If you have a web site, you may have noticed one of two things about the traffic you get from search engines.

Your search traffic may have dried up overnight, with once-healthy streams turning into a sad little trickle.

Or you may have noticed a nice, steady improvement as you’ve climbed higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), while other sites that used to outrank you suddenly evaporated.

There’s a super-secret new ingredient in SEO.

It was always a factor, but it’s become even more important recently, as the Google team relentlessly declares war on what they see as tricks and sneaky tactics.

Today we’ll talk about the “new” SEO copywriting techniques you can take advantage of in a post-Panda search world.

Ready for the mind-blowing “secret new ingredient”?

It’s the authority, editorial focus, and relevance of your site — in other words, your site quality.

Be careful — site quality may not mean what you think it means

It’s not just good writing. That can help, but it’s not enough.

It’s not just having a lot of content. That helps too, but it has to be the right content.

And it’s not just optimization. Optimization still matters … but only after you take care of these key site quality factors.

Improving your site quality means building a site that works for users first, and search engines second.

In other words, it’s what Copyblogger has been telling you to do with your SEO for six years now.

Let’s take a look at some individual elements of site quality, and how you can boost them to create a site that works for users and search engines.

Is your site someplace readers want to be?

One of the factors Google looks at is how long a reader spends on your site. Not just on the page they land on, but are they sticking around to check out other pages?

It starts with site design that’s clean, uncluttered, and appealing.

It may not make sense for you at this point to spend thousands of dollars on graphic design, but anyone can benefit from great-looking site design (that also happens to be well-optimized for SEO) for less than $100.

You also want to make sure you’re on good, reliable web hosting, so that waiting for your site to load doesn’t resemble waiting in line at the DMV. Slow sites aren’t good for users and they don’t earn search engine love.

Finally — and most important — you need to put reader questions, problems, and concerns front and center. If you’re a great resource for them, they’ll stick around and see what else you have to offer. What’s the secret there? Content, of course.

Less sophisticated SEOs might advise you to outsource a writer (who may or may not be particularly proficient in English) to slap together hundreds of pages that have the right keywords on them.

That’s a sign that you need to fire your SEO. The true SEO pros know that it isn’t just content you need — it’s good content.

Good content isn’t always the most gracefully written. It might violate every grammatical rule in the book. It might be brash, or weird. It might offend your in-laws.

But for your purposes, it’s good content if it’s:

• The content your readers actually want to read, and
• It’s content that serves your persuasion goals.

Good content is persuasive, it’s interesting, it’s useful, and it gets shared. It earns the “signals” that tell search engines you’ve got the best site in your topic.

What do you talk about most of the time?

This one can be a real advantage, letting a relatively small site win the SERP battle against a much bigger competitor … for the right term.

That’s because Google now looks more closely at what you talk about most of the time.

Here on Copyblogger, we talk a lot about writing and content marketing. And we tend to do very nicely for terms related to those things.

We don’t talk much about pizza, weight loss, FOREX trading, pharmaceuticals, or naked mole rats. So even though this site has lots of authority in general with Google, because we’ve attracted a lot of high-quality links over the years, we’re not going to rank for those terms.

That’s why for every site that got kicked in the teeth by Google’s Panda update, there was another site — one with a lot of high-quality content that was well focused around a particular topic — that started to see a nice boost in search traffic.

Write about what you want to rank for. Then write some more about that. Then write some more.

Keep your content focused. Keep serving your audience. And keep showing up.

Every page is a landing page

Seth Godin made this observation about a million years ago, and it will always be true.

You don’t know how your next reader will find your site. It might be the result of a search. It might be from a social media share. It might be an email post that got forwarded. You might have bought some traffic with pay-per-click.

It doesn’t actually matter. Because every page on your site is a landing page for someone. The reader jumps into your site there … and looks around to see what to do next.

Every page has to lead gracefully into everything else you do. Every page has to underscore the value you provide.

That means you make your navigation user-friendly, you highlight your very best content, and you get smart about internal links. Which brings us to …

How to use your link structure

Remember when we talked about keeping readers nicely stuck to your site, poking around and finding lots of good stuff to read, listen to, or watch?

That’s one of the many excellent reasons to have lots of internal links in your content.

What should you link to? To your best content — what we call your cornerstone content. Your best advice, your best thinking, and your best answers to the questions readers come up with again and again.

Content landing pages are a handy way to focus those links, but you should also keep linking to your favorite posts that address a key point in your topic particularly well.

Not only does this encourage readers to spend some more quality time on your site, it also gives you a little something when the &$%# scrapers re-post your work. The resulting backlinks you get aren’t exactly going to make or break you with the search engines, but if the scraped page has any readers at all, some of them will come find you.

