Dan Harrison of PowerDosh.com, who also runs two eco friendly blogs EnviroGadget and Daily Eco Tips, has written this article on guest blogging in the eco niche.

In this article, I’ll explain my motivations for guest blogging, how I’ve approached it, and what benefits I’ve seen from being involved with guest blogging.

The motivation

Five months ago I started EnviroGadget.com, and 3 months ago I started Daily Eco Tips. In the past, I had promoted websites by basically purchasing blog posts and links from other websites. There were 2 significant problems with this approach of link building.

• It became expensive to promote an individual website. Since it would take a while for these sites to earn any money, paying for links is not cost-effective in the short term for a new website
• The quality of sites that were offering to sell links was usually very low, and clearly making an income from selling links and being poorly designed sites. Therefore the quality of links I got was very poor..

With these two new sites, I wanted to keep my costs as low as possible, just in case the sites did not make any money at all. Therefore I was looking at ways I could do my link building on the cheap.

Whist being a webmaster, I had read a number of blogs, but somewhere I had stumbled on to the idea of guest blogging. I understood the concept, and put it at the back of my mind. Then I stumbled on Piggy Bank Pie (I forget how I did, I just did!), and it was refreshing to see a detailed explanation of the benefits of guest blogging. Eventually I joined the dots and realised that guest blogging might be a way I could get backlinks to my sites, so then I hatched my plan.

The approach

• If I was going to get a blogger to give me a backlink, I needed to offer him or her something in return.
• In addition to getting something in return, I needed to make sure it was as easy as possible for that blogger to help me.
• So that the blogger knew why I was asking for a post on their site, I wanted to make it clear what I wanted from giving them a free article.
• And finally, I wanted to offer them the opportunity to blog on my site if they wanted to. Essentially a bonus benefit for them if they wanted to make the effort.

Now that I had my plan, this was the format of my email that I used to contact these bloggers. I was contacting bloggers using contact forms on their blogs, or via email addresses they had on their about pages. A surprisingly high number of blogs do not have a contact form!!

Hi,

I found your site [blog url] via [place I found the blog]. I have a couple of eco blogs that I’m starting to get off the ground, namely http://www.envirogadget.com and http://www.dailyecotips.com

I wondered if you would be interested in me writing a guest post for your blog? A guest post is an article that I write for you for free that matches the topic of your site, but relates to my sites in some way. The guest post contains a link to two to my green sites in return. You don’t have to do anything other than post the article on your site.

Would this be something that you’re interested in? If so, please do get in touch. You might also be interested in writing an eco tip for DailyEcoTips.com. In return, you’ll get a link back to your site.

Kind Regards,
Dan

You’ll notice that I explain what guest blogging is, as I don’t assume that the blogger does know what guest blogging is. I also say that I’ll match my content to the style of their blog, which should put their mind at rest that it wouldn’t be simply an advert for my site. I also keep the tone of the email as friendly and open as possible, so that the blogger does not feel any kind of pressure.

Finding green blogs

I made the assumption that more established and well known blogs were more likely to turn me down, as they probably get considerably more requests for link exchanges, etc compared to new blogs. Therefore I decided to approach the new blogs on the block, and found that the RSS feed at Best Green Blogs and the RSS feed at BlogCatalog’s Eco Friendly, Environment & Green Blogs channel were the best places to start.

I don’t contact every new blog I find, as I was looking for sites that were fairly similar to mine. So out of about 200 blogs so far, I’ve chosen to contact 44. Out of those 44 I contacted, 10 bloggers replied and were happy to exchange blog posts (around 23%). That’s a pretty good hit rate I think.

I’m contacting new green bloggers on virtually a daily basis, but I only get replies from about 20% as indicated above. However, of those reply, I’ve managed to exchange links with all of them.

The most interesting thing that I’ve noticed about guest blogging is how grateful these bloggers are that I contacted them. The feeling I get is that the reaching out to others with a similar interest is really appreciated.

I’ve compiled a list of the green blogs I’ve worked with who are willing to accept guest posts from others. The list is available on Daily Eco Tips in my Green Guest Blogger List

Benefits to link builders

I’ve seen a definite increase in traffic and regular RSS readers as a result of the guest blogging, so I thoroughly recommend it. However, I thought I’d finish this article off with a summary of the benefits of guest blogging from a link builder’s perspective.

• The links are free - if you have a tight budget, guest blogging gives you free links for your site.
• Your links come from related niches - which, from the search engines’ perspective, weights your links slightly higher than links from any old site.
• The links are in related content - it’s widely becoming accepted that links from within context-related content is more valuable than footer or blogroll links.
• You get to choose the links - you can choose where the links point to, as well as the anchor text (as long as the host blogger agrees).

Related Posts:

8 Reasons to Start Guest Blogging
Blog Post Blockbusters: Three of the Best
Obscure Voting Clubs: The Dark Side of the Force
Guest Blogging - The Instant Visibility
Making Your Content Work Harder: Eco-Friendly Blog Promotion