{"id":25443,"date":"2013-01-16T00:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T14:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/problogger.com\/?p=25443"},"modified":"2013-01-14T13:22:02","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T03:22:02","slug":"triple-your-traffic-by-guest-blogging-for-backlinks-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/problogger.com\/triple-your-traffic-by-guest-blogging-for-backlinks-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Triple Your Traffic by Guest Blogging for Backlinks [Case Study]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This guest post is written by Joseph from <\/em>GuestBloggingTactics.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Guest blogging is all the rage now; it\u2019s easily the #1 marketing technique used by both individual bloggers and online corporations.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most people are seeing guest blogging to be different from what it was originally painted to be.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no longer the sure-fire, high-traffic formula. It\u2019s no longer the thing you must<\/em> do if you want to increase traffic to your blog. In other words, guest posts on blogs that would have sent you 500 visitors a year ago will barely send you 50 today.<\/p>\n

Well, what if I told you you\u2019re doing it wrong?<\/p>\n

What if I told you I was able to get 120,000+ visitors as an indirect result of guest blogging<\/a> to one of my websites in one year? And that from less than 50 guest posts?<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll probably want me to share the sites I guest posted on so that you can write for them, too.<\/p>\n

But it no longer works that way. Even if there was a magic site that sent thousands of visitors per guest post, it\u2019ll barely be able to send ten per post in a few years time once everybody bombards it with guest posts.<\/p>\n

The good news is: it\u2019s not about the site you choose, but the approach you use.<\/p>\n

Most people see guest blogging as something that has to be direct, and that has to deliver results instantly.<\/p>\n

However, by seeing guest blogging in a new light\u2014by focusing on using guest blogging to build links instead of direct traffic\u2014I was able to triple traffic to my blog in one year. To be specific, I experienced a 340% increase in search traffic\u2014over 100,000 visitors\u2014in one year.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a screenshot showing traffic to my blog a year before I started my guest blogging campaign:
\n\"Triple<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a screenshot showing traffic to my blog a year after the guest blogging campaign:<\/p>\n

\"Triple<\/p>\n

How did I do it? That\u2019s the question this post will answer.<\/p>\n

Guest blogging and SEO<\/h2>\n

While there are many reasons people build links to their websites, the #1 reason is often to increase their search engine rankings.<\/p>\n

Search engines are the number one<\/a> traffic referrer online.<\/p>\n

When most people have problems or issues they want to solve on the Internet, they visit Google and type a keyword that can provide solutions to the problem they\u2019re experiencing. You do it and I do it too, every day of the week.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why search engines, especially Google, are the top traffic source to almost every website on the Internet.<\/p>\n

Getting ranked well for your desired keywords in Google and other search engines can be left to luck, a game of waiting and praying that things get right, or you can try to take control by actively building high-quality, high-value links that will improve your rankings.<\/p>\n

One of the best ways to build these high quality links today is by guest blogging.<\/p>\n

When most people guest post, they do it for the traffic and often ignore the link aspect. I\u2019ve observed that the links you can get from guest blogging are much more powerful than any traffic you can get.<\/p>\n

Why not start actively building links to your blog from your guest posts?<\/p>\n

A personal guest blogging case study<\/h2>\n

I dedicated a month to writing and getting guest posts published for one of my sites last year. I started a guest blogging campaign to publish over 30 guest posts on several quality blogs.<\/p>\n

The guest posts were written in a way that ties the topic of each blog I approached to the topic of my blog, without sacrificing quality, and with a focus on getting quality anchor-text backlinks instead of traffic.<\/p>\n

In other words, since every blogger has to get an author bio below their guest post, instead of just linking back to my homepage, I used my guest posts to link to internal pages and posts on my blog with specific keywords.<\/p>\n

I knew that doing this would be very effective, but I never knew it would be much more effective than I anticipated.<\/p>\n

While most of the guest posts I submitted didn\u2019t result in a single visit to my blog, and every guest post I submitted, combined, resulted in less than 50 visits, I saw a significant jump of 100 additional daily<\/em> visitors in my search traffic a week after the campaign ended.<\/p>\n

Ever since, without any active SEO effort on my part, traffic has grown significantly to up to 340% more visits a year after the challenge.<\/p>\n

