How to Increase Traffic to Your Blog, Part 3: Guest Blogging and Networking through Comments

Guest Blog For Backlinks — Source: pamlawhorne.com

Just writing a great blog is in 99.99 percent cases not enough. There are simply thousands and thousands of great blogs with great content, maybe even in your niche. One way to increase traffic to your blog is simply to be present and visible on other blogs save yours. There are two ways to do this: guest blogging and leaving valuable comments.

Guest Blogging
I write for two blogs: this one and my personal blog. But from time to time I also do a guest blog. One of my most popular and shared guest posts has brought a noticeable traffic to both aforementioned blogs. It made me a lot more visible.

This case shows that guest blogging on a blog with good ranks can be a potential boost to your SEO. The links in the author description are especially valued by Google. “Links control the web. If you want rankings on Google, you need links. If you want authority in your niche, you need links. If you want traffic from other blogs, you need links. Guest blogging is a fairly easy way to get custom anchor-text, high quality one way backlinks to your website,” writes Glen Allsopp aka Viperchill.

Indeed, guest blogging helps grow your readership by getting introduced to an audience you wouldn’t normally have access to. It helps you earn recognition, and even get some great links back to your blog; the latter is a primary reason why bloggers do it.

Whatever you write for another blog must be great. It must be relevant to the audience of the blog you’re a guest of. Indeed, only exceptional content is heavily shared and has huge potential value for your blog. Therefore, choose carefully what blog you’re going to write a guest blog for. Understand that blog and its audience. And write a post for them! Impress that blog’s readers. Only doing it this way you (i.e. your blog) may reap the rewards of guest blogging. Moreover, don’t stick with a few chosen blogs; write guest posts for many different blogs to maximize the benefits of guest blogging.

Guest blogging is a win-win situation for both, a guest blogger and a hosting blog. Therefore, don’t just guest blog on other blogs; include guest posts on your own blog. If you play it smart, you’ll get excellent, free content.

And one more thing: don’t just write a post, admire it when it’s posted on someone else’s blog and then disappear until the next one. You should always be a professional! Always respond to comments left under your guest post! This will show the readers that you are genuine and not some self-absorbed spammer.

Leaving comments
Become someone to the point where many want you to leave a comment on their blog. This is how you can increase the visibility of your own blog – simply by being active on other people’s blogs. It’s about networking with other bloggers and getting introduced to readers you otherwise probably could not. This is how you share someone else’s audience and attract them to your content. If your comment attracts attention by another reader they will click your link back to your site and see what you have to say. Besides, Google loves backlinks!

As I already pointed out, you must leave relevant and useful/helpful comments on other blogs of your interest if you want to get something out of it – increased flow of traffic to your blog. In addition, include relevant links in your comments, but don’t exaggerate. Don’t come across as just another spammer!

These two methods work! We know! We’ve increased the flow of traffic to this blog by 400 per cent in the last 6 months alone!

Do you include guest post on your blog? Do you have any rules/guidelines for guest bloggers? What are they?