This is a guest post by Robert Bellarmine from Visitask.com.
Do you know that there are some changes that you will need to make to your blog before starting your guest blogging campaign?
Indeed there are many benefits that are associated with guest blogging but unfortunately not all webmasters are making the most of this activity.
In order to help you learn more on this topic I have written this short article and I hope that it will be useful for you.
1. Easy Subscription
Guest blogging will definitely increase the traffic on your site and as such you will want to boost your email subscribers. This is why it is important that you tweak your landing page to make sure that you make it easy for people to subscribe to your email list.
Make sure that your subscription page is simple and quick to use. Additionally you might be interested to offer a gift that is related to your guest post to encourage people to subscribe to your email list.
2. Social Media boost
Similarly you might want to make use of guest blogging to boost your social media initiative. This is why it might be interesting for you to place your Facebook and Twitter button on prominent place to encourage people to Like your page or follow you.
It is also important that your social media pages are of a good standard just as your guest posts. For instance you will want to use the same logo and color schemes across all your social media sites to give a form of congruence.
3. Quality Content
You should make sure that you have enough quality content on your blog before starting your guest blogging campaign. The new visitors on your blog will obviously want to read more articles from you and it might be a good idea that you have some good articles on your blog before starting.
This is why it might be a bad idea for you to start a guest blogging campaign when your blog is still new. You might also want to install some plugins on your blog to give your readers with your recent and related posts to keep your readers longer on your blog.
4. Introduce Yourself
You should also make sure that you have a good introduction page (about me page) on your site. Do not go for a generic page that you can find on all other sites. Your ‘about’ page should contain your contact information, some background information and your photo.
At the same time you should make sure that your about page is easy to read and not a long boring page that people will just skim through.
5. Professional Design
It is important that your blog displays a form of professionalism. Most of the authority sites have some well-developed templates and it is important that your own blog is up to the standard. There are some premium templates that you can use or may be hire some designer to help you with a professional design for your blog.
6. Site Speed
The speed at which a site loads can also be instrumental when it comes to attracting readers. Many people do not want to wait for a long time to get a site to load and may just close their browser. This is why it is important that you consider your site loading speed and make sure that you make adjustments when needed. You can read articles on various sites which teaches you how to speed up wordpress blog. In some cases disabling some plugins can also help improve your site loading speed.
Guest blogging can be really useful when it comes to promoting your online business but at the same time you will want to make some changes to your own blog before starting. Indeed some simple changes can improve the effectiveness of your guest blogging campaign and help you make the most of the campaign.
One of my friends once kept insisting that guest blogging hasn’t worked for him in terms of acquiring new email subscribers. When i checked his blog, i found that it was a disaster rather then a blog. After we made some tweaks here and then (site speed + great content on the front page), we’ve noticed some very good statistics. Thanks for sharing
This is the probably the best things to do before doing guest posting. I have tried guest blogging and it really generates a lot of targeted readers, so we should optimize our blog for them first. Nice share.
Great simple tips for optimizing your blog so it can cope with the traffic from guest posts. Most important part of the iptimizing process is the loading speed of a website, in my opinion. This is what the first impression you make to the visitor, nor the design or content.
Guestblogging is interesting. I’ve always thought to continue to build up my own blog to a certain level and then pursue the guest blogging. I think many people might start to guest blog before they get their own blog in full order or with a full clear vision.
I guess it goes on a case by case basis. I don’t want to try and go out guestblogging until I have my full clear set up done.
I’m pretty close to that now. It’s the biggest thing for me. Then it’s time to go on a rampage all over the place.
I totally agree with Mahesh’s comment. I’ve had guest posting in mind as the primary strategy to build my new blog but not until I’ve taken the blog to a level.. I’m not ready for guest blogging yet..
Good tips Robert, i like the point 6, is about Site Speed, i also see your site loading fast, may i know what caching plugin you use?
Aron, are you highlighting this blog’s (SmartBloggerz) loading speed? If yes, then I am using W3 Total Cache plugin with a CDN and using memcached on my VPS for better caching solution.
These are some great tips Robert. I especially liked tip #3. While it is good to have a good quantity of posts on your personal blog before beginning a guest blogging campaign, quality definitely trumps all. Your writing style should be consistent among your posts and each post must benefit or give value to your target audience. Make sure your posts are easy to read, contain relevant and up to date information, and leave the reader with more knowledge than they had before.
I think one must establish his reputation first before starting to let a guest blogger takes over the spot. Indeed this is useful for bloggers like me. Thanks!
I am very excited to have found this post. I have been looking for ways to drive targeted traffic to my new blog using this method. I will try to implement and see how it works on my blog. Thanks.
This is the topic that always reminds me about internal linking. When you mentioned quality content (which is just The #1 Basic piece of advice for blogging, and always bears repeating!), I thought about how a lot of bloggers have a unique URL that they link to their blog from their guest post. That way, there’s a welcome page, or maybe an article which elaborates the topic of their guest post, that’s addressed to their guest readers. Then, that article contains internal links to other articles on their blog, thus capturing that guest and (hopefully!) turning them into a regular reader.
I’m always so bad about internal linking! I just forget. =) Maybe I should do a few more guest posts to get into the habit! lol
Delena
I’m a sucker for a professionally designed website. If it looks like it’s made by a pro I assume that the guy running it is also a pro. And I know a lot of other people who share this way of thinking. So, Robert, #5 on that list is VERY true. A professional design WILL help your blog out. Especially the Thesis theme, I love it!!