It usually takes a while to make your guest blogging efforts lead you somewhere and bring rewarding results. But this process takes even longer if you make some dreadful mistakes along the way. How to recognize those mistakes and fix them before you desperately claim guest blogging to be useless as a lot of people who failed at it did? Read on to see what you might be doing wrong.
Targeting Blogs in the Same Niche as Yours
When you decide to write guest posts on blogs that are in the same niche as your own, chances are you will suggest topics that have already been covered by the author or that they are still planning to cover them in the future. And in addition, if you’re writing similar content, the audience will most likely to stay loyal to the blog you’re guest posting on and won’t follow you to your website.
Tip to Fix It:
Think how you can target same audiences but with different products. Blog owner doesn’t have to see you as a competitor. For example, if your main expertise is infographic development, you might target content marketing blogs and write about an extra exposure that graphic content brings to a business. As you can see, you target the same readership but offer a different product to them. This will make readers feel free to go to your website and consume your information too.
Failing to Investigate
The worst possible mistake you can make is not researching a blog you’re willing to guest post on or not researching it well enough. Imagine you’ll write an amazing, well thought out article and it’ll turn out that the same topic was already covered? By not studying the blog for a potential guest posting first, you might encounter some minor disagreements with the editors: your style of your writing might not appropriate, the pictures won’t be right, the article might be too long or too short, you might not use enough references etc. A blog is like a home for bloggers, so try not to intrude in their space if you don’t know the rules.
Tip to Fix It:
Take some time to read the posting guidelines created by the author. If no guidelines are provided, investigate the posts that have already been published. Pay attention to what is popular. You need to understand what their audience likes the most and what tactics the blog owner uses to encourage commenting and sharing the content. This way, you can adapt an effective approach to share your story. Don’t try to sound better than the blog owner though. Remember, you’re a guest and have to behave like one.
Leaving Too Much Work to Be Done
Bloggers are extremely busy people, especially when they own huge blogs and receive more guest posts than they are able to publish. If they see your guest post is missing some vital elements, it is easier for them to reject it straight away. If your final article is missing, a proper introduction, meta description, meta titles, etc. you’re putting your opportunity to be published in danger. One more common thing is that some guest bloggers don’t pay enough attention to the proofreading of their posts knowing the editor is going to look through them anyway. Well, sometimes they won’t bother and reject your work so have some respect.
Tip to Fix It:
Write guest posts that are ready for immediate publishing. If the blog owner usually starts the posts with a small description of all the points outlined, always add images to your posts, because otherwise someone will have to do it for you. Don’t use copyright protected images you can quickly find on Google. You’d better use stock photos, illustrations, or even create custom graphics yourself. If you have at least some basic design skills and your posts include some small infographics with figures, stats, and facts, they will be much more valuable.
Writing Generalized Pitches
Some bloggers create pitches they typically send out to multiple blog owners. And you are probably making the same mistake if you look for guest blogging opportunities with this generalized approach. What you might not think about is that it’s all too obvious for people who receive dozens of identical emails every day and it can be quite refreshing to read something different from time to time.
Tip to Fix It:
Stand out from the crowd and you’ll be rewarded. Start with writing about a blog you wish to contribute to. Explain why you found it worthy, what things you like the most and which articles you are fond of. Based on a detailed website research, suggest a few topics that you would like to cover. When you actually show some interest in their content and are not there for the sole purpose of getting traffic back, you’ll have more chances to get your piece published.
Messing up Links
It’s understandable why you want to invite as many readers to your blog as possible. You desperately insert links all over the post. But unfortunately, such posts have more chances to get rejected by the editors. Even if they get published, such articles are extremely likely to scare readership away.
Tip to Fix It:
You’ve heard it many times – the links have to be used naturally in the text. Don’t deceive your readers with over-promising links. It’s usually mentioned in guest posting guidelines that you can have a link back to your blog, so use that. Another thing to remember is that everyone loves appreciation, so make sure to add internal links to relevant content on the blog, this will raise your chances a lot.
You have to decide on your guest blogging goals first – whether it’s building authority in your niche, increasing your readership or probably promoting your affiliate products. Depending on your goals, the nature and number of your links will vary. For example, if you wish to build your authority, it’s important to add your links at the end of the post and thus let readers finish the article first. People who enjoyed your work will follow.
Still Concerned?
A list of guest blogging mistakes may go on and on. While we covered some of the most common and dreadful of them, you might still stumble upon some more, big or small, but they can be quite destructive for your guest blogging efforts. Share your fears and concerns in the comments and we will try to give you some good advice.
Great! Work for sharing very informative information. Thanks keep it up
Hi
Very nice post .. Great content, thanks for sharing it .
Great Post… Thanks for sharing this…
Hi, my budget is only 800 bucks, where can I get the best backlinks ? Thank you
Great work. Thanks for sharing your views. A very informative blog.
Yes, it is quite hard here when you are a product distributor and need to compete with a lot of other bloggers with the same niche. I am writing for 3 years now. Selling the product of the same niche is much harder now since everyone is aware on SEO, not like years before.
Hi,
My name is Neha part of an organization that develops wide range of website for many big companies but these days my website is not going up on search engines. Can you suggest me some ways so that I can decrease the Alexa rank of my website and also target the qualities traffic to my website? If there any suggestion let me know in my mail id.
I really appreciate your work and what I liked the most is guest post email sample.
Thank you for this really informative post.
Cheers
Ranjan KC
Thank you for sharing this.
Hi ,
I had made the mistake of sending general pitches. But i now personalize every email and now i get more replies. And also finding the right blog to guest post takes a lot of time. Do you use any tools which help you with that process ?
Hi Kevin,
Yes, Guest posting time consuming but its done, you will get amazing results. guest posting on a reputed blog will bring lot of referral traffic for you blog.
the first problem for a new blogger is to find right blogs for guest posting.
Hello Kevin
This is a great post for anyone getting into guest posting. Congrats on writing and researching it. I think that writing too many guest posts can extremely damage your own sites. You are giving away your best work, so you really have to be careful to strike a balance. Many people don’t know how to do this.
Thank you for sharing this, this will surely put me to the right path for guest blogging.
Am very new to the world of Guest blogging. Your article is too good for a starter like me. But what the purpose of targeting the blogs of same niche of our own. I think studying and analyzing blogs of different genres can make us expand our areas of blogging. So we can target more number of blogs. Am sure that a detail study of the content which was not our niche is needed in this case. Am nearly a beginner consider this as my suggestion. Thank You.
I’ve been doing guest blog for years now.. but in some instances the content I provide to the blogger was rejected or remain unpublished. so I was wondering what am I doing wrong??
I think you are right…. Bloggers are also checking the Niche of someone who like to do a guest post.. and you will have greater chance if you are in the same Niche.. and if not then you have 50-50 chance. But other things should also be consider such as content etc. I like this post.. will defineiely share this to my friends
Personalized and targeted pitches are the ones which have helped me crack a guest posting deal with the bloggers. Also, if we ask prior to the person about the topic we’re going to write, it’s always better.