Grow Your Blog Content Fast with Guest Blogging

Why would you want to have guest bloggers?

This is a Guest Blog Post by Sasha Lassey, Every Day She's Sparkling

There are so many benefits of having a guest posts on your blog. You can build relationships, help boost your SEO and SERP ranking and most importantly, it can help you maintain and build content for your blog. This is especially important when you are just getting started as it often takes a year or longer for Google to notice your blog or you as an authority in your nîche.

I started guest blogging only a couple months into my blogging career and have found it tremendously rewarding and great for my blog. Doing so enables me to create content for my readers that I may not be an authority in and also builds credibility with Google as I grow the number of posts I have. WIN-WIN.

If you’ve been thinking about accepting guest posts on your site, here is a great system to help you get started!

Benefits of Accepting Blog Posts on Your Website

1. Build Relationships

One of the best things I have found about guest blogging is building relationships and doing collaborations with other bloggers. This is one of the key elements to being successful in blogging. Add to that idea the boost of bonus SEO juice and you’ve got a match made in heaven.

2. Can help boost SEO and SERP ranking

Most times, the blog host will agree to post at least one “dofollow” backlink to your blog. If the host blog happens to have a Domain Authority (DA) that is higher than yours, it can help you rank on Google as an authority in your nîche. Also, when you are first building out your content, it will take a long time for search engines to rank you based on authority because you don’t have enough content for them to “see”. Adding valuable content that fits your audience will help you build that faster.

3. Can Help You Maintain or Build Content

If you are a busy blogger, maybe even working full-time outside your side-hustle, you will inevitably run into times where you don’t have enough content to consistently post. When I was creating my blogging course, I completely depended on my weekly guest posts to fill my content void so that I could focus on just my course. It was a great way to continue to add value to my blog while I couldn’t commit to the schedule.

4. Can Help You Provide Valuable Information to Your Audience

Although you may be an expert in your own industry, asking other experts to create content for your audience can enhance your blog, especially if the content relates to your nîche. This can help bring readers back more often. YAY!

How to Set Up Your Blog for Guest Blogging Submissions

When I finally decided I was going to accept guest posts on my blog, I decided that I needed to create a very specific way of doing it so that I wouldn’t lose submissions and could easily keep track of everything.

The first thing I did was to create new post specific to guest posts. I laid out the page similar to how I would a regular blog post with a title and graphics as well as an explanation of what it was all about. This was important for me because I wanted to create a shareable pin as well as page that others could share in the future to help spread the word.

This also meant the page could potentially rank for Google and other search engines.

How To Set Up A Successful Guest Blogging Info Page

• Create a Post or Page
• Create a page/post on your site just for guest bloggers
• Outline what kind of guest blog posts you are interested in accepting
• Share why they would want to guest blog for you – share your stats, how you will market their blog
• Be very specific on what you are looking for
• Check out the Guest Blogging Opportunities Page on this site or on my site for inspiration

Set Guest Posting Guidelines

From the very beginning, I thought it would be really important to set definite requirements to make sure that the posts that I received were great quality and would provide the best value to my readers. I sat down and created some guidelines to let the guest posters understand the expectations right from the beginning. This is a really great idea to make sure that you don’t disappoint yourself or the person submitting the guest post.

Here are some examples of submission requirements:

• Must be an article that is within your nîche
• Must use SEO
• Must be at least 1000 words
• State the number of links or affiliate links (if allowed)
• Must not be published anywhere else, including your own blog
• Include a short bio and picture
• Do not request graphics or other images copyright infringement
• Deadline for submission (ie: one week prior to publish date)

How To Manage Your Guest Post Pitches And Submissions

If you spend some time marketing your guest posting opportunities, you will start getting flooded with requests. Creating a system for collecting and organizing these requests from the start will save you a ton of headaches.

I have worked with several guest post hosts that don’t ask for a pitch before submitting. My thinking was that I would like to have a good idea whether the content would be a good fit for my audience before I ask them to spend the time creating the post. So, I decided to create two submission forms, one for submitting the pitch idea and one to submit the post after I have contacted them to accept the pitch and set a date.