Remember to be smart about how you’re using anchor text when you link to your own stuff. Use keywords gracefully, and again (as always) write for your readers first. Don’t try to stuff your content with internal links — use them when they make sense and give the reader a deeper view into what you write about.

Of course it isn’t new

Obviously I’m indulging in a bit of silliness by calling this a “new” factor. Google (and the other search engines) have always wanted to make site quality their main factor — but doing that was difficult.

So they put a bunch of very brainy engineers on it, and every year they get a little better.

Here’s what one of their relatively new engineers said in a recent interview, quoted in Web Pro News.

Manipulating Google results shouldn’t be something you feel entitled to be able to do. If you want to rank highly in Google, be relevant for the user currently searching. Engage him in social media or email, provide relevant information about what you’re selling, and, generally, be a “good match” for what the user wants.

That’s always been their position. Trying to fight that by exploiting weaknesses in their algorithm is a short-term solution that tends not to work very well for your readers … or for the long-term health of your business.

Don’t take shortcuts, they take too long

I was talking with a gentleman at a conference this week, and he mentioned a colleague with dozens of clients who got utterly demolished by Google’s Panda update — an update designed to improve the quality of the sites Google ranks well.

Interestingly, every one of those Panda-smacked clients followed the same marketing guru for “shortcuts” to good search traffic.

Shortcuts can work for a little while. And you may have found a good one that will get you a quick burst of traffic while you build something that lasts.

But if you aren’t building a site that’s worth reading (and that’s therefore worth sharing in social media, and worth linking to), the most brilliant shortcut in the world will take you away from where you want to go.

Because you aren’t serving search engines. You’re serving readers and customers. Put them first and everything else will start working for you.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is co-founder and CMO of Copyblogger Media. Share your favorite SEO and content marketing techniques with her on twitter.

Before your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it's even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of noise, and just about everyone worth contacting is taking defensive measures.

• Do I know this person?
• Did someone I trust send them over?
• Where does she work? (Ideo? the FDA? The New York Times?)
• Has she won an award? Is she famous?
• Are there typos and is the design sloppy?
• Are they pestering me?
• Do I already follow this person online?
• Does music play when I visit the website?
• Will my boss be pleased when I bring this project up?
• Who else is pointing to/referencing/working with this person?
• Is it too good to be true?

Notice that all of these questions get asked before the idea is even analyzed. Doesn't matter that this might not be fair, it's a hurdle you have to cross.

Not all good ideas are pre-proven, sophisticated and from reliable sources. That's not your fault. Doesn't matter. In a noisy world filled with choices, you can't blame your prospects for ignoring you. I know that you're talented and have a lot to offer, but do they?

In 2009, interest in the capacity of games to solve real-world problems spontaneously began to erupt within general culture. This was an idea that a lot of people had been promoting for a some time through initiatives like Serious Games, Games for Health, and Games for Change, but their message had mostly flown under the public’s radar.

As a UX practitioner, I had long been fascinated with exploring how games could effect positive change in people and achieve things that would otherwise be difficult through conventional design. It was clear to me that the UX community could benefit from expanding its toolkit of competencies to include game design, and by gaining greater exposure to the innovative work being done in video games. So at...read more
By John Ferrara

In 2009, interest in the capacity of games to solve real-world problems spontaneously began to erupt within general culture. This was an idea that a lot of people had been promoting for a some time through initiatives like Serious Games, Games for Health, and Games for Change, but their message had mostly flown under the public’s radar.

As a UX practitioner, I had long been fascinated with exploring how games could effect positive change in people and achieve things that would otherwise be difficult through conventional design. It was clear to me that the UX community could benefit from expanding its toolkit of competencies to include game design, and by gaining greater exposure to the innovative work being done in video games. So at...read more
By John Ferrara

It’s a Twitterized world, we’re just living in it.

Blog posts, Tweets, quick videos, Google+, the Facebook Timeline, and tens of thousands of images pinned to digital boards are flying past us faster than we can read them.

Faster than we can even scan them, depending on the time of day.

What does this mean for writers trying to cut through it all? At least two things that I can think of:

1. You’d better know how to write a compelling headline
2. You’d better know how to write bullet points that grab (and keep) your reader

We’re not telling you to keep your copy short. We’re telling you to keep your copy readable.

Why bullet points? Like it or not, they keep people reading your blog posts, pages, articles, and copy like nothing else…

But lame bullet points won’t take you where you want to go. So let’s take a quick look at how to get this done, and get it done well:

The basics of writing bullet points that work

The essence of a great bullet is brevity + promise.

