What many people do not understand about guest blogging is that there are many different factors contributing to its success.

Below is a comprised list of seven different benefits guest blogging is known for and why you should jump on the bandwagon.

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1. Guest Blogging is the Foundation of Community

I agree with this statement, taken from  ContentMarketingInstitute:

Guest blogging is not dead. Google hates repetitive, spammy content, but as long as your guest post is original with good to great quality on a site known for quality content (like this one), Google is fine with it.

One of the reasons Google still likes it: community. Google cherishes community. In Google’s perfect world, there would only be a handful of websites in every niche that has a community of followers interacting with each other, creating amazing, innovative ideas, and sharing all of their insights with their acquaintances, friends and family throughout the web.

That way, whenever someone comes to Google searching for help on a certain issue, they can send them to a site where the user will be fully satisfied.

A guest post should be a place where people come to read an argument, learn about a topic or experience something new. Once the post is read, comments or sharing should follow, and so connections and relationships.

It is my personal feeling that Google would prefer to see a world where advertising does not happen from the top down, but from the bottom up. This is a true organic community, and although it is slow developing, it is long lasting.

Since guest blogging creates community, and since Google wants that community, it is viewed as a great tool for internet marketers.

2. Guest Blogging Develops Your Name and Reputation

“Why would I guest post on a blog when I have my own site to write on?” Many people ask this! This is a common, reasonable argument indeed, but through guest blogging, you will begin to grow your name and online reputation.

People want to know who you are before they come to your site. Think about it like going to a movie: you want to watch a preview or read a review before you decide to spend your money on a ticket.

No one is going to subscribe to your site or have high attention for your content if they don’t know who you are or read any background of your expertise.

Among the many guest blogging benefits, you have the opportunity to develop your name by writing for other sites around the blogosphere and gain exposure to a new community of followers.

Do you want to be an online celebrity? Make your name stand out!

Tip: I list some of my guest posts (and interviews) in my about page, as I think this helps increasing my authority and online reputation:

3. Guest Blogging Squeezes Out Link Juice

A simple concept to understand, link juice is the fuel created to push your website further into the “online land of importance”.

The more links you have spread around the web, the more link juice you gain, and as a result, Google sees your website as a better search option.

In other words, the more link juice you have, the more your site works itself up the pages of Google searches.

By guest blogging, you are usually allotted up to two backlinks in the author bio at the bottom of your post, and you want to make sure you take advantage of both by linking to your site and to one of your social media profiles.

4. Guest Blogging Gives You More Opportunities

This is not the case for just anyone, but writers who are able to develop amazing content.

Bloggers who create viral and successful guest posts make people bookmark and refer back to them. This is a long lasting opportunity to market yourself for years in future (even more if you target established sites in your industry).

But guest blogging offers more benefits: other than increasing web traffic, you can get new customers and connections by having your content and name exposed to a brand new audience.

5. Guest Blogging Increases Your Expertise

Most site owners don’t start guest blogging thinking that they need to build their portfolio first, but in many cases, the experience level they have in their niche is just enough to start writing about it.

While creating more content, you gain experience and knowledge in your niche. And even if you are an expert, that does not mean you cannot learn new things or gain more knowledge on a certain subject.

By writing guest posts, you are challenged to develop creative ideas and widen your knowledge on the subject.

Not that I would encourage anyone to keep their best content for themselves, but if you are guest blogging great content on other sites, you will be that much better when it is time to get some creative juices flowing to your own site.

With time, you will be able to create such great articles that people can’t wait long enough for your next post.

6. Guest Blogging Makes You Money

Not the actual guest blogging makes you money (unless you offer these services), but the traffic that comes to your site at the result of your successful guest posts and backlinks.

Whether you’re selling a $5 ebook or a $500 online course, you will likely make more sales and increase conversions.

This is one of the most important reasons you guest post in the same niche: this way, you attract people who are already interested in the same topic clicking a link to a site they may actually want to see or buy a product from.

