This is the forth post of the guest blogging post series.

qualities-of-pro-guest-bloggerGuest blogging can bring you great results when done correctly. Not only can it help you get high quality backlinks but also help you to drive fresh traffic to your website as well as help you build credibility in your niche.

In this post I’ve written the top 2o qualities of a pro guest blogger that, if followed, can get you great results in terms of traffic and credibility.

Why Be A Pro Guest Blogger?

Now you may ask – Why be a pro guest blogger when you can stay good enough and save a lot of time and energy writing content? You’ll get a backlink anyway so why bother being a Pro Guest Blogger? There are a couple of reasons for that –

  1. A pro guest blogger writes high quality epic guest posts that get more traffic, more social sharing and most often goes viral to bring immense traffic and subscribers to his/her website.
  2. A pro guest blogger gets more brand recognition and credibility in his/her niche with just a couple of guest posts as compared to other guest bloggers.
  3. A pro guest blogger knows what to write, how to write, where to write and when to write to get the maximum results.
  4. A pro guest blogger knows the target audience and writes for them instead of writing just for the sake of getting backlinks.
  5. A pro blogger is always welcomed to guest post on the same blog again and again because of the quality content and the value he provides.
  6. Guest blog owners are more than happy to get emails from these guest bloggers and publish their content on their blogs because of the empowering way these guest bloggers pitch them.

These are just a few reasons why you should try to become a pro guest blogger. So if you too want to become one, just adapt the following qualities of a pro guest blogger:

Qualities Of A Pro Guest Blogger

#1 Know How To Write

In order to become a pro guest blogger, the very first thing that you need to do is to know how to write. This thing is very important as if you can’t write well you’ll not be able to express yourself well and people will not appreciate you for that.

Now this does not only applies to your guest posts but also to any other type of content you write like blog posts or articles. Knowing how to write is the most basic step and you may already know how to go about it.

Just remember that you don’t have to be Shakespeare to write an epic piece of content. Write in easy to understand simple English and you are good to go.

#2 Know What To Write

Some guest bloggers really don’t know what to write, as they don’t have much knowledge about the particular topic they have to write about. Once you decide on the topic to write about, research about it well and try to understand it well before you start writing about it.

One of the worst mistake that guest bloggers make is that they do not conduct a proper research over the topic, and they take assistance of fillers and fluff to fill out the word count. Well if you are looking for regular followers, and if you are really willing to generate some good traffic that would be directed from that specific guest blogging site then you need to conduct a proper research over the topic before jotting it down.

#3 Know Where To Write

A guest blogger should always know where to write a guest post. You should be able to select proper guest blogging sites in your niche depending upon the traffic and quality of audience it has in order to make the most out of it in the best possible manner.

Select sites that are authoritative and whose subscribers love to read the guest posts and not ignore them.

#4 Pitch Perfect

Learn how to pitch webmasters for guest blogging. When you are looking to get featured on someone else’s blog don’t make your email pitch all about yourself. Talk about the blog or about a recent post that you loved or tell that you are a regular reader of their blog. Just show that you are a real fan of the blog and want a chance to guest blog.

Also, never write long emails as webmasters are busy and they ignore long emails. Keep your emails short and to the point. The webmasters already get a lot of emails for guest blogging, so be genuine at expressing your interest and keep it short and sweet.

An example of email that I use for pitching for guest blogging:

Hey Name,

You must be very busy so I’ll keep this email short.

I saw your post : [insert the title of post you read] that you published on [date]. I really loved it. I too think that [insert some text here on what you think about the post].

I also have written an article on a similar topic : [title of your guest post] that I think your subscribers will love to read and would really benefit from.

If you say, I can send the article over to you in my next mail so that you can share it with your readers. I’m sure you’ll love it.

Waiting for your response.

– Ram

Three things to learn from the above example email:

  1. Keep the email short and precise.
  2. Start by talking about how you loved the blog post. I also mentioned how his blog’s subscribers would benefit from my article – I never mentioned that I wanted something. It was all about the blog owner.
  3. I never mentioned I wanted to guest blog, yet the message is clear about that.

#5 Make The Title Catchy

I can’t stress enough on this. Come up with a catchy title so that the readers would be motivated to read the entire content. Enough has been said and discussed about this on ProBlogger’s – How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog

#6 Proper Breaks In Content

People don’t like to read the content which is written in a one big paragraph without proper breaks, use small paragraphs to make your content more enticing and easy to read.