Brevity has been a hallmark of good writing since writing began, but every one of us living in the Twitter Age possesses an acute awareness of just how important brevity is right now.

Long, complex bullet points would defeat the purpose of writing bullets at all — to keep your reader moving through your copy.

Promise is the element that hooks your reader like a fish. You’re making a plain and legitimate claim that your product/idea/service will give them what they’ve been looking for.

Goes without saying (but of course I’m going to say it anyway), you absolutely must deliver on the promise you make. There are probably faster ways of ruining your credibility and career, but not giving your reader what you promised is definitely in the top three.

Brian Clark wrote the definitive “Bullet Points 101″ post more than five years ago. Go ahead and read that through at your earliest convenience.

Seriously, here’s that link again — click it and read that post about 10 times.

And, since I’d rather straight up steal from Clark than try to outwrite him, here’s his summary of what an effective bullet point is and does:

1. A bullet expresses a clear benefit and promise to the reader. That’s right… they’re mini-headlines. Bullets encourage the scanning reader to go back into the real meat of your content, or go forward with your call to action.
2. Keep your bullet points symmetrical if possible; meaning, one line each, two lines each, etc. It’s easier on the eyes and therefore easier on the reader.
3. Avoid bullet clutter at all costs. Do not get into a detailed outline jumble of subtitles, bullets and sub-bullets. Bullets are designed for clarity, not confusion.
4. Practice parallelism. Keep your bullet groups thematically related, begin each bullet with the same part of speech, and maintain the same grammatical form.
5. Remember that bullets (like headlines) are not necessarily sentences. If you want to write complete sentences, stick with a paragraph or a numbered list.

Now that we’re standing on a firm foundation, let’s move into how to actually write these bullets …

8 ways to write bullet points that work

You might have seen bloggers complain about the proliferation of list posts and “27 Ways to …” articles.

The thing is, the elitists don’t know what they’re talking about. Again, in this fast, short, and constantly evolving digital world, she who makes sense first, wins.

And one of the best ways to make sense of an idea — especially online — is not to dumb it down, it’s to break it up into digestible chunks.

Bullet points can be a great way to do that — but don’t just rely on the stale, simplistic bullet point types you’re using now. Expand your range and add these fascinating bullet point types.

1. External Fascinations: These types of fascinating bullet points are usually found in sales copy. They create curiosity and work like headlines to prompt a purchase or other action.
2. Internal Fascinations: Internal fascinations are pretty much identical to external, except they’re designed to persuade people to continue reading the post they’re already reading.
3. Bullet Chunking: Extracting bullets out of compound sentences helps you drive home a point while also increasing the usability of your content.
4. Authority Bullets: Authority bullets are used to recite the data and proof that support your argument. As with all persuasive writing, turn dry factual information into interesting reading any time you can.
5. Cliffhanger Bullets: Cliffhanger bullets tease and foreshadow what’s coming up next or in the near future. You can also use cliffhanger bullets to lay the groundwork for an upcoming promotion, launch, or special content event.

If you want to know more specifics about how to write those (including examples), check out this classic Copyblogger post on useful bullet point types.

And — as a little bonus — our pal Ben Settle expanded on Brian’s post with a few more bullet types of his own.

Here’s a few of Ben’s favorite bullet point secrets:

6. Give-Away Bullets: These are sort of like the lady who hands out cheese cubes at the grocery store. She gives people a little “taste” of food that keeps them alert and shopping — and many times they end up with the thing they tasted in the shopping cart.
7. Expansion Bullets: These bullets break up the “sameness” of the page (when you have several pages of bullets), and they add more tease, demonstration and curiosity. Plus, they give a nice little “loop” effect to your ad that keeps sucking the reader back in.
8. “Can’t Be Done” Bullets: Basically, this is where you say something that is almost unbelievable. Something 100% true, but that is so wacky and “out there” it makes you say, “How in the heck can you do that?”

Congratulations, you now know more about bullet points than most working writers.

And here’s the simplest shortcut to jump start you in the art of the bullet …

A simple shortcut to writing bullet points that work

Craft each bullet as if it were to serve as your your headline.

The goal here is to achieve, uh, headlineability with each bullet.

You probably won’t quite achieve headline perfection with each and every bullet, but if you stick to this principle generally, writing bullets gets much easier.

And, more important, those beautiful little bulleted lines will keep your readers running down your page like water on a slide…

Want the whole enchilada?

These Quick Copy Tips are meant to get you started on (and thinking about) very specific copywriting principles and tactics.

