3 Less-Known Ways to Find Guest Posting Opportunities

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Posted on 24th February 2010 by admin in blogging

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This is a guest post by Ann Smarty. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

The two best known ways to find blogs accepting guest posts are:

  • Looking around your current contacts. Guest posting at your friends' sites will only make your old relationships stronger and more active. Besides, this is a good way to "learn" to guest post: adapt to various types of audience and blogging atmosphere.
  • Searching Google. I've posted about some advanced tips on searching Google to hunt great (and tightly targeted) guest posting opportunities previously, so you just need to go and check it if you haven't yet.

But as an active (and long-term) guest blogger, I've become somewhat creative in hunting guest blogging opportunities and in this post I am sharing the three of them which turned really effective for me.

1. Look for New, Rapidly-Growing Competitors

Well, the first thing to keep in mind here is that there are no real competitors when it comes to blogging (this is one of the reasons why I love it). Blogs can't really compete because each of them has its unique voice and thus takes its own place.

But there are blogs in the same niche as you are and it is a good idea to find new, emerging and rapidly growing ones and see what they are doing.

One of the best advice I've ever got was: when it comes to competitive research, think young. It is not easy to follow already established, high-authority blogs: they already have solid contacts and fans which help them move further.

New bloggers have nothing; they are hungry and they've got to be creative. Watching what they are doing and following their steps, you can learn a lot. It doesn't mean you have to copy everything they are doing – you'll notice yourself get inspired by watching those active bloggers; you'll notice yourself find plenty of unique ideas and finding your own ways as well.

Look out for "places I guest posted" and "my guest posts" sections to see where those new and active bloggers promote their content and how:

Guest posting opportunities

2. Search and Track Twitter

This is somewhat related to the previous one: you won't be able to (easily) find new bloggers in Google (because they don't have enough link authority to outrank more established blogs) but you will surely find them Tweeting. Besides, Twitter search is real-time – meaning that you'll find new and fresh guest posting opportunities.

There are plenty of tools allowing to search and track Twitter; I am using Seesmic Desktop because it is cool, feature-rich and clutter-free. Here's how it noiselessly updates me of new related Tweets:

First thing to do is to configure its settings to notify you of new search results. Go to Settings > Notifications and put a tick next to "Notify about new search results":

Seesmic settings

You are almost done. Now use Seesmic built-in search option to search Twitter for what you need. I was searching for "guest posts" in general, you may want to restrict the search to your niche like [guest post diet], [guest post money].

Use Seesmic to track guest posting opportunities

Quick tip: create a separate search for each synonym you'd like to track: [guest post money], [guest post finance], [guest post save], etc.

Your search will be saved automatically and from now on Seesmic will quietly notify you of new search results via small pop-ups:

Track guest posting opportunities with Seesmic

Now whenever you have new results, just go ahead and check out the new blogs and what they are doing.

3. Join Blogging Forums

Bloggers' communities are plenty. Some are generic ones where people discuss all things blogging. Others are more focused and targeted like, for example, Blogher (which unites blogging women) and 20 something bloggers that unites bloggers aged between 20 and 30 (and thus having common interested, styles, priorities, etc).

I have recently created another community specifically targeting people looking for guest bloggers and / or guest blogging opportunities. It is called My Blog Guest and if you are interested in guest blogging and plan to do a lot of it, you may want to check it out.

I am doing my best to keep the bar high enough: I don't really want the forum to turn into buy-sell thing, so only join it if you are interested in long-term partnerships and "pure deals".

My blog guest

If you've had some success hunting for guest blogging opportunities, please share your most effective methods in the comments!

Ann Smarty blogs on search, social media, branding and blogging at her SEOsmarty.com blog.

Original Post: 3 Less-Known Ways to Find Guest Posting Opportunities

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How Do I Get Backlinks to My Posts, Making Sure They Will Get a Good PageRank?

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Posted on 24th February 2010 by admin in blogging

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questions and answersThis post is part of the Friday Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Mathew asks:

Do you spend a lot of time and effort on SEO and getting some quality/relevant backlinks to them right away, or are they mostly organic links from people linking to them?

Also, what’s the best ways to get backlinks to my inner pages with older posts on them?

I was wondering because I’ve noticed almost all of your older posts have very good page rank.