To do this, on your guest post submission page, you’ll need to set up two buttons – one for submitting pitch, one for submitting the post.

Create a Guest Post Pitch Form

In order to collect all the guest post ideas in an orderly way, you’ll want to create a form to collect all of the information that you want. For this, I use Google Forms, which is an incredibly easy way to collect and store all the information I need.

To start, go to Google Drive, click on New and click on Google Forms. There are a few things you will want to make sure to include:

• Include a reminder and overview of requirements (can copy from page). Include a way for them to contact you
• Name
• Email
• Website URL
• What is blog post topic
• More info on post
• Checkbox agreeing to terms set out
• Link to privacy policy
• Click on the art easel to change settings and make it look pretty

In settings (gear icon):

Make sure to check off that you want to collect email addresses, allow a response receipt and allow your guest poster to edit the document after they submit in case they need to make changes.

Also, it’s a good idea set a confirmation message in the Presentation tab so that they know it was sent.

Creating a Post Submission Form

This is very similar to the pitch form so I created one, copied it and made minor changes for the submission form to save some time.

• Include a reminder and overview of requirements (can copy from page). Include a way for them to contact you
• Name
• Email
• Website URL
• Link to Google Docs (shared-editable). I have found this the easiest way to upload into WordPress afterwards with very little extra editing, especially if they use the headings features
• Blog Topic
• Checkbox agreeing to terms set out
• Link to privacy policy
• Click on the art easel to change settings and make it look pretty
• • If you decide to make a copy of the first sheet, don’t forget to change the name of your new spreadsheet so that you don’t have two different fields of information.

Important Things to Do for Tracking Your Guest Post Pitches and Submissions

1. Have responses sent directly to your email so that you know when something new is added

2. You also want to set up a “Response Destination” so that all of your pitches and submissions are tracked in a Google spreadsheet. Just click on “Select response destination” and click on the button to “Create a new spreadsheet”. Name your new spreadsheet and that’s it. Google will do all the tough work for you.

Vett Your Submissions

Once I get a new pitch in my email, I will review it, vett the submitter’s URL to make sure that their submission will work well with my audience. If I am happy with the pitch and writer, I will contact them via email to let them know that their pitch has been accepted (remind them what it was- they often have submitted to other places) and give a publish date with a reminder to have it submitted a week before. It’s also a good idea to include the link back to your submission page for them to submit their content.

Publishing Guest Post Content

When I receive the post for submission, I copy and paste the doc into a new WordPress post and set up my CoSchedule guest post task list to make sure I don’t forget any steps. (Using Google docs makes this a super easy transition with little editing, especially if they’ve used the right headings in the doc).

I will review if for spelling and grammar and do an SEO check to make sure I am maximizing any opportunities in the headings and content. I also create graphics and insert images as needed and create meta and Pinterest descriptions. As a side-note, I prefer to do all my own graphics so that I am completely sure that there is no chance of plagiarism or copyright infringements.

Once I am 100% happy with all the content, I will schedule the work for publishing and contact the writer to let them know when it will be published and give the URL and remind them to share and respond to comments. Although the post is written by someone else, it is living on my blog, so the more I share, the more we both win.

Interested in additional sharing opportunities for your blog posts?

To help generate even more engagement and traffic to your website, bloggers of all nîches are welcome to join The Digital Collective of Women Entrepreneurs, a Private Facebook Group (it's FREE!) where you can connect with other bloggers, ask questions, gain valuable insight that is exclusive to the group, and participate in social media networking and sharing threads!

Do You Accept Guest Blog Posts?

Setting up a formal guest post submission strategy can take a bit of time, but once it is all set up, the system works all on it’s own, keeping track of all of your pitches and submissions in one place.

Would you like to submit a Guest Blog to Vogue Media? Start here!

Submit a Guest Blog to Every Day She's Sparkling? Start here!

Have you done a guest post before? Do you accept guest posts on your website? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below!

Sasha Lassey is a blogger who has a passion for entrepreneurial life. She has been building businesses and growing teams for the past 15 years and now she helps other women entrepreneurs grow their side-hustles and earn money through her course, Simply Blogging. Be sure to check out her blogging tips and tutorials at: Everyday She’s Sparkling