If you want the entire picture of the “Copyblogger Philosophy” — including strategic teaching on content marketing, email marketing, social media, and more — go ahead and sign up for our free Internet Marketing for Smart People course.

Do you love bullet points or loathe them? What’s your favorite way to use them in your content? Let us know in the comments …

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s copywriter and resident recluse.

It’s a Twitterized world, we’re just living in it.

Blog posts, Tweets, quick videos, Google+, the Facebook Timeline, and tens of thousands of images pinned to digital boards are flying past us faster than we can read them.

Faster than we can even scan them, depending on the time of day.

What does this mean for writers trying to cut through it all? At least two things that I can think of:

1. You’d better know how to write a compelling headline
2. You’d better know how to write bullet points that grab (and keep) your reader

We’re not telling you to keep your copy short. We’re telling you to keep your copy readable.

Why bullet points? Like it or not, they keep people reading your blog posts, pages, articles, and copy like nothing else…

But lame bullet points won’t take you where you want to go. So let’s take a quick look at how to get this done, and get it done well:

The basics of writing bullet points that work

The essence of a great bullet is brevity + promise.

Brevity has been a hallmark of good writing since writing began, but every one of us living in the Twitter Age possesses an acute awareness of just how important brevity is right now.

Long, complex bullet points would defeat the purpose of writing bullets at all — to keep your reader moving through your copy.

Promise is the element that hooks your reader like a fish. You’re making a plain and legitimate claim that your product/idea/service will give them what they’ve been looking for.

Goes without saying (but of course I’m going to say it anyway), you absolutely must deliver on the promise you make. There are probably faster ways of ruining your credibility and career, but not giving your reader what you promised is definitely in the top three.

Brian Clark wrote the definitive “Bullet Points 101″ post more than five years ago. Go ahead and read that through at your earliest convenience.

Seriously, here’s that link again — click it and read that post about 10 times.

And, since I’d rather straight up steal from Clark than try to outwrite him, here’s his summary of what an effective bullet point is and does:

1. A bullet expresses a clear benefit and promise to the reader. That’s right… they’re mini-headlines. Bullets encourage the scanning reader to go back into the real meat of your content, or go forward with your call to action.
2. Keep your bullet points symmetrical if possible; meaning, one line each, two lines each, etc. It’s easier on the eyes and therefore easier on the reader.
3. Avoid bullet clutter at all costs. Do not get into a detailed outline jumble of subtitles, bullets and sub-bullets. Bullets are designed for clarity, not confusion.
4. Practice parallelism. Keep your bullet groups thematically related, begin each bullet with the same part of speech, and maintain the same grammatical form.
5. Remember that bullets (like headlines) are not necessarily sentences. If you want to write complete sentences, stick with a paragraph or a numbered list.

Now that we’re standing on a firm foundation, let’s move into how to actually write these bullets …

8 ways to write bullet points that work

You might have seen bloggers complain about the proliferation of list posts and “27 Ways to …” articles.

The thing is, the elitists don’t know what they’re talking about. Again, in this fast, short, and constantly evolving digital world, she who makes sense first, wins.

And one of the best ways to make sense of an idea — especially online — is not to dumb it down, it’s to break it up into digestible chunks.

Bullet points can be a great way to do that — but don’t just rely on the stale, simplistic bullet point types you’re using now. Expand your range and add these fascinating bullet point types.

1. External Fascinations: These types of fascinating bullet points are usually found in sales copy. They create curiosity and work like headlines to prompt a purchase or other action.
2. Internal Fascinations: Internal fascinations are pretty much identical to external, except they’re designed to persuade people to continue reading the post they’re already reading.
3. Bullet Chunking: Extracting bullets out of compound sentences helps you drive home a point while also increasing the usability of your content.
4. Authority Bullets: Authority bullets are used to recite the data and proof that support your argument. As with all persuasive writing, turn dry factual information into interesting reading any time you can.
5. Cliffhanger Bullets: Cliffhanger bullets tease and foreshadow what’s coming up next or in the near future. You can also use cliffhanger bullets to lay the groundwork for an upcoming promotion, launch, or special content event.

If you want to know more specifics about how to write those (including examples), check out this classic Copyblogger post on useful bullet point types.

And — as a little bonus — our pal Ben Settle expanded on Brian’s post with a few more bullet types of his own.