I used to spend a lot of time and effort on SEO and on getting quality/relevant backlinks a couple of years ago. That is because the blog was new and had a small audience, so publishing outstanding content alone wouldn’t do the trick. How did I go about attracting backlinks? Doing three things mainly:

1. Submitting my posts to social bookmarking sites. There are plenty of do-follow social bookmarking sites out there that will send you link juice even if you are the only one voting for your story. On top of that I also tried to promote my killer articles on Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious, and whenever I managed to score a front page a big influx of organic links would come.

2. Networking with fellow bloggers. Building a relationship with bloggers inside your niche is essential. This means that I would link to them often, and many times they would return the favor. I am not talking about link exchanges but rather about natural links to quality content that your fellow bloggers post.

3. Guest blogging. As you probably know I am a big fan of guest blogging. Back in the day I used to do it a lot, which sent both new readers and backlinks my way. Sometimes instead of using the byline link to my homepage I would point it to a related post I had published on my blog, and that can help a lot with search rankings.

Over time, however, I started to spend less and less time trying to get backlinks, because as my audience increased so did the organic backlinks. That is, every time I publish a normal post these days I get 5-10 backlinks on it. When I post a killer article I get 50-100 backlinks. So I just focus on producing content these days, because the promotion side pretty much walks alone.

There are two other things you can do to maximize the link juice of your single posts, however. They are:

1. Having an HTML sitemap. This is basically a page within your blog that you’ll link to all posts you have ever published. You could make this by having an “Archives” section, as I do. This is a very efficient way to distribute your link equity because all pages of your blog will link there, and it will link back to all pages of your blog.

2. Cross linking between your posts. Linking to older and relevant posts is another practice that can increase your PageRank and search rankings, apart from adding more value to your readers. Whenever you are writing a new post, therefore, think about what you have published in the past and trying to find something relevant to link to.

Finally, notice that having lots of backlinks pointing to each of your single posts is not necessary to make sure they will have a good PageRank. If you have a good amount of backlinks pointing to your homepage, and use the two methods I mentioned above, your link equity will naturally spread all over your website, and even single posts will no backlinks at all will gain some PageRank.

Original Post: How Do I Get Backlinks to My Posts, Making Sure They Will Get a Good PageRank?

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The Mass Guest Bloggging Strategy: Can You Do It?

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Posted on 10th February 2010 by admin in blogging

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post saying that I needed to hustle more, and one of the goals I set to myself was to reach 50,000 subscribers by July 21.

Many readers posted a comment or emailed me asking how I planned to achieve that goal. Well, I have many things in mind, and I’ll talk about them individually. Today I want to talk about the first strategy I’ll use: mass guest blogging.

You already know what guest blogging is, and why it is an effective promotional strategy. It basically allows you to reach a new audience, to network with fellow bloggers, and to receive some traffic along the way. But what about mass guest blogging? It is the same thing, but implemented on a mass scale.

For example, you could write and publish 20 guest posts on blogs inside your niche, all within a 30-day period. Alternatively, you could aim to get one guest post published a week, for 6 months in a row.

I like the mass guest blogging strategy because it creates synergy. That is, the results you will get with the 20 guest posts packed in a single month will be larger than the results you would get if you were to publish these same posts scattered through a longer period, say one or two years.

Why is that? Because when people see your name (or the name of your blog) everywhere on a short period of time, they start wondering what the fuzz is about, and they get curious or motivated to visit your site and possibly to subscribe to it.

Leo Babauta used this strategy when he was promoting Zen Habits in the early days. I remember I would see a guest post from him on popular blogs every other day, and that is how I discovered his blog and became a fan of his work (and probably how many other people did, too).

My goal is to write and get one guest post published every week, for the next 6 months. The one for this week is up on Problogger, and it is titled 9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days. I’ll also try to double the efforts on some weeks, publishing two guest posts instead of one.

It will be a lot of work, but I am sure the results will be worth it. On top of that now I made the whole thing public, so I have some extra motivation to walk my talk.

But what about you? After all you read this blog to improve your own, right? That is why I wanted to invite you to this challenge. Can you write one guest post per week and get it published on blog relevant to your topic? I am sure you can, so get on with it. Make a list of 10, 20 or 30 blogs where you want to guest post, brainstorm some content ideas and start writing the posts straight away.

Within six months I’ll write another post with the results of the challenge, and I’ll be looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Good luck!

Original Post: The Mass Guest Bloggging Strategy: Can You Do It?