One of the most effective ways to get traffic to a blog or website is to guest blog. Guest blogging allows you to bring someone else’s existing audience to your website. You make use of all the months and years of effort they’ve put into building their audience. In fact, if you could just do one guest blog post a week, you’ll very quickly find your site’s popularity going higher and higher.

How do you land guest blog gigs? How do you make sure your blog posts bring people to your site?

1. Approaching Other Bloggers

The most important thing to remember when you’re approaching other bloggers is to realize that you’re asking them for an equal value deal. People who approach blog owners as if they’re asking them for a favor stack the deck against themselves before they’ve even put a proposal on the table.

So how do you ask for the deal?

First, outline exactly how it’ll work. Tell them what you’d like to write about. Give them a few potential topics. Tell them all they need to do is copy and paste it onto their websites.

Outline what the benefits are for them and why you’d want to give them free content. Emphasize that it’ll be a win/win for everyone. Make it seem as risk-free as possible.

Then ask for the “order.” Give them a link to your site so they can gauge the quality of your content and make sure that you share similar values. Assuming they like your site and like who you are, they’ll probably respond.

You won’t get every site you ask to write for. If you approach many sites, you’ll get many “no’s” and no-responses. But you’ll also get a lot of people who say “yes.” And that’s what matters.

2. How to Write a Great Guest Post

First of all, get to know their audience. Each site has a slightly different vibe, with an audience that cares about slightly different things. Get to know the specific vibe of each audience before you start writing.

Connect with your readers first before you write your post. People want to know who you are and why you’re qualified to teach before they’ll open their hearts and minds to listening to what you have to say.

Finally, once you get into the heart of the content, give it your 100%. Give them the best quality content you can and don’t worry about selling. The goal of the article shouldn’t be to sell to someone on a click-through, but to write an article that’s so good that they’ll seek out the link in your bio box.

Make people want to know more by giving them a taste of what you have to offer.

That’s how to approach blog and site owners and offer to do a guest blog post. It’s not difficult. All it takes is commitment and persistence.