10 Mistakes People Make When Guest Posting

1. Approaching it like an advert

Writing about your own business or your product is an easy way of blowing your guest posting chances early on. Site owners will not want to post an article that is a blatant advertisement because readers don’t want to read that.

2. Not linking back

Guest posting is a great way of getting backlinks to your own site so don’t waste the chance. At the very least, ensure there is a link in the bio section. If you’re allowed to post a link within the article, ensure you post one that is relevant.

3. Not including an offer

If you’re looking to build leads, it’s a good idea to have some sort of offer included in your bio. However, if you’re simply looking to create more recognition for your brand, it’s not necessary to include an offer.

4. Writing for the wrong site

You don’t want any kind of traffic coming your way. If you’re getting traffic that isn’t converting, you’re wasting a lot of time. Write for sites that will send you targeted traffic. A lot of traffic doesn’t always mean a lot of conversions and vice versa.

5. Writing only for the links

Writing with the sole purpose of creating backlinks is a practice that Google frowns upon since it doesn’t generate quality content. The best way to approach your writing is to create content that will be of interest to the readers.

6. Not having content on your site

If you don’t have plenty of high-quality content on your own site, there is no need to attempt guest posting. Without content, what will all that traffic to your site be going to do? It’s recommended that you should have at least 10 high-quality posts on your site before writing a guest post.

7. Writing a poor quality post

Some guest bloggers will not put much effort when writing guest posts since the content isn’t going on their site. However, this will sour relations between you and the other blogger and they are unlikely to promote your article to their readers.

8. Being a one-off contributor

Rather than writing one post for a blog and moving on to other blogs, a better strategy is to establish a long relationship with blogs that bring you a lot of targeted traffic. This will give you repeated exposure.

9. Poor pitches

Most guest post pitches don’t make it beyond the first email. It’s important to know how to pitch your ideas to the blog owner. You should first research the type of content that is posted on the site so you can explain how you can add value to their site.

10. Not keeping the audience in mind

While you may want to write in your own voice, it’s more important to your prospects that you write according to who the audience is and the type of information that they are looking for. You can even ask the blog owner about the type of audience who read posts on their blog.