissions. If they have guest blogging enabled it means they are actually looking for fresh content and welcome guest bloggers. You’ll just need to do your bit and supply content that meets the quality standards.

  1. Blog targeting is poor

There is no point in targeting blogs that are of poor quality and have low levels of traffic. You’re wasting your time and resources targeting such blogs as they will not get you the return on investment that’s required to make guest blogging worth the time. As the Smartblogger.com suggests: pick the wrong blogs and you’ll receive nothing in terms of new subscribers.

To get a sense of how good a blog has a look at their social media accounts and what the traffic statistics are. Furthermore, the number of comments their blog posts receive is a good indication of how engaged the audience is with their content.

However, you should keep in mind that while some blogs might not be very good now they might be in 6 months or maybe a year. Your blog entry will still be live and you’ll receive the benefits then. As you become more experienced as a guest blogger your ability to sense the good blogs from the bad ones will improve.

  1. Not selling yourself

Guest blogging entries will not be viewed as credible as the other content on the website. Therefore, you’ll need to build some credibility with the audience.  This can be done by making the blog as factual as possible: use numbers, images, and details.

Furthermore, you should include a strong call to action. This is the part where you tell the audience a little about yourself and invite them to visit your website. Most blogs allow a call to action to be present because it is the trade-off for receiving a piece of content for free from a guest blogger.

The call to action should incentivize the audience to perform the action that they want. Perhaps they can learn more about how to solve a specific problem, or that you are an industry leader and they should follow your content.

Finally, if there is a specific blog that delivers you a lot of traffic consider creating a landing page and opt-in form that is specific to that blog. This will make the audience feel more appreciated and they will be much more willing to sign up giving you that all-important e-mail.

  1. Not viewing other blog entries

To get a sense of what is expected from your blogs it makes sense to have a look at what other blogs have been created. Newbie guest bloggers think that a one-fits-all approach will work if their content is great.

You can get away with that up to a point, but some webmasters will not be flexible and require that content matches their style very closely. If the blog in question is worth the effort, because it provides a lot of targeted traffic, then you’ll need to adapt.

When taking a peek at the other entries have a look at what titles have already been tackled. There is no sense in yet another article on how to tackle blog commenting if there are several titles already completed on that subject matter.

Try to come up with something new or at the very least a new angle on a topic that has already been extensively covered. This increases your chance of the webmaster feeling your blog entry can add new value to the website.

  1. Landing page wastes traffic

The point of guest blogging is to impress the target audience with the content and hopefully get as many clicks in the call to action to take them to your landing page.

However, the work is not done – the landing page has to effectively get the audience to perform the desired action. This might be to fill out a form, sign up for an e-mail newsletter or buy something right away.

Even if you have the best guest blogs out there, a badly created landing page can ruin your efforts and waste a lot of the targeted traffic that is hitting it. Let’s say that from a guest post you get 100 new visitors and only 15% hand over their e-mail. With a better landing page, that number could double to 30 new subscribers leading to more sales further down the sales funnel.

  1. Freebie doesn’t match target audience

One of the sins of guest blogging is offering a freebie that doesn’t appeal to the target audience. The freebie is something that one receives for performing a desired action – typically handing over their e-mail address.

Create a freebie that offers something of value to the target audience. Let’s say that you’re targeting a blog on marathon running. You could create a freebie on how to improve their personal best, or what the right foods are to eat before the day of a marathon.

Conclusion

Now that you are aware of the top mistakes that newbie guest bloggers make you can change your approach to ensure you don’t make them yourself.

Avoiding these mistakes is in your best interests as it leads to higher rates of e-mail newsletter subscriptions, more social shares, more sales and overall higher rates of engagement.

Guest blogging when done right can be a powerful way of attracting new customers, and when done wrong a frustrating way to go about wasting your time and resources.

Author’s Bio:

Stephanie Proper is a career specialist who adores helping people especially when it comes to building a successful career. Besides, as a blogger, she is experienced in many other areas including SEO and Marketing. Currently, she works on her own project properresumes.com

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