Guest Blogging 101

Guest blogging involves writing and producing material for another blog, with the purpose of building backlinks, reputation, and getting traffic and exposure.

It remains one of the most effective, natural and Google-friendly link-building practices today, particularly after the introduction of Google’s search engine updates (Google Panda and Penguin).

Essentially, what you’re doing is giving away content, for free, with the hope of getting traffic, backlinks and exposure.

After guest bloggers are able to build authority, they are often paid to develop content and write for other blogs, and this also becomes their source of income.

Guest blogging is a tremendous way to

i.                     build reputation and authority,

ii.                   make a name for yourself and/or your brand,

iii.                  connect and network with other bloggers,

iv.                 connect and network with potential customers and clientele,

v.                   get the word out,

vi.                 and of course, it remains a valuable way to build backlinks to your blog that could potentially allow you to drive in a lot of referral traffic.

The potential is enormous. Guest blogging should be a fundamental part of not only one’s content marketing strategy, but their SEO strategy as well.

Purpose

Before setting off with your guest blogging exploits, it is essential to determine what your goals for guest blogging are. In general terms, it could be either to (a) build backlinks to your website, (b) drive in referral traffic from a high-PR source to your blog/website, or (c) build authority and reputation.

Most guest bloggers therefore prefer writing guest posts on authority, high-PR blogs that preferably has a large number of highly-engaged readership. This allows them to accomplish all three of the aforementioned goals simultaneously.

Guest Blogging Opportunities

In order to find guest posting opportunities, the following should be considered:

i.                     The blog is related to your niche or industry or the subject matter of your own blog/website

ii.                   The visitors of the blog will be interested in said readership,

iii.                  The blog has a good amount of activity – in terms of readership/traffic, comments and social sharing,

iv.                 The blog owner is socially-active, and will be able to share and promote your post on social mediums.

 Benefits of Guest Blogging

1.       Linkbuilding: One of the biggest advantages of guest blogging and (in my opinion) one of the best ways of building natural backlinks to your blog!. Most blogs allow guest posters to put up a few links in the author bio section as well as in the write-up, in the form of anchor-text. You might also be allowed to put in a few links to actual posts on your website/blog. It is important to try taking full advantage of all this by trying to get a couple of links in your guest post this way, and include as many keywords in the author bio as possible. However make sure that the write-up looks natural.

2.       Exposure: Blogs such as Problogger gets thousands of views on a daily basis. Publishing a single post on such an authority blog will allow your name, your content (and your links) to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people instantly. 

3.       Build Authority: Guest blogging is a great tool to build reputation and authority, and be seen as someone who is a leader in their field/niche. For this purpose, make sure that you know your stuff, know what you’re talking about, and have done your research. Be prepared to respond to questions and comments in the comments section. If you are able to come across as someone who knows what he’s talking about, and is knowledgeable and well-versed on the subject matter, you will eventually be seen as a credible authority figure on the matter.

4.       Traffic: Another important benefit of guest blogging involves the ability to drive in traffic to your blog. This links that you put up in your write-up are not only meant for link-building purposes, they also allow people reading your post to come to your website, which means that if you guest-post on a blog which gets, say, thousands of visitors daily, you can also potentially drive in massive amounts of referral traffic to your blog! Above all, if you guest-post on a blog that is relevant to your niche/industry, any traffic that you get will be highly-targeted. 

5.       Make Sales: If your on-page elements are strong (a good CTA couple with the ability to convert visitors), this traffic can be immensely beneficial in monetary terms as well. More traffic always equals more sales! 

6.       Building Relationships: In terms of building and nurturing relationships, guest posting has two distinct advantages: First off, writing guest posts on other blogs builds and forges relationships between fellow bloggers. If you write on a blog regularly, you are able to provide that blog with a regular supply of quality content. This is precisely what blog owners want – quality, well-written and fresh content. This will allow you to develop a strong professional relationship with an authority blog owner. Secondly, guest blogging also provides you with the opportunity to network and connect with your customers and potential clientele. It provides you with an opportunity and a platform to interact and communicate directly with them, be able to build trust and hence, maybe even market your products and make sales.

7.       Get subscribers: List-building is one of the most essential elements of good SEO. When you’re able to drive in a large amount of traffic to your blog, you also have a chance to build your list and be able to get subscribers on your blog.

