Guest posts are a great way to grow your personal brand… if you guest post on the right blogs.
In 2010, I covered 5 Ways Guest Blog Posts Build Your Personal Brand.
In 2011, I added 3 More Ways Guest Blogging Can Build Your Personal Brand.
This year, I want to make sure you know how to choose the right blogs to get the best guest post results.
10 things to keep in mind
When searching for the right blog to guest post on, these are the main points to look out for:
1. Niche
First target blogs in your niche. After you guest post for a few of them, then you should target some blogs outside your niche with a crossover post relevant to both the blog’s niche and your own.
2. Traffic
Target blogs that have large audiences, that can drive traffic to your blog or other personal branding hub.
Alexa.com ranks blogs according to their traffic. Although skewed favorably towards sites that are popular in the US, it’s still a good indicator for any blog in the world. Aim for blogs with an Alexa rank lower than 150K.
3. Audience
Popular blogs in your niche will understandably have a large audience that cares about your topic.
Popular blogs outside your niche may have a large audience segment that cares about your topic.
Feedburner’s RSS subscriber count chiclet, although less pervasive than it used to be, is still a good indicator of readership.
4. SEO
Lots of factors determine a blog’s success with Google Search, and Google’s Pagerank metric is still a valid way to compare one blog to another. There are many browser plugins and websites that will look up the pagerank of a website. Aim for blogs whose homepage has a pagerank of 5 or more.
5. Social media
Do the blog’s articles go viral on social media?
Does the blog have many Facebook fans, Twitter followers, etc.?
Does the blog promote its articles to their social media channels?
If so, there’s a good chance your guest post will also get social media traction.
6. Engagement
Is the blog’s audience engaged?
Do new articles get comments, and do people share them on social media regardless of whether the blog automatically promotes articles there or not? You want a blog that gets its audience to react.
Low engagement is never a good sign, and it’s not just limited to small blogs either. Some blogs publish articles too often for their audience to keep up.
7. Design
Does the blog have a nice design, without ad clutter? If so, they probably edit each article to fit their high design standard, making your submission more likely to be appreciated by the audience.
8. Brand
Does the blog have a good reputation?
Are you comfortable associating your personal brand with the blog’s brand?
You don’t want to post on a blog that you will regret referring people to.
9. Respect for guest bloggers
Does the blog have guest post guidelines, so you don’t waste your time (and theirs) with a submission that will likely get rejected?
Have they published other guest posts in the past, and did the blog promote them well?
Does the blog allow guest posters to include a bio with links to your site? Or even allow you to mention your site in the content, if relevant?
10. Likability
Do you like the blog? Is it one that you’re already subscribed to or will subscribe to, now that you’ve discovered it?
Does the blog post quality content regularly?
If you like it, chances are that many other people do too and that appreciation will extend to your guest post by default. Better that than being the only good post on a bad blog.
Bonus
11. Effectiveness
Remember Pareto’s Law and the 80/20 rule. Better to concentrate your efforts on reaching a few high-powered blogs than many lower quality ones.
Speaking of high-powered blogs that accept guest posts, the 6th Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest has just gotten underway, with thousands of dollars in prizes including an early-bird raffle for submissions by end-of-day next Monday, July 30th, 2012.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
