Guest blogging the right way is important, because getting it wrong can cost you dearly. It can cost you viewers, respect, and the love of Google. The wrong way is to publish a generic post, with generic links, on generic blogs without thinking about your goals or audience.

The correct way to guest post is to do all of the following.

Know your goal in advance

Your content should take them to a specific page, not your home page. Have a plan to capitalize on the blog post by sending blog viewers to a very special and targeted page.

Provide a special gift

Don’t just contribute a blog post, contribute a special giveaway that is targeted to the specific blog audience you’re writing the guest blog post for. This will not only attract the audience of the blog, but also the owner of the blog, because they will like to be able to give away something special.

Create follow-up content

Once you write and publish a guest post, you want to write follow-up posts on similar content on your own blog. It will also help relate the new content to the guest post.

Treat guest posting as a long-term strategy

Don’t work for the immediate results but for the long-term results that guest blogging can provide today and tomorrow. A guest post done right can pay off years down the road if you play your cards right.

Make sure a guest post increases your credibility

When writing a guest post, you want to make sure it looks good and the blogger you’re posting for looks good. The goal of a blog post is to give you the appearance of authority, knowledge, and someone who knows.

Link to your guest blog posts

Within other content you write on your own website and blog, be sure to link to that blog post from time to time. It will make the blog owner happy and it will also make the search engines happy.

Answer Comments

For at least the first few months (if not forever), respond to comments that appear on the blog post. You can also use these questions as fodder for new blog posts, in which case you can reply to the blog post with a link to your new blog that answers your question.

If you do these things, you will not only make each guest post worthwhile for yourself, but also for the bloggers you guest post for. You will soon be sought after as an expert in your niche and maybe even pay for guest posts because your posts do so well in terms of numbers and ROI.