The Most-Essential iPhone and iPad Apps for Bloggers

Here’s a list of some of the best iOS apps for just about any and every blogger out there – compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad – that should be a part of every blogger’s list of ‘must-have apps for the iPhone/iPad’:

1. Wordpress for iOS

Wordpress remains one of the most popular blogging platform and CMS (content management systems) out there. It is the CMS-of-choice for over 54 million bloggers and website owners out there, a number which is rapidly on the rise. Chances are that many of the people reading this will have their websites or blogs hosted on Wordpress. Which is why having the Wordpress for iOS app handy at all times is essential. It is a free download from the Apple iTunes store, and can be fired up any time, no matter where you might be or no matter where inspiration might hit you. The app has a very simplistic interface, which makes it easy to manage your WP blog straight from your OS. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the Wordpress for iOS app was an absolute treat to use on the larger screen of the iPad. Features include creating and editing posts and pages, moderating comments and viewing statistics of your Wordpress blog. PS. You can add as many Wordpress blogs (both Wordpress.com and self-hosted ones) to the app as you like.

2. Analytics Pro

In the absence of a Google Analytics app for the iPhone, analytics pro proves to be the best alternative. The app is built for people who might want to keep a check on their blog/website’s statistics. It provides you with access to your Google Analytics dashboard, and provides an insight into a lot of metrics, data and reports – such as visitor activity, traffic sources, referral sources, top content, top countries, and keywords used. Details for each are also easily accessible from within the app. So essentially, Analytics Pro puts the power of Google Analytics on your iOS-powered device, giving you the ability to see your website statistics on-the-go. You must, of course, already be signed up for a Google Analytics account to use the app. It costs $5.99 on the iTunes store.

3. HootSuite

HootSuite is a social media ‘dashboard’, that allows you to integrate, manage and access all your social mediums – such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and MySpace (to name a few) – from one single location. The HootSuite iPhone app, called ‘HootSuite for Twitter’, allows you to manage and access your HootSuite dashboard from your portable Apple device. With the app, you can send updates or schedule them to be sent in the future, add a multiple number of Twitter accounts and manage them all centrally, add multiple Facebook accounts (profiles and pages) and manage them centrally – all of which means that with the app, you can send out a post update to all your social networks instantly and effortlessly. In addition, it also allows you to track click stats, and monitor keywords, hashtags and lists. The app’s dashboard is as simple and easy-to-use as it is in the online version, and it is a great tool to manage all your social profiles from one place, without the need to download their individual apps.

4. Evernote

Evernote is, by far, one of the best apps on the iOS platform, and my personal favorite on this list! Evernote allows you to organize your thoughts by quickly jotting down notes on any ideas or inspiration that might spring to your mind – whatever the time may be and wherever you might be. It lets you take text-based notes (and organize them by tags), take photos (or whiteboards, paper, anything!), create to-do lists, save webpages (which can later be viewed on a desktop), or even record voice-based reminders. It then syncs these notes across all your devices (in a Dropbox-like manner), so that they are instantly accessible (and even searchable) regardless of where you might be working from. Quite simple, an immense tool for the modern blogger! The app is a free download over at iTunes, which means that you can now organize your life in a much better way and improve your productivity ten-fold, for free!  

5. Instapaper

Ever stumbled upon webpages while browsing the internet on your iPhone or iPad, and wished there was a way you could save them in order to view them later? That’s where Instapaper comes in! Instapaper, quite simply, gives you a read later bookmark, which means that you can save webpages, articles and blog posts for later viewing/reading – such as articles which you might want to finish reading later, or save for later in order to use them in that post you plan on writing in the evening. The saved pages can be saved and accessed/read from any device – including of course, the iPhone/iPad, a desktop or an eBook reader such as the Kindle.

6. PayPal

Pretty self-explanatory and obvious. This is the official PayPal for iPhone/iOS app, which puts the power of PayPal right in your phone, giving you access to your virtual bank right from your iOS device. Just about every blogger and internet marketer out there uses PayPal to handle any and all of their online transactions – including transferring funds and above all, receiving funds – which means that the app is an indispensable tool for just about every blogger, entrepreneur, marketer and online merchant out there. Features include the ability to manage your account, including checking your balance and view all transactions, send money, withdraw money, plus other features. The app is secure and reliable, and works well.

7 Points on Creating Quality Content

Content is king! Developing quality content goes hand-in-hand with good SEO practices. In fact, quality content is one of the most essential things when it comes to SEO.

Whether you’re a blogger, a webmaster for a large multinational, a SEO or an internet marketer, quality content is very important. Blogs and websites with quality content tend to rank higher in the SERPs, which allows them to be able to get organic traffic from search engines.  