Here’s a few of Ben’s favorite bullet point secrets:

6. Give-Away Bullets: These are sort of like the lady who hands out cheese cubes at the grocery store. She gives people a little “taste” of food that keeps them alert and shopping — and many times they end up with the thing they tasted in the shopping cart.
7. Expansion Bullets: These bullets break up the “sameness” of the page (when you have several pages of bullets), and they add more tease, demonstration and curiosity. Plus, they give a nice little “loop” effect to your ad that keeps sucking the reader back in.
8. “Can’t Be Done” Bullets: Basically, this is where you say something that is almost unbelievable. Something 100% true, but that is so wacky and “out there” it makes you say, “How in the heck can you do that?”

Congratulations, you now know more about bullet points than most working writers.

And here’s the simplest shortcut to jump start you in the art of the bullet …

A simple shortcut to writing bullet points that work

Craft each bullet as if it were to serve as your your headline.

The goal here is to achieve, uh, headlineability with each bullet.

You probably won’t quite achieve headline perfection with each and every bullet, but if you stick to this principle generally, writing bullets gets much easier.

And, more important, those beautiful little bulleted lines will keep your readers running down your page like water on a slide…

Want the whole enchilada?

These Quick Copy Tips are meant to get you started on (and thinking about) very specific copywriting principles and tactics.

If you want the entire picture of the “Copyblogger Philosophy” — including strategic teaching on content marketing, email marketing, social media, and more — go ahead and sign up for our free Internet Marketing for Smart People course.

Do you love bullet points or loathe them? What’s your favorite way to use them in your content? Let us know in the comments …

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s copywriter and resident recluse.

But it is the new reality for just about every organization.

Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media. Your money, your plans, your control. It might not work, but generally the worst outcome is that you will be ignored and need to spend more money.

Horizonal marketing, on the other hand, means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person. It's out of your control, because all the interactions are by passionate outsiders, not paid agents.

Most marketers instinctively want control. We reach for the budget and the ad and the press release and most of all, the powerful media middleman. We buy SuperBowl ads or shmooze the reporter.

Horizontal marketing, though, requires giving up control. We spend all of our time and money on a great story and a great service and a remarkable offering. The rest is up to the market itself. You can't control this, and you can no longer ignore it either.

But it is the new reality for just about every organization.

Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media. Your money, your plans, your control. It might not work, but generally the worst outcome is that you will be ignored and need to spend more money.

Horizonal marketing, on the other hand, means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person. It's out of your control, because all the interactions are by passionate outsiders, not paid agents.

Most marketers instinctually want control. We reach for the budget and the ad and the press release and most of all, the powerful media middleman. We buy SuperBowl ads or shmooze the reporter.

Horizontal marketing, though, requires giving up control. We spend all of our time and money on a great story and a great service and a remarkable offering. The rest is up to the market itself. You can't control this, and you can no longer ignore it either.

We all know that guest posts grow blogs.

But not many people realize that tactical guest posting grows careers.

Most bloggers I see pump out these articles while reciting the mantra “quantity over quality”; there’s no real strategy and there are no real long-term benefits.

In this post I am going to show you the seven crucial tactics for writing a radically successful guest post.

Done right, these strategies will get you more email subscribers, coveted Google ranking positions, and a big head-start on your content marketing goals.

Who am I to teach you about guest blogging?

It seems like the decent thing would be to start this article by flashing my “guest blogging badge.”

At least that way you’ll understand why I’m wearing these high-glare aviators.

For me, the proof was in the pudding, and the pudding was the sale of an 8-month-old blog for almost $20,000 while I was still in University.

Actually, I sold the blog after a year had passed, but I had mostly stopped working on it at the eight-month mark.

That baby was built on tactical guest posts. So were the other blogs I’ve sold for similar price tags, and I’m doing the same with Blog Tyrant.

It’s now almost a decade later, and despite being a mediocre writer I still have success with these strategies.

Hopefully they’ll give you some extra juice for your next guest appearance. With that, I give you the 7 tactical elements of a radically successful guest post

1. A guest post should funnel people to an outcome, not a home page

Every time you do a guest post, you’re given a little space in the post for a biography, with a link (as well as a few in-post links) that can direct readers back to your blog.

The mistake that most newbies make is they don’t give any thought to where they are sending those new readers.

Click away and you’re likely to end up on a home page or some nicely done but relatively unrelated post (usually with a good amount of tweets or comments).

What you need to do is funnel people toward a specific outcome.

Let’s say your goal is to get as many email subscribers as possible. A successful funnel would entail:

• Creating a niche-specific free giveaway. You’d create an eBook that is centered around a very specific topic in your niche that will appeal to a well-defined group.
• Creating a landing page or ad for that eBook. The next step is to add that eBook to your blog and give it away as a free incentive for joining your list, using a service like Aweber. If you don’t know how to do this I made a video.
• Guest posting on closely related topics. Here’s the sexy part. You now go out and guest post on topics that are closely related to your free giveaway. Link back to your landing page/advert if you can, but even if you don’t you will be funneling and pre-selling people on the idea of your eBook.

