Guest posting on other sites.

02.05.11 Posted in Hints and Tips by Mathew

Getting backlinks to your site is one of the most powerful ways to build your online presence and improve sales. The problem most people face is just not knowing where to start to get more of this online marketing gold. Here’s one great idea;

Writing an article for another website is a great way to get an instant high quality backlink to your website. There are plenty of sites that publish stories regularly, and plenty more blogs run by individuals who would be happy for some extra fresh and original content they can use on their site.

Look for sites that do not compete with yours, but where your product or service overlaps with the topic of the site; For example, a lot of products and services would not compete with a builder, but would be of interest to the builders client base, and have some relevance for people building a new home.

Once you’ve found a prospective site, decide on what sort of article you could write for them. Make sure you are an authority on the subject, because they aren’t going to want a poorly written article for their site. You don’t even need to write it yet, but you could write a few of these, and then offer them to sites. I tend to look for the site opportunity first, though.

Then, contact the site owner and make the offer. Be to the point, don’t try to make out you are offering free content because you are a great person, tell them you thought you could offer content their visitors would appreciate, and you are looking to gain a link back to your site from theirs. At this point, consider if they could offer YOU some content too; There are many products and services that overlap in both directions, and doing an article swap is even better!

Once you have agreement, try and incorporate one or two links in the article itself, using anchor text that describes your product or service. This is the best kind of backlink you can get, one that tells Google not only that your site is worth a visit, but exactly what your site is about.

One important point; You are going to need to write a fresh article for every site that takes you up on your offer. Giving multiple sites the same copy will result in those sites being penalised by Google, and most likely, they’ll take your content down.

Let us know how you go in the comments!