Tip: through guest blogging, you will be able to increase your chances of getting new business and building new awesome relationships. Always network with people within your niche. I also think it’s wise to invest time answering to the bloggers who is asking you to be interviewed or participate to experts roundups:

7. Guest Blogging Allows You to Access Traffic From Other Sites

One of the amazing benefits of guest blogging is the traffic that comes to your site as a result.

I’ve already touched on traffic a bit, but there is really a huge benefit from gaining access to other sites.

When you guest post on a blog, you are able to reach thousands, or even tens of thousands of viewers that click on their site every single day.

If you guest post enough, the number of people who you are able to connect with is astronomically high.

Final Words

If you haven’t started yet, I hope this post has finally convinced you to begin guest blogging.

I’d love to hear your experience in this field and please share any of your tips or suggestions, by leaving a comment below, thanks!

Guest Blogging when did the right way can gain you awesome results way beyond your imagination.

Okay, hit the break. Hi, I’m Amal Rafeeq [Zion] back from India and I thank Erik a lot for inviting me to be a host on NoPassiveIncome and giving me a chance to roll out an article to you guys through this wonderful job.

I really hope this one will be worth reading.

Let me not throw you off from the topic. Let’s roll.

First of all let’s see why you must focus more on Guest Blogging.

What are the benefits of Guest Blogging?

• Increases your online presence.
• Gives you quality back links.
• Improves your Page Rank.
• Increase your blog readership.
• Make your affiliate sales go wild.
• Drives you more Traffic.
• Increases your Search Engine Rankings. And it goes on like that.

How To Guest Blog the Right Way?

Like I said before, you can only gain profits if you do it the right way and let’s see what are the exact steps to do so.

#1: Lock on to the High Authorities.

What’s the value of just rolling out your sweat breaking articles on blogs which won’t give you much as return?

So stop killing your time by contributing your valuable time and content on blogs which doesn’t have a great audience.

I’m not suggesting you to always go for A lists. But you have to make sure what you’re doing is worth it, always.

As a regular blogger, you probably know the top read blogs on the sphere about your niche field. Prepare a note or type these lists into your computer.

#2: Approach with a Smile.

Okay, now that you got your eye at a high authority blog, it’s time you roll for the kill. The first thing to do is to make friends with the blogger.

Don’t act like you’re contacting him for contributing a Guest Post on his/her blog. Act like you wanna keep in touch.

After you’ve shared some talks and all, just shoot the idea of YOU contributing a guest post on HIS/HER blog. 99% of the answers will be “Yeah! Why not?”.

I swear, I’ve been at this point several times.

Okay, after the blogger have approved your request to guest post, set your account or ask them to make you one for you.

#3: The BIG step – Delivering Perfection!

Now that you’re fully ready to throw a content at them, it’s time you come up with a value factor. Don’t just write a boring topic that automatically makes the mouse pointer run to the close button of the tab.

Shoot something that’ll force the reader to share with excitement and research more about you. The reason you Guest Post is to grab the readers from a blog and to put them on your hands.

So make each post count.

Read : How to Write an Article – Writing Tips from a Professional Writer.

Every one are actually lame and lazy to look into guest posts they got in their blog and publish it after editing it. It requires time and effort.

So why don’t you make it easy for them by doing all of it yourself. Follow these things You’ll rock it with the post.

1. Come up with a Compelling Title for the post. Don’t even think about the word SEO. You’re blogging for the present readers, not for gaining more traffic to them. And titles are the door to each post. So make it mouse-attracting and you won’t regret it.
2. Format the post well. Make sure you use subheadings, highlight the main words and type it in a readable way. Keep grammatical mistakes outta the way.
3. Interlink to old posts. After you’ve completed your post, try to give links to old blog posts withing the blog with a reason.
4. Add great Images. A picture tells a thousand words, so why don’t you tell 2 or 3 thousand by adding awesome images? Include an eye catching featured image and include another one on the mid portion.
5. Prepare an Author Bio. Without this section, you’ve wasted your whole time on the post. Congrats if you’ve did this before. Prepare a bio-data of you which’s quite simple and explaining yourself. Make sure you link to your blog/website and social profiles so that one can contact you if they need to.

These things will get your post published in no time at all.

#4: Promote it like it’s the end of the world.

