How to Organize your Guest Blogging Efforts
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the Nevada desert, you know how important guest blogging is for a small business SEO campaign in the post-Panda and Penguin world.
That being said, it’s equally important to make sure your guest blogging strategy is organized and efficient.
Here are some tips for maintaining a well-oiled guest blogging machine:
Expand your outreach methods
Organization through the early stages of guest posting is critical, because you should be reaching out to blogs with authority and prestige in their respective communities. The last thing you’d want to do is to be approved for a guest post, and then mistakenly send them another email asking for an opportunity to write for them.
I use the Link Prospector tool from Citation Labs as much as I can during my outreach process, and export the prospects into a CSV, which I then transfer into my tracking spreadsheet.
Create a tracking spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are incredibly useful when you’re tracking large quantities of data, and Google spreadsheets can be edited by more than one user at a time. This makes them the ideal way to track guest blog post opportunities and submitted posts.
Here’s a tracking spreadsheetI created that’s very similar to the one I use for my own projects. Feel free to make a copy and use it.
Anytime you make contact with a blog editor or owner, record the interaction in the spreadsheet under the “opportunities” tab. Include the date, the domain and the site’s metrics. This will help you organize the information, and give you a point of reference when you’re comparing one site with another. Also include the guidelines of the prospective blog, and the contact information for the editor or webmaster.
Incorporate social media
You should also be keeping track of the promotion you do on your guest blog posts. Being able to effectively promote your posts is just another arrow in your quiver when you approach blog owners. The third tab in the tracking spreadsheet should be a place to keep track of your promotions, so you can make sure each post you write receives the same amount of social love and attention that it deserves.
I’ve kept this list short, because I want to give you a chance to leave a comment with your organization tips. What works well for you? Any tools or programs that you use to keep your guest blogging efforts organized?
Leave your comments!
Ann Smarty
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12 Responses to “How to Organize your Guest Blogging Efforts”
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Please advice me on steps to take when trying to optimize a brand new site. Is it wise to build back links right away?
Also what is the quickest way to get your site indexed?
Thank you.
Anyone is welcome to answer.
Excellent write-up Andrew! Organization when guest blogging is critical to the success of your postings, if you’re doing it on a large scale.
Tom, organization becomes an even bigger factor when you’re trying to scale it. Better to build good habits now, rather than trying to play catch-up when it’s too late!
Hi Andrew! What a timely post. I have in my to-do list a task to find guest blogging opportunities for a client. This tracking sheet is a big help and I do think that it will impress my client
Thanks!!
I just go through the article. it’s really awesome. i appreciate your work. I think people should go through it. Thanks.
Hello Nica, thanks for reading. Being able to track and quantify your guest blogging efforts will go a long way in proving its worth to your clients. I hope that tracking spreadsheet helps!
I haven’t done as much guest blogging lately but it’s always given me good results. The link prospecting tool is definitely something that will help to find the good opportunities. I’ve had more than my fair share of guest posts that got lost by Google after a couple of weeks.
Great tips for me…Good luck
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This post was incredibly insightful. I knew of the importance of backlinks to your video, but I don’t think I’ve been paying attention to the filename. The program I use for making videos names the files on its own. I think I’ll have to pay more attention to that. Thank you.
Organization is key when it comes to guest blogging. You’ll also want to keep a list of social media handles along with the blogs that you submit guest posts to. Then, you can use this when you are promoting the posts.