How to Capitalize on Guest Post Traffic

If you’re going to put in the effort to guest post on other blogs, you’d better be ready to capitalize on the guest post traffic you receive.

What’s special about guest post traffic?

One of the reasons you might want to write a guest post is to gain some exposure to someone else’s audience. And hopefully, that exposure will turn into some website traffic for you. More traffic equals more opportunity for whatever you’re hoping to achieve – sales, followers, readers, whatever.

If you need more guest blogging basics, go read A Business-Owning Mom’s Guide to Guest Blogging.

When a portion of that new audience wants to check you out, they’ll follow the link you add to your bio section. You are linking to yourself in your bio, right?

But unless you have a plan for that traffic, you’re wasting your time. These are brand new visitors who are interested enough after one article to check you out. If your inclination is to send them to your home page and hope for the best, it’s like you’re saying to them, “You’re not so special, I’ll treat you just like I treat anyone who stumbles in off the street(web?)”

How could guest post traffic benefit you?

Before a guest post is published, you need to think about what you want these new visitors to do, so you can make the most of the traffic you might get. Remember, they’re probably new to you and your information, but are actively seeking you out to learn more.

Here are some ideas for making use of guest post traffic.

Simply build awareness of your business and brand

Here, you could create a logical path or list of content for these visitors to consume, based on the topic of the guest post that tempted them.

Get them on your mailing list

Offer them a free, valuable piece of content that relates to the guest post topic in exchange for their email address. If you sell products, try to give free content that has a paid product as the next logical step. If you sell services, “free” consulting calls or coupon codes for future services can be compelling.

Sell to them

Offer a just-for-them product or bundle of products based on their interest in the guest post.

Get them in the habit of visiting

Encourage regular site visits by setting expectations of how you do things. For example, if you offer daily tutorials or monthly workshops, highlight those.

Boost your traffic numbers so you can qualify for ad networks

If you just need numbers so you can join an ad network, then put more focus on getting that initial click. Give them a no-opt-in video or masterclass.

Have them join your FB group

You don’t have to link to your website at all. If you’re currently working on boosting your social media numbers, you can link directly to FB. Or even better, to a sales page promoting your free FB Group.

This is just a small number of things that you can do with your guest post traffic. Since you have some indicators of what these visitors are interested in, you have a better idea of what would appeal to them than you would for general traffic.

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Make guest post visitors feel welcome

If you’ve decided that you’re sending your guest post traffic to your own website, don’t just send them to your home page and hope they find things that interest them. 

Create a specific landing page for this traffic. You could have a topic-specific, article-specific, or guest-host specific landing page (or even a combo, which is good if you do a lot of guest posting on one particular blog).

This is where you implement the strategies you thought about above. You can create your offers, education, content-maps, etc. based on the bits of information you know about this audience: at least one topic they’re interested in, who they follow, possibly some demographics.

Think of this landing page as a stepping stone between the guest blog host page and your website, and make that transition as welcoming as possible. A great way to do this is to mention the article they just read. Thank them for checking out your site. Or, invite them to learn more about the subject they just read about.

Another reason to have a separate landing page for your guest post traffic is that it makes it pretty easy to ask them to sign up for your email list and segment those subscribers into a sub-group. Once you do that, you can send targeted emails to that sub-group within your larger email list.

Encourage guest post visitors to act

No matter how you “greet” your new traffic, give them very specific calls to action. Don’t flood them with 10,000 options. If you’re going to do that, you might as well just send them to your home page.

Keep the call to action that you show them very specific. If you’ve decided that you want your new visitors to read more you’ve written, list out relevant articles. But then take the next step and have a large “Start Here” or “Read This” button highlighting the first article to read.

Clear and specific calls to action make navigating a new page easier on visitors. No one wants to think too hard to get through something new. 

Make this traffic planning part of your guest blogging process so that you don’t miss out on the benefits this traffic can bring you.