Na, don’t take it seriously! I just needed a subheading for this section. That’s all.  

Okay, after you got your post published, it’s time you put your part to promote it. I’d fire an Email pack through my Newsletter, Social Networks and directly to my top readers.

I just love the word – “Engagement“. You’ll love it too.

It’s a good practice to link to your guest posts from the new blog posts which you’ll write. So that things will go in a cycle.

Over to you.

Whoa! That’s all I got.

I hope you made it useful. And thanks a lot for reading this 860+ worded article. I really respect your patience !

Good luck, see you around. This is Zion, signing out.

Don’t forget to comment what’s on your mind before leaving. Thanks again.

But there are also other essential benefits that we can obtain from guest blogging, especially on those well-known blogs or websites and this is author trust or rank factor.

In SEO industry, Google always urge many SEOs to avoid spamming, unnatural and irrelevant linking, link manipulation etc. typically, tactics that violate search engine guidelines and purse content distribution and ethical link acquisition.

However, establishing author trust is quite difficult to establish especially if you will start from scratch, but this will surely help your website and your online presence gain a strong reputation from your target readers if done properly.

They key to success in establishing author trust through guest blogging is to focus within your niche and target those highly visited blogs/websites in your industry.

Slowly introduce your existence on their website by actively commenting on their recent posts.

Once you’ve got the attention of their community, contribute a highly informative content where new ideas and strategies that can be developed by your audience. Also, do not attempt to write something that was already posted on their blog to add up new information.

By building author-trust, you can benefit your website and your online presence in many ways and this includes the following points.

Earn clicks (CTR)

Linking relevant pages to add more detailed information to your content is one useful way to lead your guest post readers to your website.

This will help your website receive referral visitors and might as well become your regular readers.

Also, your guest post will surely appear in SERP in relevant search queries, so they key here is to ensure that the content you will produce is what people are sharing for.

This will help your post receive organic traffic which can eventually turn into referral traffic.

Earn Social Shares

Quality content deserves to be shared not only within your network but also to the world. If your readers find your guest post helpful and informative, they can also recommend it to their network community.

If your post becomes viral, you will definitely receive a hundred and even thousands of visitors from social media referrals.

Social signals are also one of the factors that Google is looking at when they are calculating content’s authority and they use these signals to determine how beneficial and useful a post is to its target readers.

Longer Reader-Author Engagement

Actively interacting with your readers is something that you should keep in practice.

Your readers will often drop their comment to share their opinion on your post and to keep your visitors returning to your post, respond to each of their comments and establish a conversation that should you and your readers will enjoy.

Also, one important thing remember is “you can’t earn author-trust if you don’t talk to your audience. So, the frequent you interact with your readers the stronger author-trust you will build.

Author-Trust

Author-trust factor is also the key to increase your CTR in SERP when people in your industry. Especially if you became popular through your informative content distribution on highly visited related websites within your industry.

This is also a safest way to acquire links for your website and at the same time, expand your own network to increase your connection.

However, being a trusted author means that you will only provide useful and informative content to your readers so you need to consistently produce a good one and never disappoint them with your content.

If you do, then you must have noticed how difficult it can get finding a suitable blog for your guest post.

Not just any blog, but the perfect fit for your post.

Of course, if your post is trashy, it would be needless to waste time trying to get a perfect place to publish it.

But when you have taken time to write something awesome, it is important that you do not just throw it away in an obscure blog.

What are important metrics to consider in choosing a home for your guest post?

What factors should you weigh in preferring one blog over another when it comes to publishing your guest post ?

Guest Blogging – You Need Goals

When we set out to guest blog, we should ideally have goals.

Those goals play a huge part in our decision on where to publish our guest post.

What is it you want to achieve?

Take some time out and draft some of the goals you are targeting, and then locate sites that are aligned with your stated goals.

A lot of bloggers hear about guest blogging and just jump in blindly without a well defined strategy in place.

Before starting your guest blogging campaign, it is important that you sit back and decide what exactly it is you want to achieve.