Sending people back to random posts or a home page is just a waste of time.

Just like filling up your car with petrol, you need to put fuel in the gas tank, not pour it all over the engine. Use a content funnel to direct the flow of traffic toward your desired outcome or target.

It doesn’t matter what it is — a free eBook, product, etc. — as long as you are intentionally directing people there.

Don’t assume they’ll find it for themselves.

2. A guest post should mention big bloggers in your niche

Simply put, one of the fastest ways to grow a new blog is to mention other sites with big audiences in your guest post appearances.

This strategy, while obvious to some, has many benefits.

First, it associates you with those experts.

Second, if you drop a handy email or Tweet before the guest post goes live, you can harness the sheer awesomeness of their contact lists. Most of the time they will at least tweet out your guest post and thus associate themselves with your content. This is also a nice bit of promotion that your “host blog” will appreciate.

And third, it opens a door with those bloggers. When you send them a guest post, they’ll have an idea of who you are, and will be that much more open to taking a look at what you send them.

This type of professional networking is extremely helpful if you want to place guest posts on good blogs. I think of it as giving before receiving.

3. A guest post should be followed up by sister posts

One of the coolest things I ever learned about guest posting was that you can leverage the fame of your guest post to create buzz for your own blog.

I actually learned it in reverse, and a good example is when I did a post about the best About Us pages, and mentioned Copyblogger.

Brian Clark kindly Tweeted my post, which helped me land a big chunk of traffic and some super fast indexing at the top of Google for the key phrase “best About Us pages.”

Since that time Brian has been active on other posts I’ve done. For example, he stopped by here to leave a comment.

Not only does this make me feel all warm inside because Old Man Clark is one of my heroes and has a cool goatee, it also has some pretty obvious and ongoing benefits.

Mention big bloggers in your guest posts, then give them a reason to tweet or promote follow-up posts you do. Don’t just reach out once — create follow-up content that continues that relationship.

Think of it as the second date.

4. A guest post should be aimed at 10 years of results, not 10 hours

Sonia Simone once said that,

The rewards of guest posting are cumulative…. you build more momentum the more you post.

I used to write a guest post and eagerly await the flow of traffic and increase in subscribers that occurs after being published.

I’d to spend the whole day looking at stats and monitoring the progress of the article on all the social networking sites.

But I soon realized the error of my ways. A guest post needs to be a 10-year strategy.

While still important, I now place a lot less importance on the initial flow of traffic and tweets.

Why?

For starters, I am more interested in how the guest post matures. So now I ask myself these questions in order to judge the success of a guest post:

• Does it rank well on Google< for a keyword phrase that is going to continually benefit my own site and goals?
• Does it boost my reputation and credibility in the niche?
• Did it make me any new contacts in the industry?
• Did it create a discussion on the post or somewhere else?

If you want to write guest posts that produce results for years to come, you need to do some solid keyword research as well as creating an exhaustive post that covers issues — to the point of becoming a timeless resource.

Jonathan Morrow does this extremely well here on Copyblogger. He writes resource-rich, original content that will rank well and get people interested in his upcoming releases.

5. Each guest post should be part of an anchor text strategy

Anchor text is the text you use when you link to a post.

Just above you’ll see that “Jonathan Morrow” is the anchor text for that link to his articles here on Copyblogger.

Your choice of anchor text is hugely important for search engine rankings.

We all know that relevant backlinks help us to rank better on Google, but the anchor text of those backlinks also plays a big role in what exact keywords we rank for.

When you do a guest post, you should have already done keyword research and know specifically what phrases you want to rank for, based on how much traffic they bring and how competitive they are. Remember, you want your guest post to be bringing you love from Google for the next ten years.

Once that post is live, you can then link back to it in the future using the desired anchor text. This will help you elevate your own post on someone else’s website so that it matures well.

Just remember that SEO copywriting has to work for humans first, search engine robots second. Mix it up sometimes, and only link to your article if it is relevant and useful for real-life human beings.

6. Each comment should be answered or used as material

One of the really important things to do when you guest post is stick around and answer every single question that you get in the comments.

It’s in the comments section that long term relationships are built with the readers that you are reaching on the new blog.

It’s in the comments section that you enhance your branding as an expert or fellow traveler or mentor.

I have never tested it, but I would guess that at least half of the loyal readers I get from guest posts left comments that I answered on the day of publication.

If a comment or question is really good, you can take the idea and use it as the germ of a post on your own blog. Announce it in the comments section and see how many people drop on over to see what you’ve done with it.