However creating quality content is something that, perhaps surprisingly, often gets overlooked when it comes to developing an optimization strategy. Here are a few tips, pointers and best practices that should be an integral part of your content-creation strategy:

1. Quality – The first step is to create high-quality and valuable content, content that is well-researched, well-written and exudes professionalism and authority. The importance of quality content has increased tenfold after the introduction of Google’s updates to its search engine algorithm (Panda and Penguin), after which Google started de-indexing low-quality and spammy websites from the results, putting website that produced highly-valuable content on a regular basis on top of the results. Quality content, therefore, ensures that your website or blog ranks well on the SERPs and gets traffic from search engines on a regular basis.

2. Authority – An essential part of quality content is writing content allows you to be seen as an expert, or an ‘authority’ on certain matters. For this purpose, it is important that (a) you have a deep-lying interest on the said matter, you have tons of knowledge and are fully updated with everything that happens in said field, and (c) you produce well-researched and well-written content on the matter. Doing so will allow you to be seen as an authority – someone who is knowledgeable and well-versed in the industry/field.

3. Unique – The importance of unique content simply cannot be overstated, especially after the advent of Google Panda and Google Penguin – both of which have seen Google take concrete steps to ensure that copied and spun content doesn’t end up anywhere near the top of the SERPs, and in worst case situations, is banned from the search engines. Be more original and unique. Producing unique content requires time and patience – you can choose to do it yourself, or you can pay someone to develop it for you.

4. Keywords – An important aspect of creating quality content that does well in terms of SEO is the usage of relevant keywords. These are essentially terms (or phrases) that you want your content, as well as your website/blog, to rank for. It is important that these keywords are relevant to the subject matter of your write-up, and that they are used in the write-up a certain number of times, although now, it is preferable to write with a theme instead of maintaining a certain keyword density. In addition, do not focus only on big-money keywords, such as the ones which are looked up the most; it is a well-known fact that niche keywords and long-tailed keywords can drive in a lot of traffic.

5. Humans – After having said everything, it is important to know that content should always be human-oriented, rather than being search-engine oriented. This means that it should be written for human beings, in the sense that it should be easy-to-read, precise, should use simple language, should deliver value to the reader, should be grammatically correct, and should be able to bring across a certain point with clarity. Writing for humans will ensure that you drive in traffic, as well as have visitors make a purchase, respond to your CTA or maybe even share your content on social mediums. 

6. Interesting – Another important aspect of writing for humans is developing content that is interesting – essentially providing your readers with that they want. This could be anything, from writing opinion-based articles, providing readers with the latest news, giving advice or help on certain matters, writing how-to posts on your blog, reviewing the latest gadgets, or even a blog which provides it readers with funny images and viral videos from all over the internet. It is important to do your research before doing this; keyword research is a good place to start. Also look in your blog’s comments section about what your readers would like to see, or simply ask your readers about it. An interesting blog, which provides its readers with precisely what they want, will allow you build a returning base of visitors. 

7. Not Just Text – While website text (aka. copy) is an important part of quality content, there is a lot more to quality content than putting up a big wall of text. Apart from text, you can incorporate images (photos, memes, infographics, etc.), audio (mp3s, podcasts, music, etc.), videos (Youtube videos, commercials, animated videos, funny vidoes, etc.), eBooks, and internal and external links in your write-up in order to make it more interesting, less monotonous and more valuable to the reader. Like with text, anything that you put up should be relevant and related to the subject matter of your write-up.

Following these steps will allow you to create highly-valuable, high-quality and search-engine-friendly content for your blog – something that will almost certainly have your blog or website rank well on the SERP, and be able to drive in organic traffic from search engines in a post-Panda/Penguin era.

Spy On Your Competition With The Link Classifier Backlink Analyzer

Ever want to know why some site's rank well in the SERPs, while others are not?  Well one way to do this is to carefully examine the backlink profile of the site.

So how do you do this?  Well, services like MajesticSEO, OpenSiteExplorer, and aHrefs make it easy to get the backlinks that are pointing back to your site or pages.

But to really make use out of the data, you need to run these backlinks through a tool like Link Classifier.  Link Classifier is an alternative to the Link Detective tool that was made popular by this post , How Garbage Ranks in the SERPs: a Case Study.

Link Detective is an online service, while Link Classifier is a self hosted script that you need to install on your own web hosting.  Link Detective is a bit more polished looking, but it only works with SEOMoz's OpenSiteExplorer export files which makes its use more limited.  Link Classifier can take a list of urls from any service.

Here is a video of the Link Classifier script in action.

How would you use it?

Lets say you have a site that you want to rank for a specific keyword in Google.  Do a google search for that keyword and look at the sites that rank in the top 3.

For each of these sites, put them into your favorite backlink service.  All of them will allow you to output a CSV file that contains the backlink urls.  Analyze with Link Classifier and look and see how it categorizes the links.  Lots of Footer/Sidebar links could indicate paid links.  Lots of Comment links could indicate comment spamming using software like Scrapebox.