For me, that was an additional 120,000 visitors.<\/p>\n

Of course, the guest posts I wrote in that month alone weren’t the only factor contributing to the increase in search traffic, but when I did the math I estimated that each guest post I wrote then would have attracted at least<\/em> 2,000 search engine visitors in the span of a year.<\/p>\n

Even if I\u2019m not accurate and it\u2019s half of that, receiving 1,000 visitors for a single guest post is very rare these days.<\/p>\n

The campaign enlightened me and made me realize that guest blogging doesn\u2019t always have to be for direct traffic and an instant boost in subscriber count. A link-building guest blogging campaign<\/a> can also be very effective.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be “immoral”<\/h2>\n

Due to how widely abused guest blogging for links is today, most people immediately come to the conclusion that guest blogging for links is a bad thing.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t always have to be. It\u2019s just like SEO: there\u2019s good and bad SEO, but when most people talk about SEO they talk about it as if it\u2019s unethical. Does that mean you should ignore SEO? Not if you want your online business to survive!<\/p>\n

Guest blogging is a natural thing for bloggers and it is okay to expect something in return when you write guest posts; instead of ignoring the real estate you have in the author bio of every guest post you write, why not focus on getting a high quality backlink or two that can improve your own blog’s ranking?<\/p>\n

With that said, whether you\u2019re a blogger or a company utilizing guest blogging, quality should of course be your number one focus. This is especially important for agencies using guest blogging, and something Georgina recently talked about<\/a> here at ProBlogger.<\/p>\n

So let’s look specifically at the steps you’ll need to follow to make this tactic work for you.<\/p>\n

5 Steps you should follow to guest blog for backlinks<\/h2>\n

Here are the steps I take when trying to guest blog for backlinks.<\/p>\n

1. Have effective content marketing in place<\/h3>\n

While guest blogging is effective, doing it alone won\u2019t help you get results.<\/p>\n

Guest blogging should be a part of a bigger content marketing<\/a> plan.<\/p>\n

In other words, before you get started, you should have a blog that constantly publishes relevant articles; you should then develop a campaign focused on ranking your landing pages and pillar articles on your blog.<\/p>\n

For a business, this might sound like something that won\u2019t be very effective. After all, why put all that guest blogging effort into blog posts?<\/p>\n

However, recent changes to Google\u2019s algorithm and those of other search engines have made it very clear that content and social are the future of SEO. It\u2019s becoming increasingly difficult for static web pages to rank well in the search engines\u2014and that\u2019s where you come in.<\/p>\n

Of course, to really get the best from this you\u2019ll need to ensure that articles published on your blog are properly aligned with the goals of your business; this could be getting leads, selling a product, or getting readers to take a particular action, for example.<\/p>\n

The point is it\u2019s easier to rank a detailed blog post that can get comments and social shares than it is to rank your blog’s homepage.<\/p>\n

2. Prepare a set of keywords you want to rank for<\/h3>\n

Based on the content of special blog posts you\u2019ve written as well as key pages on your website, prepare a set of keywords you want to rank for.<\/p>\n

In most cases, these keywords should be centered on a particular major keyword.<\/p>\n

So if I\u2019m trying to rank for \u201cguest blogging\u201d, for example, instead of letting all the anchor texts I use in my author bio be \u201cguest blogging\u201d\u2014which can be very dangerous\u2014I\u2019ll target a host of other keywords such as \u201cguest blogging tactics,\u201d \u201cguest blogging tips,\u201d \u201cguest posting,\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n

If possible, try to avoid using the same keyword twice\u2014even if it\u2019s the main keyword you want to rank for. Instead, develop a set of keywords that center around your main keyword and use them in your author bio.<\/p>\n

By using them, you\u2019ll be able to rank for both those keywords and<\/em> the main keyword you really wanted to rank for, giving you double benefits for your effort.<\/p>\n

3. Research and select a list of blogs you want to guest blog on<\/h3>\n

They don\u2019t always have to be as big and massive as Problogger.net, but in choosing the blogs to guest on, try to avoid link farms and poor quality blogs as much as you can.<\/p>\n

If you can find a relevant authority blog in your niche, great. If you can\u2019t find a relevant blog, however, you can look for a way to write content that’s relevant to both your audience and that of the host blogger to benefit.<\/p>\n

For example, if I were to start a guest blogging campaign to rank ProBlogger for major blogging keywords, I can easily benefit from targeting entrepreneurship blogs and even law blogs by writing articles along the lines of:<\/p>\n