Guest Posting Handbook from Chris Garrett

I’ve just come back from a long vacation during which I paid absolutely no attention to my online presence.  Therefore traffic at my labor-of-love site, the German History Blog (GHB), is way, way down.  I indicated in my last post about GHB’s November traffic that guest posting played a big role in improving traffic during that month, so one of my strategies for getting back on track for the rest of December is to again do some guest posts.

Great timing, because Chris Garrett of Authority Blogger fame is just now in the process of releasing his new e-book titled “Guest Posting for Quality Links and Targeted Traffic“.  I picked it up and devoured it in one sitting, taking some brief notes along the way.  Now I’m totally keyed up to getting back on the guest posting bandwagon ASAP.

Weighing in at 20 pages, I found Chris’s e-book to be of appropriate length for the topic.  Chris is a very succinct presenter; you never feel as though he is trying to fill up space so as to make the document heftier and therefore appear more authoritative.  At the same time, I never felt that a topic was being skipped or purposely shortened in order to maintain brevity.  Considering the length and quality of the content, I found the price point — $7 (US) at the time of this writing — to be very appropriate for this product.

Chris touches on every phase of the guest posting process:

• First, he defines the topic of guest posting for those bloggers who may not have heard of it or who have yet to consider using it as a means to generate traffic and backlinks.
• He then explains many of the benefits that can be derived from guest posting.  Though you may go into the guest posting exercise thinking only of generating traffic and backlinks, Chris points out a few more benefits you can enjoy as well.
• Next comes the meat-and-potatoes of the e-book: a look at the entire process of guest posting, from announcing your availability as a guest poster (including finding appropriate blogs to post at), through writing and submitting the article, and then staying tuned in to the post at the host blog so you can answer readers’ comments and thereby increase your trustworthiness and exposure.
• Chris also devotes an entire section on something equally important: what not to do when you are going through the guest posting process.  You’d be well advised to avoid some of the pitfalls Chris describes in this section.
• A useful section on generating topic ideas contains some interesting tips, one of which I found very intriguing: using the Google keyword tool to help you learn more about the host blog’s content and which keywords (and therefore topics) would be interesting to its readers.  Chris gives a nice example of using the keyword tool for this purpose.
• Finally, Chris ends the document with calls to action in a section titled “Next Steps”.  It’s my opinion that every “how-to” style of e-book should end with such a section, and Chris does not disappoint.  This is the section I’ll jump to soon to get me going on getting some more guest posts done for German History Blog ASAP.

If I had any criticism (or, rather, a suggestion) it would be that Chris should include — with each step of the guest posting process that he describes — an example of how he fulfilled that step with one of his own guest blog posts that he had done in the past.  I think deconstructing a guest post that proved particularly successful for him would have been a nice addition to an already fine e-book on this topic.

If you knew about guest posting but weren’t sure how to get started, or if you’re completely new to the topic and now convinced that guest posting is right for you and your blog, pickup a copy of “Guest Posting for Quality Links and Targeted Traffic” now and start putting its ideas to work for you.

See you soon with more ideas!

Bill Dawson

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