Also make sure to examine a handful of the In-Post links.  If a site is using blog networks to rank, then you can easily tell by looking at the links here.

Finally, pay close attention to your anchor text distribution.  In this post Google Penguin world, having any keyword appear more than 15% of the time is just asking for trouble.  Any more than that, and you are leaving a huge footprint for Google to see.

Social Media Networking Strategy: Keys to Success

Let’s face it, social media is now an integral part of not just our personal live, but also our professional lives. Bloggers have started using social mediums for promoting their blogs, and for promoting and marketing their content. Social mediums like Facebook and Twitter give you an edge in creating and promoting your online presence and connecting with your audience and potential clientele/consumers.

People have started selling and marketing their products and services on social media.

Marketers have realized the potential of social media, and are now leveraging its power to build brands, attract more consumers and generate more sales. Research conducted by the firm Buddy Media shows that Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are always considered when developing a marketing strategy, particularly in larger organizations.

And it is easy to see why. Social media is cheap, very accessible, and presents marketers with an enormous opportunity in terms of access to a large demographic and the ability to influence a large number of people. For instance Facebook has (almost) a billion users – that’s 1/7^th of the whole world’s population! Which means that with a single status update, you could be potentially reaching out to millions.

Here is a set of things that should be a part of every social media strategy:

1. Know your audience: The first step towards building a strong online presence is actually knowing who you’ll be reaching out to. This includes familiarity with your audience, and understanding their habits and interests. It is also important to determine what demographics (age, sex, location, income, profession, etc) your audience belongs to, as this will allow you to tailor your content accordingly.

Example: A Facebook page aimed at promoting an NFL Betting website would need to target people that fit into the correct demographic – professional males in North America, making a specific amount of money. It’s all marketing research.

2. Regular updates: Be regular with your updates. People need to know that you are alive, and in a world where there is plenty of information at one’s disposal (information overload even), it is important to be able to remind people that you still very much exist.

Example: ESPN’s Facebook pages sends out an update at least once-a-day, usually the day’s biggest story. Similarly, IKEA’s page regularly shares pictures of its furniture on a regular basis. Most newspapers and TV channels share breaking news on their Facebook pages, which could be related to entertainment, politics, sports or other categories.

3. Be interesting: The key to good updates and the ability to really engage your audience is being interesting. Avoid sending out boring or generic updates or tweets – send something that’s actually worth reading, and would be valuable to the group of people you are targeting.

Example: Create and share infographics. Ask your fans what’s going on in their lives, or who they would like to see host next year’s Oscars, or whose performance they think stood out in the new Batman movie.

4. Be unique: An easier approach to take would be rehashing content from other sources and essentially re-sharing what other publishers are putting up. Instead, the most successful social media marketers are those who share original content. Put some thought into creating your own content

Example: If you run a page on humor, internet memes (such as Bad Luck Brian, LOL Cats, etc.) seem to be doing pretty well right now. Try sharing images and videos that would awe your audience. Think outside the box, such as that Old Spice commercial.

5. Offer something in return: The biggest gains that can be had through social media marketing is when you, as a marketer, offer something in return. Focus on passing on the benefits to your fans and followers, instead of what you can get is the right approach here.

Example: One of the best ways to do this is doing giveaways and/or offer discounts on your products/services – perhaps doing something like a Facebook-exclusive giveaway will enhance social engagement. Alternatively, use your online presence to offer advice, tips, and DIYs.

6. Keep all communication short and to the point. Because let’s be honest, no one has the time to listen to or read long stories – people hate having their time wasted, and lead busy lives. On the other hand, concise and to-the-point communication – such as tweets, status updates, or messages through images or videos – will give you a better chance of being read, and people will be more like to retweet, like, share, and +1 such updates and help you spread the word.

Example: This is pretty easy to do on Twitter as you’re restricted to 160 characters per tweet. While I don’t have a specific example on how to be precise on Facebook, I generally recommend keeping your updates short, and using as less words as possible to get your message across, because ‘posts that are less than 80 characters create 27 percent more engagement’ according to a study by Buddy Media.

7. Day and time of updates: According to the same study, the day and time that an update is sent out during the day has a large influence on its engagement. Posts sent out early in the morning, at the end of the day or late at night had 20% more engagement. Similarly, posts on Sundays and during midweek (Wednesdays and Thursdays) seem to be the most popular.

Example: Fairly obvious. Send out your updates on the aforementioned days and during the said times so that they yield the most returns in terms of engagement. Maximize your post frequency and output during these times.