Some goals you should have in mind would include:

1. Build relationships with A-list bloggers in your niche.

2. Build relationships with growing bloggers and grow with them.

3. Get keyword rich backlinks from authority blogs.

4. Leave an impression that is good enough to drive traffic back to your site.

5. Become an authority in your own right.

How do you find blogs that can help you achieve those goals?

Find Guest Blogging Opportunities in Comments

I have sought and found almost all my guest blogging opportunities in the comments section of my favorite blogs.

How can you make the comments section of other blogs a hunting ground for a home for your guest posts?

Step 1: Seek out quality comments that resonate with you. This must be comments that add to the discussion, not just “me too” kind of comments that are made to register presence in the comment thread.

Bloggers who take the time to leave meaningful comments on other blogs are bloggers who take their blogging seriously.

Step 2: Visit the websites of the commenters. If their sites are as compelling as their comments, and they are in a relevant niche, add them to your guest post prospect list. This list should ideally be an excel document that has a field for contact name, email and website address.

Step 3: Leave a comment or two on every site that makes it into your list. It is also advisable to subscribe to their RSS of your target sites as this will update you on future posts they publish, so you can leave a comment and make the blog owner as familiar with your name as possible.

Step 4: After some days (and some comments), send an email with a guest post pitch to the blog owner. There is most likely an email address on the about or contact page.

I have had almost 100% guest post acceptance following this sequence.

In deciding which sites on your list to give priority to, it is important to answer the question:

How Did Past Guest Posts Perform?

Even after making a shortlist, it may be necessary to still scrutinize the sites further to determine which prospect should be given priority.

Keep your eyes open to tell-tale indicators on the site.

How did past guest post published on the blog perform?

Is there any evidence that the community rejects quality posts from new entrants? You can tell that is the case when quality guest posts have few comments and shares as opposed to the higher comment count all posts by the blog owner attracts.

If a high number of quality guest posts have low traction, that may indicate a trend and you would be wise to be careful about sending your guest post to that site.

It takes time to write a quality guest post, so choosing a home for your guest post should take as much deliberation.

Trash Goes in the Trash-Can

When your guest post pitch is accepted, what is next?

Some persons have the idea that guest posts should be churned out as fast as possible and that it is okay to send trashy posts as long as they get published.

That is one of the biggest mistake you could ever make as a guest blogger.

On the contrary, guest posts should be shining beacons of excellence; a promise of all that you are worth!

So take your time to write the very best possible, keeping in mind that each guest post you send out is like a letter of recommendation – recommending you to your prospective audience.

If you send out trashy guest posts, remember that trash goes in the trash-can.

Even if your trashy guest post gets published by one unfortunate blogger, its presence out there with your by-line does you and your brand more harm than good.

Before sending a guest post out, remember that it takes a perfect guest post to get on a perfect blog.

Take your time to write a guest post you will always be proud of.

But every time, and it’s not important, if it was success or failure, you have to learn from it as much as possible. It’s because you must avoid wrong behavior and continue proper actions.

So today, you can find here 10 lessons learned from the first month of blogging on NoPassiveIncome.com.

In reality, this blog was started at the beginning of this year, but in January and February only some posts were published, without any marketing effort. Work on this blog was restarted in the middle of April, so the first, full time month of blogging was May 2012.

 10 Lessons Learned from First Month of Blogging

 1.       Build Great Blog First

It is one of the most important (and difficult) things – If you want to be a successful blogger, you should have great base for it. And concern not only on appearance and content of the blog – there is a lot of other things, you must care about – visibility in social media, strong relationships with other bloggers, SEO, link building, credibility of you and your blog.

If you want to have great content on your blog, please start with reading two of our articles about it:

10 Article Writing Tips, How to Write Killer Article

How To Attract Your Blog Posts – 20 Tips For Normal People

 2.       Make Strong Relationships with Other Bloggers

As I wrote above, having great content isn’t enough –it’s only beginning. You have to build close relationships with other bloggers. Two most important steps in building such type of relationships are commenting on other blogs and guest posting. If you don’t know, how it should be performed, please read following posts:

