4 Steps To Prepare Your Blog Before Guest Posting

I am sure you all heard how important guest posting is for your internet marketing strategy. There are tons of article out there that teach you how to guest post, what are the benefits, on which blogs to guest post and so on and so forth.

Depending on the size of the blog you are guest posting on you can get quite some exposure. This exposure usually consists in one or two days of high traffic and that is it. Guest posting on the so called “A list” blogs can bring in from a couple of hundreds new visits up to one thousand or even more. That is a nice amount of traffic especially for the beginners but also for the not so new blogs.

What anyone didn’t tell you is that you need to prepare your blog for this kind of traffic. You want to make the most of the additional traffic you will get from the guest post and you have only one chance to do it. If your blog is not optimized you will lose of this traffic. You want to take as much advantage as you get from it, whatever your goal is: get people to subscribe to your RSS feed or to buy something from you.

Below are a few tips that will help you make the most out of the additional traffic you will get.

Step #1 – Offer freebies

People love to get stuff for free. Even if your content is top notch, freebies are the only things that will make your readers give out their email address. Write an e-book and offer it for free to you new subscribers, offer a free WordPress theme or whatever product you can produce by yourself. Make it loud and clear that you are giving away free stuff for your subscribers. Put a subscribe form on your sidebar at the very top and write down something about the stuff you are giving away. The line that I believe that works best is something like this “Subscribe and get for free an e-book worth xx $$”.

Some people might want to make the freebies even more visible and use popups. As long as they aren’t too annoying for the visitors and there is a “Close” button you can use them as well.

Step #2 – Work on your content

Make sure the content your homepage is displaying is the best one you can show to your visitors. Make it interesting, write catchy headlines. “How to”  and buzz lists, like “Top 5”, “Top 10” type of articles work best. Have a most read posts list so people can check out older articles as well.

Step #3 – Introduce yourself

People love to see that you are a real person. Work on your about page. Make sure you have a photo of yourself and a few lines about you: who you are, what you do, what are your goals.

Don’t hide this page. Make is visible to everybody. Add an author box at the end of each post and link it to the about page. You can also put a small author box on the sidebar of your blog, above the fold so that everyone can see it when they land on your homepage.

Step #4 – Social media

Having a boost in visitors on your blog can also bring you a boost in Twitter followers or Facebook friends. Make your social media buttons visible and encourage people click them. Instead of closing your posts suddenly, tell readers where they can follow you on Twitter or where to connect with you on Facebook.

Your opinion

So, these are my top 4 tips for preparing your blog before getting your guest post published on “A list” blogs in order to make the most out of them. If you have used other methods that have shown good results please share them with us.