13 Feb Guest Blogging Isn’t Dead by a Long Shot!
Matt Cutts from Google recently recorded a video explaining why guest blogging was now a waste of time from an SEO point of view. IT’s caused a huge raucous amongst bloggers and SEO enthusiasts alike throwing a massive curve ball into the online search marketing field.
Yes, guest blogging for SEO is dead, but not for lead generation. Guest Blogging is still a huge customer magnet if you apply yourself and focus on your customer needs instead of your own.
In today’s video I share with you 5 powerful tips for creating posts that not only work well for SEO, but will also generate traffic and referral customers through guest blogging.
Enjoy!
They say that guest blogging is dead. Well, I don’t believe so – at least not if you do it properly. And that is the topic of today’s YouTube Update.
Hi, my name is Paul Barrs. Hello and welcome to today’s YouTube Update.
We’re talking Internet business. More specifically, we’re talking about guest blogging. Now there’s a lot of talk and there has been a lot of talk in recent weeks, saying that blogging is dead. Of course, this is being sparked by the latest video from Matt Cutts, who talks about this thing, this industry, of guest blogging. And truly when it comes to the type of thing that he’s talking about, well, yes, it is dead. It should’ve died a long time ago. But if you’re prepared to put in the time, if you’re prepared to put in a little bit of effort, you can make guest blogging work for you to generate more traffic than you can possibly imagine.
Here’s five quick tips that will help you do exactly that.
Tip Number One – Topics
Firstly, I want you to, if you haven’t already, take the idea of taking your keywords, getting rid of them, and turning them into topics. Yes, you heard this with, of course, the latest Google update. I’m talking about taking all of those targeted key words and looking at the general topics that they might be targeting instead. Considering that Google is now moving more towards, at this point of time, who knows what’s going to happen next week, but for the moment, moving towards understanding the intent behind the search. Rather than just a key phrase, rather than just a keyword, let’s look at the overall subject matter.
So here’s what I’d like you to do. Take, for example, about half a dozen keyword phrases and look at the deeper meaning of the topics and the conversation behind them.
Tip Number Two – Subheadings
Then, secondly, with those topic headings I want you to use them as the subheadings in your actual article. Now I’m talking now a strategy for writing one article, taking your keywords and then the next second step is to turn them into the subheadings for your topics.
This will give you a much, much deeper article to then write about. Instantly, you should know that, I’m not talking about a 3-, 4-, 500 word article because each of these subheadings, each of these topics, become an article in themselves, 300, 400, 500 words. Yes, this is something that’s going to take a little bit longer to write than just wham bam thank you ma’am and pumping crap out. This is what I want you to move away from.
Tip Number Three – Write
So step three is write each of these topics, these subheadings, to complete a full article. Now this is what I call a featured article. And when I do this, I do this in such a way that I might write each section, maybe, each day. It could take a week to put together a good article, only because I have many other things, many other areas in my business that I’m also working on. So I’ll just spend sort of 40-45 minutes each day putting together that section. But then combined over the week, they become a deep thought article.
I use good use of images. I use a good use of bullet points. I spread out the content. I don’t just try and throw out as many words, putting in keywords, as I possibly can. I make each section relevant. I make each section a standalone document but on an overall theme they become a solid featured article.
Tip Number Four – External References
Now the next thing that you should do is, of course, use external references. Don’t be afraid to do this. There’s nothing wrong with quoting and referencing the authorities in your industry. Look, people like and want to hear what you’ve got to say, no doubt. But if you can say what you’re saying and then back it up, that’s good stuff. That’s what people want to know about.
I’m going to use a reference right now to Moz.com. It is one of my favorite blogs. I subscribe to Moz and I look at some of the articles that come up through YouMoz and I see this exact pattern time and time and time again. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do. Good, deep thought articles by a variety of different authors doing each of the things that I’ve already spoken about.
Tip Number Five – Internal References
The next thing that I want you to do is start using internal references. Have a think and look over the site that you’re writing for, whom you would like to publish your guest blog. Yes, you should have someone in mind. Look at the quality of the content that’s already there, the users, the views, the interaction that they’re getting, and use internal references to things that they’re saying.
Heck, you’re writing of a topic that’s of interest to them and their readers. Wouldn’t you agree? So you need to use some kind of internal linking and references as well. Make a quote. Reference a page on their site. Make a statement. Reference a page or an image on their site. This is how you get people interested in your work, because they know that you’ve spent the time to write it for them just in the same way as you would if you were writing for your own website.
And seriously, if you don’t bother writing for your own website and your own audience, what’s the point of writing for somebody else? Yes?
Tip Number Six – Custom Landing Page
Which leads me to my final point, number six. I know I said five at the beginning but number six is that you should also have a custom landing page. For everything that you do, for everything that you write, for every ad that you publish, whatever it may be, back to your website. The link should never go to your homepage. It should go to a custom landing page. If you’re writing content for site A, then you need to have a targeted landing page for visitors who come to you from site A. Same for ad B or for promotion C or whatever it may be.
These are the different principles that you should apply when you’re looking at writing your guest blogs. So let me just sum those up for you very, very quickly.
Take your keywords, forget about just targeting keywords and writing 300 to 400 word articles. Look at targeting overall topics. Take each of these topics and turn them into subheadings for what will become an overall article.
When you’re writing these subheading contents, I want you to write at length for each of them 300, 400 words or more. Expand on it. Use images, references for those images. Use bullet points. Make it easy to read, good and easy on the eye.
Don’t be afraid to use external references along the way and, of course, internal references for either your site, if it’s just for yours, or for guest blogging purposes, the website that you’re looking to have it appear on. Make it good for their readers. Make it good for their viewers. And, of course, all of this assumes that you’re writing quality content not just writing for ‘SEO.’ You know what I mean?
Lastly, whenever you are writing for another website, always create a target landing page, which has what? A strong CTA. A Call To Action where you can get results from the visitors who come through to your site from the results of the work you’ve already done.
All right, those are my tips for today. Guest blogging isn’t dead, folks. There are so many people out there crying. They are hungry for good, quality content. That’s one way to get it out to them and get results.
Fantastic.
My name is Paul Barrs from PaulBarrs.com. I’ll talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.
Image Credit: http://www.creareseo.co.uk