Break your article into multiple paragraphs, bullet points, headings, sub – headings etc in order to make it look interactive and readable.

#7 Use Small Sentences

Use small sentences in your article in order to make it easy to read and understand.

#8 Post On High PR Sites:

A guest blogger should know about all the high PR guest blogging sites, so that he can post on the accordingly for more link juice to his/her website.

#9 Know The Readers

It is really very important for you to know the readers of the blog he’s about to guest post on. Once you understand the mentality of the audience, it would be way much easier to produce content that the readers would love to read.

#10 Avoid Direct Promotion Of Your Blog

You should always focus on providing high quality content instead of pitching readers to click on links to your blog. Take an indirect route and follow the readers through your content to your links.

Produce a content that is capable of self-promoting and makes people want to click your link to know more about you.

#11 Proper Link Placing

A guest blogger should know the art of placing links in the content. The best place to put your links is at the top of the content as it gets the most exposure and link juice, but not all blogs allow links at the top.

You’ll mostly get chance to post a link in the author bio section, so utilize this opportunity wisely. Make your author bio related to the content so that it acts as a part of it. By this you can ensure higher CTRs.

#12 Keep Your Content Plagiarism And Spam Free

Search engines hate plagiarism. It is really very important that a guest blogger should produce the content that is 100% spam free, else it would be rejected by both search engines as well as readers. Never copy content.

#13 Provide Useful Information

A guest blogger must provide useful information to its users, hence allowing him to make the most out of it in the best possible manner. Write in-depth posts selecting a particular topic that provides complete information about that particular topic.

#14 Proper Use Of Keywords

A guest blogger should know proper use of keywords. Keyword stuffing decreases the overall quality of the content and is also not good for SEO.

Try your best to insert the keywords naturally and make sure that you do not increase the density more than 3%, else it would ultimately be rejected by the guest blogging site.

#15 Social Bookmark Your Guest Post

Don’t forget to socially bookmark your posts on social bookmarking sites as a measure of optimizing it off-site.

#16 Meeting The Deadlines:

As a guest blogger you should always meet the deadlines when it comes to writing and posting of a blog post over other blogs. Remember that it’s not your website, so you should respect the webmaster and avoid keeping them waiting for your content.

#17 Track Your Progress

This is one of the most important things that guest bloggers generally forget to do.

Track your progress across various blogs you are posting on and see where you’re getting the maximum results. Also track your progress on various factors like – time spent on content creation, how many webmasters accepted your guest posts, number of people visiting your blog via a particular guest post, ranking of your website in search results for the links you posted in guest posts etc.

Make a stylesheet for this and measure as many metrics as you can. Using this gathered information in creating and posting guest posts can increase your results manifold.

#18 Reply To Comments

Always leave reply to comments on your guest posts. Engage with the commentors and reply to their queries. This shows the readers that you are a real person and not just posting to get a link and helps build you credibility.

#19 Author Bio

Utilize the author bio section at the fullest. Describe yourself in brief and interesting manner and put links to your blog intelligently. Webmasters generally only up to 2 links in the author bio, so the best thing to do is use one link to put your keyword optimized link to a page and another to link to your homepage or a page specifically designed for that website’s visitors.

#20 Make An Audience Specific Landing Page

Make a landing page specifically for the guest blog’s audience for more conversion. Use this landing page to introduce yourself and your blog to the new audience, to share some of the coolest stuff on your blog and to ask them to opt-in to your list for more content from you.

Don’t forget to put your opt-in box at the end of the landing page as the sole purpose of such landing pages is to funnel people to your list.

I have found that sending the audience to these landing pages is far better than sending them to your home page as they result in very high conversion.

Tip: Start your landing page with the title “Welcome XYZ Blog Reader” to make them feel more at home.

Conclusion

At the end I’d like to conclude by saying that guest blogging is the future of link building and traffic generation. So try to become as better a guest blogger as you possibly can. Follow the above qualities and you too can become a pro guest blogger.

But on the other hand if you think guest blogging is not for you then hire someone else to do it for you as there is no way around it, at least for the next couple of years.

Other posts of this series: