When you are starting out in the online world it is a bit difficult to make yourself known. Make a hole in the market. One of the strategies to increase your visibility is to publish articles in other well-known blogs. They also serve media.
Websites that accept guest posts
In this article, I tell you about the advantages and benefits of publishing guest posts. In addition, I will share a methodology that works very well and increases the success rate by doing guest blogging.
My idea with this article is that it becomes a kind of definitive Guide to guest blogging in Spanish.
You’ll tell me later what’s up…
Contents in this text.
What are guest posts?
The guest post, or guest posting, consists of publishing an article on someone else’s blog, as a guest author. The practice of posting on someone else’s blog is quite common in the blogosphere.
You will wonder why…
Because guest posts offer a series of Benefits and Advantages both to the person who writes the article and to the person who hosts the space.
For this reason, blog owners are generally open to guest posting.
Advantages of guest posting
The best thing about guest posting is that it has advantages for everyone, and everywhere. Do you have a blog and you get requests to publish on your blog? It’s the best thing that could have happened to you.
It means that someone considers your space good enough to want to stamp their name on it. Would you like to write a text for someone’s blog, but have doubts? It is normal to have doubts. However, I assure you that when you land your first guest post, only good things will happen.
It doesn’t matter if you have your own blog, or if you don’t have a blog at all. What’s more, if you don’t have a blog yet, all the more reason you should try posting on someone else’s blog. It will give you two very important things: knowledge and experience.
Next, I will list the advantages of guest posts. Read it all and then tell me in the comments if you think I’m right.
Advantages for the guest writer
✅ ONE: Guest posts are a very effective way of promoting both the author’s personal brand and their own blog.
✅ TWO: You can get a do-follow link to your own blog. Links of this type are an important factor in search engine positioning.
✅ THREE: They work as social proof when the logos of the collaborations are included on their sites.
For example, take a look at how Mark Sheafer places the media in which he has published on the front page of his site.
Logos of sites where Mark Schaefer has published
This is a sample of expertise that many potential clients will appreciate.
✅ FOUR: Gives the writer access to the community of readers of the owner of the blog where he publishes the guest article.
Advantages for the blog owner
✅ ONE: You can rest a bit, by occupying a space in the editorial calendar with a publication from another person.
✅ TWO: It is a recognition and prize for the guest blogger, who is possibly one of his own readers.
✅ THREE: If the article is sponsored, it could be a significant source of income.
✅ FOUR: Increases the value provided to the community of readers, by giving space to different authors, themes, and approaches.
✅ FIFTH: It is a way to reduce investment in Content Creation without affecting the frequency and quality of what is published. In this way, the Content Marketing dilemma that all bloggers face can be solved.
In this case, the owner of the blog also benefits from the promotion that the writer will surely make of the article among his own community.
How to get your guest posts accepted
As you have seen, writing a guest post is a win-win transaction. Let’s review which are the most appropriate steps to successfully venture into guest blogging.
Identify where you want to publish
Many newbies to guest blogging start by writing an article and then try to sneak it to someone. While it might work, most of the time it doesn’t.
For this reason, the first step is to identify the medium in which it is best for you to publish your guest post. To choose the right blog, there are two things you should consider. The first thing is that the theme of the blog is related to your objectives. If you are a marketing specialist, it is useless for you to publish on a blog or medium that has investments in the stock market as its main theme.
The readers of that space may come to read your article, but it will not do you any good. The followers of that space are not really interested in the services you offer. The second thing to consider is whether it is worth the effort. Writing a guest post requires effort, sometimes even more than you do for your own blog.
Consider that in addition to writing a good article, you must do so within the terms and conditions of the site where you want to publish. As ugly as it sounds, to make a guest post you must take your accounts and assess the ROI that the time and energy invested will bring you.
So you should only post on blogs bigger than yours? Not necessarily. Publishing on a smaller blog, but with an active community can benefit you.
In addition, you will have the thanks and support of that blogger and his entire community, for adding value through your guest post. Remember that not everything is money in this life.
Analyze the environment in depth
Once you know where you want to publish comes the second stage: study the blog. Many of the failures in collaborations are due to a lack of research. An in-depth analysis of the medium is the way to know what works for the readers of that blog. It is even more reliable than the site editor’s opinion.
It may sound strong, but it is the truth. Many content creators fall in love with a theme, a tone, or even a format to produce content. However, the last word is always with the readers, and they give their opinion through visits and reactions. So I recommend that before you write a single letter, you continue to start doing this. Check which are the most popular articles, with the most traffic from Google and the most shared on social networks.
There are many tools that will give you this information. I like Ubersugest because it is free and very intuitive. Suppose you want to publish in Merca2.0, an important Digital Marketing magazine. Well, you take their domain address and put it in Ubersuggest, select a country and that’s it.
It’s going to give you back something like that.
Merca20 analyzed by Ubersuggest
From here we are interested in the TOP SEO PAGES section. To see more data, click on VIEW THE PAGES THAT DRIVE TRAFFIC TO THIS DOMAIN.
