Guest blogging is extremely popular with bloggers. It helps a new blogger get noticed by the community, gets him quality backlinks and also directs some traffic to their sites.
These are the main reasons why most bloggers do guest blogging. But not many bloggers are able to get the most out of their guest posts. The reason being the silly guest blogging mistakes they make.
Now, you might want to know what those guest blogging mistakes are, so that you can avoid making them in future.
I am today sharing 3 top guest blogging mistakes:
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Poor choice of blogs
When you decide to put up a guest post (for whatever reasons), make sure to look for blogs in your niche.
Because even if the blog where you have chosen to put up your post approves your article and publishes you, it will not be considered as a relevant back link for your blog. Infact, you could be penalized for trying to get links from blogs which are not related to yours.
Every blogger wants to put up his posts on a blog with a high PR. So much so that they forget the importance of choosing he blogs that cover the same topics as they do.
If you cannot find lots of relevant blogs in your niche, you should know how to create relevant content for other blogs.
When I was running my health blog, I would often get stuck up for lack of choices. There were not too many health blogs to choose from for doing a Guest Post. So, I would write articles like “Best Posture Tips For Bloggers”, “Is Working Till late at Nights Ruining Your Health” etc and submit them to blogs on blogging niche.
I also did Guest Posts on tech blogs like, “Best Apps for Runners”, “Best Android Apps for Healthy Living” and so on.
This helped me get valuable backlinks without getting irrelevant links.
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2. Poor Content
Most bloggers are extremely cautious about accepting Guest Posts from unknown bloggers. And I don’t blame them for that!
What most cheap bloggers will submit by way of Guest posts is regurgitated content. The sad thing is that such content might manage to pass copyscape at times. But have you ever thought how you will escape the watchful eyes of the Big G i.e. Google?
My sincere advice to all those who submit guest posts is to be EXTRA careful about the content you provide for guest posts. And I have my reasons for doing so:
- If you give cheap, sub standard content you might get accepted once. But if your article does not rank well (which it never will if you have submitted a rewrite of an article published with another title elsewhere), you can never hope to get another guest post on that particular blog again. Remember, you might need to do another guest post on the same blog in future as well. So, give him good content.
- Your guest post is your chance to present your writing skills and expert knowledge to the world. If you write an original, well crafted article, you will get noticed by the blogging community and they will begin to respect you for providing killer content.
- Since you are most likely to do Guest posts on good PR blogs which have a good flow of traffic, readers might want to connect to you if they read something fresh in your article. You might win lots of twitter followers, Facebook fans and G+ contacts. And, if you are lucky, some dedicated and loyal readers too!
I always go out of the way and work harder on my guest posts than I would do on a post to be published on my own blog. And that is one reason my friends never turn down a Guest post offer from me.
I did a guest post for my friend Pradeep Kumar from Hellbound Bloggers a few months back about Domain Authority. It gives me immense pleasure when I see that post on Page 1 of Google now. The result being that when I approached Pradeep for another Guest post, he agreed immediately!
Submitting shoddy content for guest posts is, according to me, an unpardonable guest blogging mistake.
NEVER do that! You are being read by people who might never ever visit YOUR blog. Why not deliver superlative content so that they want to visit yours after reading your article?
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3. Poor Choice of Links
Even after you have delivered the best content you could and posted on relevant blogs, you might not get your due if you do not place your links correctly.
I would suggest all my friends, especially new starters, to be careful about placing the links.
Most bloggers allow you two back links per post.
When I was new to blogging, I did the blunder of placing them both in the author bio, without even trying to place one of those in the article body. As if that was not enough, I would not know WHERE to point those links!!!
I was naïve enough to do at least 5-7 Guest posts with 1 back link pointing to my home page and the other to “About us”. I don’t know whether I should be laughing over that now! :(
And I might have continued doing so till a very dear Pakistani blogger friend of mine pointed this put to me.
Try to take one link from the article body. As far as possible, link it to one of the articles on your blog with the right anchor text. Your article will start ranking higher in search engine rankings for the KEYWORD on which you place your link.
If, for example, I want to link my article on “How to recover Deleted Memory card Pictures” to my Guest post, it would not help me if I place the link on the word “Pictures”.
When you are interlinking your posts to other posts on your blog, that might sound perfectly normal. But not when you are placing your links in your guest post.
If I do that, my post on that topic might rank a few positions higher in SERP rankings with the Keyword “Pictures”. Which would be totally useless for me.
