How to Write Quality Guest Posts for Higher Rankings

You may be a brilliant blogger with good writing skills but you won’t be recognized by many people unless you expose yourself to a wide range of audiences. One of the best ways to reach more people is through guest blogging.

Of course, many people are trying to write a guest post, but not everyone gets success in their attempt. Only people who have excellent writing skills and a strong appetite for sharing some useful information to the people are likely to be successful. So, before beginning to write a guest post, you need to learn the art of writing high quality and in-depth guest post that has potential to go viral.

Apart from reaching out to wider audience, you also stand to get the following additional benefits by writing guest posts:

• easily build quality links to your website
• drive more traffic to your website
• Get loyal subscribers
• Build your credibility as an expert in your niche.

In order to get all of the aforementioned perks, you need to work hard because writing a guest post that is to be read by hundreds and thousands of readers is not that easy. If you write ordinary posts, people won’t like your content; sometimes not even click the link to your blog/website. The only way you can do this is by writing impressive and quality content.

Here are few helpful tips to write a quality guest post:

1. Evaluate your area of interest:

It is one of the important things that most of the writers fail to consider. Everyone has a good knowledge in their own field. So, while you are attempting to write a guest post especially for the first time, it is advisable to choose the topic from your own niche. Definitely, it helps to expose your own thoughts and will also attract more readers.

To write guest posts in other niches, increase your reading habit on different topics and then present that to your audience.

2. Choose a topic that is already loved by the audience of the guest blog:

Before starting to choose a topic for your guest post, you need to keep certain things in mind:

First, search the ‘best performing articles’ on the guest blog on which you would like to write a guest post. Most of the blogs have a ‘Popular Posts’ widget on the sidebar from where you can easily pick the best performing blog posts.

In case, the blog doesn’t have anything like that, then you can filter them from the posts that are most shared and commented by the audience. Otherwise it is advisable to read all the guest posts as much as you can.

You can classify them based on their length or type. For example, you can check whether the topic discussed on the blog is general or particular, whether it is a list type post or a normal post, etc.

You can even create a spreadsheet for the blog. Just copy and paste the topics of most popular guest posts and make a note on why these topics performed well. Then fill the notes based on audience comments.

It may sound like a lot of work, but if you choose the topic on these bases, definitely you can reach more audience.

3. Use Content Strategy Creator Tool to get original ideas:

The ‘content strategy generator tool’ created by Daniel Butler helps you compete against other guest bloggers. It is really very easy to use. Just go to File > Make a copy and enter the keyword in cell B3, then tap return.

Within few seconds of the gap, you will get more powerful ideas from Bing News, Digg, Google News, Reddit, Topsy, Twittorati, Yahoo Answers, and more.

4. Follow the guest blogging guidelines:

Before starting to write to or pitch the blog owners, spend some time to read their guidelines for guest posting. It is not a difficult task. Following the guidelines is as important as writing the guest post.

It enables you to write in a way or tone that blog owner expects and it will be easy for them to approve your article and get published on their blog.

Especially you are advised to check the link exchange guidelines since links play an important role once your article is published.

5. Use the words that are easy to understand:

You may be a genius in using vocabularies and sentences but never try to show them off in your guest post. Use only simple words; don’t make your reader refer the dictionary again and again to understand the meaning of your sentences. But make sure you are writing the posts without any grammatical or typographical errors.

6. Write new and useful content:

No one on the web would like to read plagiarized content, and writing such content will never help you earn good reputation and credibility online. So, always come up with fresh, unique and useful content. These are the key to write a winning guest post.

7. Don’t write the guest posts just for backlinks:

Guest post is the means to say something useful to the audience and it is not the place just for giving back links. I don’t mean to say back links are unimportant for guest post; of course, they are, but here I advise you to give more importance to the quality of the content rather than the link.

Once you have written useful and high quality content, you will automatically earn a good reputation among the readers and they will definitely share your content with others. Again, this will turn to improve the traffic of your website automatically.

8. Write a lot on the guest post, but don’t sacrifice the quality of your words:

Trying to write a lot without writing too much content is a great challenge for most of the bloggers. Every guest blog has a limit on number of words (550-2000). If you write more than that, definitely it won’t be appreciated. So, try to learn how to write a lot in your guest post without sacrificing the quality of your words. One of the best things is that you can split them into multiple articles with proper interlinking.

9. Use proper formatting:

Most people glance through the content; so use proper formatting on your every blog post and guest post so that it looks interesting and doesn’t look boring. Don’t write large paragraphs, use headings and sub-headings at appropriate places.

Also, use bold and italics to highlight important words and sentences. Use right images to explain your concepts. It makes your post look better and more readable.

10. Follow on-page SEO practices on your guest post:

In order to get your guest post rank higher in search results, you need to follow some simple on-page SEO practices.

Just include your target keywords in the title, headings, sub-headings and content. Don’t over-optimize your keywords; try to include them in a natural manner. Excessive usage of keywords on your guest post may reduce the quality of your content; so balance the repetition of keyword correctly in your article.