How Commenting May Help You Build Your Credibility And Traffic For Your Blog

and

Great Guest Post and another 9 Secrets of Guest Blogging

3.       Give First, Take Later

If you really want to build great and devoted audience around your blog, you must offer them something special. So, prepare for giving, not for taking. For example you can create some series of killer articles or lists, where you can link to other sites, blogs and resources. Below you can find two killer lists, which may be helpful for every blogger

Top 100 Websites for Bloggers

150 Great Topics and Ideas for Bloggers

 4.       Participate in Social Networks

There are a lot of social networks. We have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest,  LinkedIn and lot’s more. Even for bloggers we have plenty of networks – for example Bloggers.com or Networkedblogs.com. It’s almost impossible to participate in all of them, but you must try to be here Relationships make on social networks are almost as valuable, as direct relationships with other bloggers. In May I concentrated my effort on Bloggers.com and on Twitter. But except networking, you should make something special, for example tutorial for chosen network:

How to use Twitter – tutorial for beginners

 5.       Don’t Consume, Create

Reading other blogs, participating in social networks or even commenting on other blogs is very good for you, especially on the beginning of your blogging way. But all of these activities are “passive” – you consume others work.

So stop consuming and try creating something new – write article for your blog, prepare guest post for others blogs or create an ebook, which may be used by you on your blog.

Spending your whole time on reading other stuff will cause, that you will waste your time for blogging. Your time is your money, so don’t waste it, because Blogging isn’t passive income

6.       Concern Your Effort on 1-3 Things at The Same Moment

Making a lot of things, at the same time, is very ineffective. As a blogger you must prepare great articles for your blog, make relationships with other bloggers and build traffic for your blog. If you don’t have enough money for outsourcing it, and you aren’t problogger, you must do it by yourself.

For good results of your work you must prioritize your activities and concern on 1-3 tasks. For example – in one week(month) concern on 1-3 social networks, comment on 1-3 other blogs, be active on 1-3 forums, etc.

7.       Fight with Distractions

Distractions are very dangerous and time consuming blockers for you and your blog. Only you know how much time you spend on Facebook, Pinterest or by reading emails. Here you can find some tips, how to fight with major distractions.

Top 10 distractions of work in online business – how to operate with them

8.       Traffic First, Monetization Later

As you can find in one of the first articles on this blog (Goals for this blog), goal of this site isn’t making money. And even if your goal is to make money from blogging, firstly you must build credibility and huge traffic for your blog. If you will do it in the wrong order, you will fail, because people will not read your blog…

9.       Monitor Your Progress

If you want to know, where you are, you must monitor your progress. You can analyze your stats, your followers, your fans or even amount of your subscribers.

I’ll give you some examples of numbers for this blog:

So you can see huge progress in Alexa rank, Bloggers.com and in Twitter followers. Amount of Facebook fans is really small , but in May I didn’t make anything to get Facebook fans (and for the next two months I’ll continue it).

And here you can see graph of stats for NoPassiveIncome.com since the beginning of this year:

You can see here, that internet users start visit my site in May

10.   Don’t Give Up

This problem concerns all of the bloggers – beginners and probloggers. Sometimes we feel tired, exhausted and unmotivated. There are a lot of reasons for that – too much work, drop in statistics, only virtual contact with other people or even noisy environment at your work place.

But you must be strong and don’t give up – you are BLOGGER, and bloggers don’t give up!

And how about your experience? What are your most important lessons learned? Do you remember your first month of blogging? Or maybe it was long time ago and you don’t remember it? Please share your lessons learned with us.

But why guest blogging is so popular?

Let’s go into some facts. Most of privately hold blogs, are updated once or twice a week (or even less often). There are only few blogs, which are updated on daily basis.

Why?

It’s not because bloggers don’t like to post or don’t know, what they should post about – mostly it’s because they don’t have time for blogging. Solution for this problem is really simple – guest blogging. In my opinion, it has only advantages.

Blogger, who is writing guest post, has a new audience. Readers of the blog, where the guest post is placed, can read some new content and become acquainted with another point of view. And the owner of the blog also has profits from it – he or she get free (and mostly very good) content for the blog. Besides, it saves his or her TIME – and it’s very important!