I wanted to promote my article on “Female Celebrity Tattoos” recently and did a Guest post on a similar topic where I placed a link with the anchor text, “Female Celebrities”. Now, while I did move from Page 5 to Page 2 for the Keyword “Female celebrities”, it did not help me much.
Conclusion
Having come into blogging from freelance writing, I made lots of guest blogging mistakes. But then those mistakes made me a smarter person. And I now know how better how to go about and get the most out of my Guest post!
My purpose of sharing them with you was to help my fellow bloggers avoid making the same blunders I’d made earlier.
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Mistakes are always there to make you more skilled and smart, the only thing required is learn them :)
I particularly liked your idea of getting relevant links even from completely irrelevant niches. Really smart idea.
Guest blogging is truly a fun and cooperation in blogosphere, but these shabby ‘SEO Experts’ exploited it using automated tools to create and submit articles. It is due to their excessive exercise, I’m afraid if Google comes up with another update to penalize guest blogging.
Very Informative post here I really found it great, Nice write-up
these are really mistakes that the one should be preventin’ !
thanks buddy!
Hi Suresh, Thanks for liking that!
I had to come up with this ingenious idea because I was unable to find many health blogs for Guest posts. On the contrary, there were tons of those on technology and blogging. I thought sharing this with some of my new friends out there might actually help them!
Thanks for liking, Anis!!
Yes, I went through that phase myself and would regret having made all those silly mistakes because there was no one to guide me. I hope and wish that no one else has to undergo the same ordeal.
:)
Thanks Anis for your comment, and yes to make the best out of a guest posting opportunity one has to avoid the mistakes listed in this article.
Some bloggers are silly Ambika.
I mean, they hold back, refusing to post their best content on guest posts.
The smart guest posters or posters anywhere, for that matter, do their best job EVERY time out. This is a key to online success.
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Ambika,
Really Guest blogging plays a crucial role in Blogging,. It helps us in increasing our Readers !! Thanks for sharing !! :)
Cheers
Thanks Ryan for your comment..
Thanks for your comment…
Hello Ambika,
There is more to blogging than just normal words and you just showed that to us. When writing a guest post, it is best to provide quality content so it’ll attract more visitors to your blog. wacky or ordinary content will not drive that much traffic to ones blog but at least it’ll give you backlink :D . Thanks for this lovely post and do have a blessed week ahead…
Thanks for your contribution babanature, hope you come by always to read from Netmediablog.
Yeah, there’s definitely a level of quality that is tapped into when a writer puts their whole effort into the production of a post. Links are definitely taken advantage of, but it’s an even worse frustration when links aren’t processed right in the post. Now we went from having a great post that has some viable links, to a great post that isn’t being used in its proper form. All facets of a guest post should be used.
Thanks for your sincere contribution.
Hello Ambika,
I totally agree with you about the common or silliest mistakes of guest blogging. And according to me, i believe the first mistake would be poor content (Mostly by newbie bloggers) and i also learned some tips from the post.
thanks
Thanks Jordan Singh for your comment, i am glad you have same view as the post.
Finding guest bloggers that don’t write crummy or rehashed post is very difficult. My second pet peeve is guest bloggers that don’t respond to comments.
Very true, Jason. Most Guest Bloggers are interested in backlinks and once they get them, they disappear!!
That is really funny because your duty does not get over after the PUBLISH button has been pressed.
A great post, I really like it and also like the way you adopt for writing this post and I am 100% agree with you that Guest Blogging is a great way to get more visitors. I am planning to post some Free guest posts on my blog and these tips will help me a lot.
Goodluck on it, i hope you make the best out of it from what you have learnt from this post.
You right, Ryan.
You have seen my article. How about accepting one from me now?? ;) :P
Just like a clever shopkeeper wants to get the most out of his new customer by charging him exorbitantly for his purchase, we can get 1-2 back links for our GP once. No matter how bad the content is.
But a SMART shopkeeper would want THAT customer to come back to him. He will never be unfair to him. Likewise in guest blogging.
Give good quality so that you get accepted next time as well.
Thanks for liking, Maria. Glad to know you liked it and found it useful.
Yes, do lots of guest posts. At least 2 every week.
Having poor content is not good when you do guest blogging. Content is king and therefore if you have a good content then that goes to show that you did a good job in doing guest blogging.
Thanks Jill for your contribution.
I am agree with you about the frequent or silliest mistakes of guest blogging. And according to me, i believe the first mistake would be poor content and i also learned some tips from the post. I am planning to post some Free guest posts on my blog and these tips will help me a lot.
Thanks Jack for your wonderful comment.