Then we export the data to work with it in Excel, or in a Google spreadsheet. Wherever you are most comfortable. We apply a filter to see which are the best-performing articles in shares on Facebook. Now you have a list of articles that you are going to take as a reference to make yours.
List of articles filtered by more shares on Facebook
Why Facebook shares?
Well, the virality of the content continues to be an element highly valued by some editors. Especially in digital media.
If you are going to publish on an SEO blog, the analysis varies a little; although the steps are the same.
With the list ready, then the next step is to enter each article and break it down to find the regularities.
In order not to make the text so long, I will tell you what you should analyze:
- Theme: To discover the most repeated.
- Titles: Number of words. Elements that compose it.
- Subtitles: Number of subtitles. Hierarchy. A number of words. Elements that compose it.
- Media (Images and Videos): How many? Original or Stock.
- Text: Number of words.
- Structure of the article: Number of words per section (introduction, development, conclusions).
- Structure of the paragraphs or sentences: short or long (this assessment is a bit subjective, but it is okay to consider it).
- Links: How many? Internal or external.
- Data sources: Cited. Scientists, other media, and other articles within the same medium.
To organize all this information and systematize it, you can create an Excel sheet to calculate the averages for each metric.
Doing this may seem like a tedious and worthless task to you.
Quite the opposite.
This quantitative analysis will give you an almost perfect template of the ideal post for the medium you have analyzed.
Write the best post of your life
With all the intelligence gathered you are ready to create your article.
The previous study gave you the format, but the content is up to you.
Now yes, open a document and start writing. Put all the desire you have. Treat that guest content as if it were the best post you should write in your life.
It is possible that during the writing you come up with something so good that you would like to keep it for your own blog. I will tell you 3 reasons not to.
✅ First: Remember that you are putting together a text with a format and style conditioned by your research. Even if it looks great, it may not really fit into your own blog.
✅ Second: The better the article you write, the greater the chances that it will be accepted and that you will make a good impression among the readers of the site.
✅ Third: Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. It is not at all elegant to send “junk” to someone else’s medium or blog.
Contact with a ready proposal
When you have your article ready, then… and only then, contact the editor of the blog or medium where you want to publish.
You may be doubting this workflow. Normal. Many people first contact the blogger. They express their desire to post in your space, and then submit topics or ask for suggestions on what to write about.
The problem with this order is that you make the editor work more, and that reduces your chances of success.
It has happened to me that they contact me asking if they can publish on my blog. I say yes, and then I don’t get any more messages from that person.
It’s not that much work to reply to an email. However, before answering I like to do a little research on who this person is who has written to me. That does take me a bit of time. When I have responded positively and I do not receive the offered item, my trust in that person is greatly reduced.
He made me work in vain, and I don’t like that. So, it is preferable that you contact with an article already ready to publish. They can only answer one of these possibilities.
They might ask you for some changes or edits to publish in the text. You make the changes and they publish the text. It’s what you were looking for so all good.
However, they might reject your item. What to do in this case? Well, rearrange a text to offer it to another similar medium or blog, or publish it on your own blog.
A while ago I wrote an article about SEO for Images for another site. To publish it, they asked me to make many editions of the text, and I did not have time at that time to carry them out.
I apologized to that person, I explained to him with total honesty and transparency why I couldn’t do what he asked me to do, and I published the text on my blog. Currently, the article ranks very well on the first page of Google for the related search. The guest post didn’t come out, but I still took advantage of the article I did.
Evaluate, improve and repeat the guest posting Evaluating is the way to know if you got the result you were looking for. No evaluation no paradise (…or was it something else?) The important thing is that you measure how successful your guest post has been. Always contrasting with the objectives you pursued.
Logically, it is very difficult for them to give you access to the Search Console or the Analytic of the blog, for their statistics. But you can use other tools to measure blog performance. I assume you already know which tool to use. Exact.
In the same way that Ubersuggest helps you study the blog, it also helps you follow up on your guest post.
If they allowed you to place a link to your website, you could measure if it brought you traffic. A metric that almost no one looks at, but it is good to follow in these cases, is brand searches on Google.
It could happen that people read your article. They like it and are encouraged to look for you to learn a little more about your work. If in the days after the guest post, you notice an increase in brand traffic, it is possible that it is a consequence of the article.
There are many other things that could be measured and evaluated. I repeat, it depends on the objectives you had to do guest blogging. In any case, whether you get it right the first time or not, my recommendation is that you repeat the process. With that same medium or with other blogs.
Perseverance always beats emergency.
Would you like to post on my blog?
Dear reader, thank you for coming this far.
I hope this text guides you on the best way to do guest blogging. I did a lot of research for this text since one of my goals for 2020 is to publish more in other spaces, but also to open CRamonSanabria to other people. If you are interested in publishing on my blog I welcome you.
To facilitate the guest blogging process with me I am writing a style guide that I will link to later from here. In the meantime, you can contact me without a problem and we can talk about it. I only ask you not to make work in vain.
If you are really interested in publishing your guest post, the doors are open here. If you are not convinced, then wait a bit until you are.
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