There are many benefits to allowing guest bloggers on your WordPress powered website. Guest authors sometimes bring their own audience. Your website can give a new perspective to topics you cover. The audience of your website might like the change. You also gain a new post. This is content you didn’t have to spend any time writing. That time recovered could be used to do something else.
So how should you get started? Here are our general guidelines for how to get guest bloggers for your WordPress website.
Create a Guest Blogging Guidelines Page
You should have a page dedicated to all the information about your guest blogging program. This will not only be a resource for information but will also serve as a landing page to attract people who want to write for you. In WordPress, it is very easy to create a new page. From the WordPress dashboard, go to Pages and then “Add New”.
Here are some of the basic details you should include:
- E-mail Address (or Contact Form) – You want to give them a way to contact you, of course. You can do this by providing an email address or by inputting a contact form on the page in question.
- Your Basic Guidelines for a Post – Let them know the type of posts you expect to see from them. Give them an estimate on length of posts too.
- Details on What They Get for Guest Blogging – Offer your guest bloggers some perks. Some people share ad revenue while others will simply provide an author’s bio and a link back to your website.
Link the page on your website once you have created it. You need to make sure it is prominent and easy to see. Some websites out there will include a link at the top of the website while others will include it somewhere around the bottom of a post.
Start Guest Blogging on Related Websites
Now that you have your own landing page created for guest bloggers – what do you do now? The best thing you can do is network. Find websites that share the same types of posts and ask them about you guest blogging for them. Often, websites will exchange guest blog posts. This gives both websites a boost in unique content and also promotes both websites to new visitors.
Make sure when you are negotiating such deals, you request a high quality backlink. At a minimum, you should get something to the effect of, “This post was written by (Your Name). You can find out more about them at (Your Website)”.
Find Guest Bloggers for Your Niche
Your website visitors are going to be a great place to start looking for guest bloggers. Hopefully, they will now see your new landing page about guest blogging and give it a shot. You have to think of every website as its own community.
However, if you are having trouble attracting bloggers – try Twitter. You can search Twitter for your niche plus the phrase “guest blogger” and find tons of people willing to write. Figure out a way to contact them that does not sound too spammy. Here is a good example:
“Hello, I noticed we both run blogs about farming. I was curious if you or any of your bloggers might be interested in guest blogging on my website?”
It is polite and to the point. You may even find that they have their own “How to Contribute” page on their WordPress powered blog too.
The last thing you should take into consideration is to never give anyone administrator access to your WordPress powered website. I would suggest posting for the people who guest blog for your website. However, you can also create limited guest user accounts for your blog. Make sure you keep your own website security in mind.
After following this guide, you will be on your way to getting some great guest blog content for your WordPress website.