If you operate a single website or more than one, you already know that a big challenge is adding fresh, relevant content to your site. You don’t necessarily need to add articles and information to your site every day, but you do need to add new content fairly often.
I want to share a strategy I use to get content on some of my websites. I like to reach out to my advertisers and ask them to send me a guest post on a topic of their choice related to their business. I emphasize that it will receive good placement on the website, and it will also link to their own website. They can send unique articles as often as they’d like, and I will post them as often as they send the articles.
What has happened is that I’ve received some great articles written by experts that are happy to share knowledge and advice. In return, these experts get exposure on a high trafficked website, and they also receive a back link from my website in return. I believe it’s a win/win for both parties, and it’s something you can and should do on your own websites.
I want to share an example of this with you. One advertiser on DogWalker.com owns a pet care company in San Diego. Just about every month, she emails me an article for DogWalker.com, and I post it ASAP. This morning, I was sent an article about traveling with dogs, and I posted it on the site right away. I also used Facebook and Twitter to share the article with others.
This may not bring a lot of traffic, but it’s a topic that is of interest to vacation travelers right now, and perhaps they will learn about the site when they find the article while searching Google. Perhaps they will even need a dog walker while on vacation and use the services of one of the advertisers on my site. However it’s used, it’s something that will attract visitors to the site, and it didn’t cost me anything to create.
If you’re not doing this yet, I really think you should.
I have even seen this method on smaller sites where people will ask to write an article in exchange for one link back to their site which I always do for the free page of content.
From the flip end it is also a great way to build links to sites in exchange for articles.
Brian
Elliot, When you decide to build out a domain name, how many pages of original content does it take?
@ Andre
It all depends on the scope of a project. I really don’t think there’s a set amount.
have you done the opposite in an attempt to get some traffic or a backlink?
i mean doing a guest post on someones sites.
maybe that also could be a way for you to get more advertisers.
@ Svein
Good suggestion, and I have for a couple of my other sites.
Elliot,
I just wanted to thank you publicly for this article. I read this as soon as you posted it and immediately got to work on this and scored a huge article deal this morning for one of my websites.
You get criticized so often on the comments for writing tips that may be obvious or old news. Even though in some cases it may be true sometimes a simple reminder can get you going in the right direction and that’s what happened here. Same with your Craigslist post.
@ Shai
People can say what they want about the tips… 1) They’re helpful and useful even if they’re old and 2) they deliver traffic to my blog from search engines, which keeps advertisers happy.
🙂
@ Elliot
I’m with you 100%. Let the haters keep hating and let the rest of us keep benefiting from it.
Keep them coming!