This is a guide to writing an effective guest post for high-traffic bloggers. These tips work because I’ve used them myself to write on sites, resulting in hundreds of thousands of new readers.
While many new bloggers write content and pray for others to come, proactive bloggers reach out to others in their field, write amazingly good content, and quickly build a name for themselves.
I’m surprised why more people don’t do it: You get exposure to new readers on massively popular blogs, create tons of links, and get new subscribers to your blog’s RSS and email subscriptions. When done right, traffic increases in a powerful step-function, and when done regularly, guest posting is one of the best techniques for getting more and more qualified readers.
So here’s the deal: Each week, I get multiple pitches for guest posts, and most of them are absolutely horrible. They’re often “me-too” posts that contain nothing new, list-y articles that make everyone’s eyes glaze over, or weird rants.
What I’m looking for
I’m thrilled to send lots of traffic to people with interesting ideas — especially up-and-coming bloggers. I’ll speak for myself, although many high-traffic bloggers will tell you the same thing: If your guest post is simply a rehashed old point, it’s dead in the water. Here’s what I look for.
- Original content that tells my readers something new. This is simply the most important factor of all.
- Posts that are backed up by research, charts, data, and expert quotes, not your opinion. It’s easy to write what you think. It’s much harder to produce data that backs up an argument.
- Substantive discussion. Short posts usually get rejected