So, how to prepare for this win-win action – read our tips

10 Secrets of Guest Blogging

1)      Find proper blogs for your guest posts

Firstly, you should find 5-10 blogs, which are in your niche. You should check, if their owners are open for guest blogging (there is a little amount of bloggers, which doesn’t agree for guest post on their blogs), and which type of articles they are waiting for. If you can’t find, if it’s possible to place your guest post on the blog, please gently ask about it – you may send an e-mail to the Blogger.

2)      What’s cool on the blog?

If you have found at least 5 proper blogs for your guest post, you must decide, on which you want to write this time. After making a decision, spend at least 10 minutes, investigating who is reading the blog and which articles has the most amount of comments. A lot of comments below the article means, that it’s cool on the blog. Besides, on some blogs posts with a lot of comments are promoted in the sidebar. So, try to write your post in “cool” category, but remember about one thing – bloggers don’t accept articles, which were already published. They don’t like duplicated stuff…

3)      Quality is a king!

This is most important thing in almost all aspects of blogging, and especially in guest blogging. If your guest post will be weak, how do you think, will it be published by somebody? I assure you, it won’t be. Besides, it’s better to don’t have guest post, than having guest post with poor quality. Nobody will read it, and your reputation as a writer may suffer. So, your great guest post should be really great!

4)      Use proper linking strategy for your guest post

If you want to get some “link juice” from your guest post, you should also give something from you. Spend some time looking for similar topics on the blog and link to them inside your guest post. The same is with your backlinks – find some useful posts on your blog and link to them. But be very careful with it – if your post will have too much links (comparing to length of your article) it may be treated to spammy. So, like Google said – it should be good for your readers

5)      Put some live into your post

Include images, tables or videos into your guest post. It makes your post easier to read and optically diversify the text. Don’t allow your post to look like a phone book – who will read it? Some of the blog owners add pictures on their own. But ask them – maybe they want to get “fullpackage” of your guest post?

6)      Create landing page on your blog

Prepare landing page on your blog for new readers. If you made a free ebook (as a gift for signing into your e-mail list), please try to prepare your guest articles around the topic of the ebook.  If it’s not possible, prepare some related articles on your blog. They should be related with your guest post, of course. If you already have your landing page or related articles, link back to them in your guest post (using your smart linking strategy of course ).

7)      Make it easy to publish

Preformat your post in order to make the publication as easy, as possible. If you prepare your article easy to publish, your host will be very grateful to you. So you should check, how your guest post may look. Take into consideration titles, boldings, bullets, HX tags, etc. The best solution is to send it in two formats  – in MS Word (doc) and in html (you can prepare it on your blog and copy text from html view in your WordPress).

8)      Promote your guest post

Finally, after publishing your article, you may think it’s over – but it’s not. You should notify your blogosphere about your guest post. You may use Facebook and Twitter for it. Even your own blog may be good for it – you can write a short info about it, send it to your subscribers or even ask your blog commentators what do they thing about it – there is a lot of possibilities for doing it.

9)      Follow and answer comments below your guest post

There is one more thing, after publishing and promoting your post. Try to start (if it’s not started yet) a discussion below the post. Most comments = most traffic to your blog. Try to answer on each comment. It’s not needed, that you answer on all of them separately. You may answer on some of them in one comment. And be ready for criticism or another point of view– everyone has each own mind, which may be different from yours.

10)  Don’t give up

On some blogs you may find information, that guest posts are welcome. So you spent a lot of hours on preparing great guest post, sent it to the owner of the blog and… Nothing’s happened. It’s normal situation. Most popular bloggers get hundreds of guest posts each month. And only some of them will be published. Besides, they examine guest posts not every day, but once or twice a month. So you must be patient and don’t give up, in case your post will be rejected.

For example in May, I prepared 3 guest posts – two of them are accepted:

3 Vital Tips For Creating A Successful Blog

20 SEO Tips for Beginner Bloggers

Unfortunately one of my guest posts isn’t accepted yet (what’s more, I even didn’t get any response about this guest post). But I’m patient…

And what’s your experience with guest blogging? Are all of your guest posts accepted or not? Or maybe you want to write guest post for us? Please tell us about it below!