7. Guest posts should be aimed mostly at beginners

It might seem a little counter-intuitive, but most of the readers who interact with content, subscribe to your list, and eventually buy your products, are newbies.

Think about the entrance paths for finding posts. Most of the time people either Google a question because they don’t know the answer, or click a referral link on Facebook/Twitter/Blog because it’s something they are unfamiliar with.

A lot of any blog’s readers are new to that blog’s topic. And that tends to be where new readers come from — newbies looking for a grounding in the topic.

After a while, the intermediate group often trails off and focuses on their own projects, as opposed to sticking around to learn more skills.

The more successful guest posts are the ones that focus on topics that are well digested by beginners, especially if you are aiming at getting that post indexed well on Google.

Try to write list posts and articles with an instructional tone, full of resources and links.

What guest posting strategies work for you?

I’d really like to hear about what guest posting strategies have worked or not worked for you.

Have you tried anything above with great success?

Please leave a comment and let me know. All ideas are welcome — especially the half-baked ones …

About the Author: The Blog Tyrant is a 25-year-old guy from Australia who has sold several websites for large sums of money and now shares his methods for dominating your blog and your niche. He also answers every comment on his blog. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook or sign up for his emails.

We all know that guest posts grow blogs.

But not many people realize that tactical guest posting grows careers.

Most bloggers I see pump out these articles while reciting the mantra “quantity over quality”; there’s no real strategy and there are no real long-term benefits.

In this post I am going to show you the seven crucial tactics for writing a radically successful guest post.

Done right, these strategies will get you more email subscribers, coveted Google ranking positions, and a big head-start on your content marketing goals.

Who am I to teach you about guest blogging?

It seems like the decent thing would be to start this article by flashing my “guest blogging badge.”

At least that way you’ll understand why I’m wearing these high-glare aviators.

For me, the proof was in the pudding, and the pudding was the sale of an 8-month-old blog for almost $20,000 while I was still in University.

Actually, I sold the blog after a year had passed, but I had mostly stopped working on it at the eight-month mark.

That baby was built on tactical guest posts. So were the other blogs I’ve sold for similar price tags, and I’m doing the same with Blog Tyrant.

It’s now almost a decade later, and despite being a mediocre writer I still have success with these strategies.

Hopefully they’ll give you some extra juice for your next guest appearance. With that, I give you the 7 tactical elements of a radically successful guest post

1. A guest post should funnel people to an outcome, not a home page

Every time you do a guest post, you’re given a little space in the post for a biography, with a link (as well as a few in-post links) that can direct readers back to your blog.

The mistake that most newbies make is they don’t give any thought to where they are sending those new readers.

Click away and you’re likely to end up on a home page or some nicely done but relatively unrelated post (usually with a good amount of tweets or comments).

What you need to do is funnel people toward a specific outcome.

Let’s say your goal is to get as many email subscribers as possible. A successful funnel would entail:

• Creating a niche-specific free giveaway. You’d create an eBook that is centered around a very specific topic in your niche that will appeal to a well-defined group.
• Creating a landing page or ad for that eBook. The next step is to add that eBook to your blog and give it away as a free incentive for joining your list, using a service like Aweber. If you don’t know how to do this I made a video.
• Guest posting on closely related topics. Here’s the sexy part. You now go out and guest post on topics that are closely related to your free giveaway. Link back to your landing page/advert if you can, but even if you don’t you will be funneling and pre-selling people on the idea of your eBook.

Sending people back to random posts or a home page is just a waste of time.

Just like filling up your car with petrol, you need to put fuel in the gas tank, not pour it all over the engine. Use a content funnel to direct the flow of traffic toward your desired outcome or target.

It doesn’t matter what it is — a free eBook, product, etc. — as long as you are intentionally directing people there.

Don’t assume they’ll find it for themselves.

2. A guest post should mention big bloggers in your niche

Simply put, one of the fastest ways to grow a new blog is to mention other sites with big audiences in your guest post appearances.

This strategy, while obvious to some, has many benefits.

First, it associates you with those experts.

Second, if you drop a handy email or Tweet before the guest post goes live, you can harness the sheer awesomeness of their contact lists. Most of the time they will at least tweet out your guest post and thus associate themselves with your content. This is also a nice bit of promotion that your “host blog” will appreciate.

And third, it opens a door with those bloggers. When you send them a guest post, they’ll have an idea of who you are, and will be that much more open to taking a look at what you send them.

This type of professional networking is extremely helpful if you want to place guest posts on good blogs. I think of it as giving before receiving.

