How to Optimize Your Guest Post to Get Traffic

Many opportunities are lost and energies wasted during the guest post process. Some people bring their A game to the post but provide little thought to how to maximize the traffic

There are two methods you can immediately use to take advantage of a guest posting opportunity.

1. Preparing your blog for the associated traffic.

You should ensure that you’ve ascertain your blogs usability and ease of navigation. You can improve this by using a landing page for people visiting from your guest post.

Create a landing page to use as your byline link

Bloggers allow you to reference your own blog in your byline. Instead of sending them to your home page, send them to a page listing all the aspects of your blog that may appeal to them.

You can create a different landing page for different circumstances. You have four choices, depending on your level of dedication:

• Create a landing page for each guest post
• Create a landing page for guest posts on a particular blog
• Create a landing page for guest posts in a specific niche or sub niche
• Create a generic landing page for all of your guest posts.

Some tips for improving the landing page:

• Mention if your available for guest posting. Highlight aspects that make you a valuable contributor. Examples are driving social media traffic, or a developing reputation of interacting within the blog comments.
• Link to posts that may intrigue the target audience. This is an appropriate time to pull out your pillar content.
• Expand on concepts that are discussed in the guest post. Self linking within guest posts can seem indulgent. Self linking within a mini post, that is an extension of the guest post, is adding value to the conversation.
• Point to any products that may be of use to your readers. This can also work if one is in development.

The goal of having a specific landing page is to convert the traffic into tangible goals. This technique be used in conjunction with the post structuring technique, detailed below, to maximize conversions.

Structuring your post to attract readers interest.

There are a couple of ways you can structure your post to attract readers. One is within the body of your text,

Tie the blog post to your blog.

This can be done using a number of methods:

• Refer to a case study that was featured on your blog
• Briefly mention that you have many more posts on your blog
• Use your blog as an example

This technique very much depends on the niche you are in and how receptive the audience is.

Futhermore if your byline is interesting, people will click out of curiosity.

Four tips for creating a compelling byline.

1. One should view the byline in a similar manner as a blog. Effectiveness is lost due to link clutter. This can actually diminish the traffic potential from your post.
2. Don’t try to cram in as many links as possibly. This just gives the reader an incentive to skip the byline. Focus on selling either you or your blog. Once decided, use your minimal lines of text to provide a reason why it would logical for the time poor reader to click through to your blog.
3. Less can be more. You should make it easy to ascertain the type of interaction your expecting from the readers. Do you want to get work? Do you want to grow your RSS readership, or promote your product? Focus on the one intended outcome and put all of your energies into that.
4. Take this opportunity to link to their professional and personal brand. This can be really effective if done correctly. Use one brand to influence the other. You can leverage your online profile – especially if your professional site is successful – to emphasis why you are an authority in that niche.

Top tips: Using your guest posts to get freelance work.

• Be extremely professional. Word of mouth will spread to fellow probloggers looking to hire writers
• Mention in your byline that your looking for work.
• Get guest posts on freelancing or writing blogs
• Have an understanding of how the blogger edits and formats their post. Try to reduce the work they have to do once you’re post is accepted.

I have seen many bloggers err with their guest posting opportunities. Don’t waste your efforts – strive to provide a complete ‘package’.