3. A guest post should be followed up by sister posts

One of the coolest things I ever learned about guest posting was that you can leverage the fame of your guest post to create buzz for your own blog.

I actually learned it in reverse, and a good example is when I did a post about the best About Us pages, and mentioned Copyblogger.

Brian Clark kindly Tweeted my post, which helped me land a big chunk of traffic and some super fast indexing at the top of Google for the key phrase “best About Us pages.”

Since that time Brian has been active on other posts I’ve done. For example, he stopped by here to leave a comment.

Not only does this make me feel all warm inside because Old Man Clark is one of my heroes and has a cool goatee, it also has some pretty obvious and ongoing benefits.

Mention big bloggers in your guest posts, then give them a reason to tweet or promote follow-up posts you do. Don’t just reach out once — create follow-up content that continues that relationship.

Think of it as the second date.

4. A guest post should be aimed at 10 years of results, not 10 hours

Sonia Simone once said that,

The rewards of guest posting are cumulative…. you build more momentum the more you post.

I used to write a guest post and eagerly await the flow of traffic and increase in subscribers that occurs after being published.

I’d to spend the whole day looking at stats and monitoring the progress of the article on all the social networking sites.

But I soon realized the error of my ways. A guest post needs to be a 10-year strategy.

While still important, I now place a lot less importance on the initial flow of traffic and tweets.

Why?

For starters, I am more interested in how the guest post matures. So now I ask myself these questions in order to judge the success of a guest post:

• Does it rank well on Google< for a keyword phrase that is going to continually benefit my own site and goals?
• Does it boost my reputation and credibility in the niche?
• Did it make me any new contacts in the industry?
• Did it create a discussion on the post or somewhere else?

If you want to write guest posts that produce results for years to come, you need to do some solid keyword research as well as creating an exhaustive post that covers issues — to the point of becoming a timeless resource.

Jonathan Morrow does this extremely well here on Copyblogger. He writes resource-rich, original content that will rank well and get people interested in his upcoming releases.

5. Each guest post should be part of an anchor text strategy

Anchor text is the text you use when you link to a post.

Just above you’ll see that “Jonathan Morrow” is the anchor text for that link to his articles here on Copyblogger.

Your choice of anchor text is hugely important for search engine rankings.

We all know that relevant backlinks help us to rank better on Google, but the anchor text of those backlinks also plays a big role in what exact keywords we rank for.

When you do a guest post, you should have already done keyword research and know specifically what phrases you want to rank for, based on how much traffic they bring and how competitive they are. Remember, you want your guest post to be bringing you love from Google for the next ten years.

Once that post is live, you can then link back to it in the future using the desired anchor text. This will help you elevate your own post on someone else’s website so that it matures well.

Just remember that SEO copywriting has to work for humans first, search engine robots second. Mix it up sometimes, and only link to your article if it is relevant and useful for real-life human beings.

6. Each comment should be answered or used as material

One of the really important things to do when you guest post is stick around and answer every single question that you get in the comments.

It’s in the comments section that long term relationships are built with the readers that you are reaching on the new blog.

It’s in the comments section that you enhance your branding as an expert or fellow traveler or mentor.

I have never tested it, but I would guess that at least half of the loyal readers I get from guest posts left comments that I answered on the day of publication.

If a comment or question is really good, you can take the idea and use it as the germ of a post on your own blog. Announce it in the comments section and see how many people drop on over to see what you’ve done with it.

7. Guest posts should be aimed mostly at beginners

It might seem a little counter-intuitive, but most of the readers who interact with content, subscribe to your list, and eventually buy your products, are newbies.

Think about the entrance paths for finding posts. Most of the time people either Google a question because they don’t know the answer, or click a referral link on Facebook/Twitter/Blog because it’s something they are unfamiliar with.

A lot of any blog’s readers are new to that blog’s topic. And that tends to be where new readers come from — newbies looking for a grounding in the topic.

After a while, the intermediate group often trails off and focuses on their own projects, as opposed to sticking around to learn more skills.

The more successful guest posts are the ones that focus on topics that are well digested by beginners, especially if you are aiming at getting that post indexed well on Google.

Try to write list posts and articles with an instructional tone, full of resources and links.

What guest posting strategies work for you?

I’d really like to hear about what guest posting strategies have worked or not worked for you.

Have you tried anything above with great success?

Please leave a comment and let me know. All ideas are welcome — especially the half-baked ones …

About the Author: The Blog Tyrant is a 25-year-old guy from Australia who has sold several websites for large sums of money and now shares his methods for dominating your blog and your niche. He also answers every comment on his blog. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook or sign up for his emails.