If you run a website or blog, then it is likely you are trying to get as much relevant traffic to your site as possible. If this is the case, then there is a strategy you can use, that will surely help increase traffic to your website in more than one way. One of the main marketing techniques we use on our websites, is guest blog post writing.

What is a Guest Blog Post?

A guest blog post is fairly straight forward. An example would be if you wanted to write a blog post on another persons blog or website. You would write an article that is relevant to your website (and the other webmasters site as well of course). You would need to provide the blog with a high quality, unique blog post. There needs to be value for the readers, and the webmaster that you are trying to venture with. In exchange for your original article, you will be able to keep a link back to your website within the guest blog post that you wrote.

Why Write Guest Blog Posts?

The answer is simple. There are high traffic websites all over the Internet, that are relevant to your website. Many of the people that run these websites will be happy to allow you to write a guest post. In exchange for your guest post, you get links. That means you will get traffic from those links (the people that read that article), and you will boost your search engine rankings. Not only that, but you will be able to become known in the blogging world, and start to network with other readers. Hopefully those same readers will become your readers on your website.

How to Go About Writing

The important part is that you are providing value. You should keep the blog post short and to the point, however it still needs to be long enough to provide that value we are talking about. You will likely target blogs that are related to your topic, however not the same. It is not likely that your competition will want to help you. That is why you should go after those who are not directly competing with you.

We wrote a guest blog post for our friends over at seorabbit.com. They run an SEO site, that specializes in providing information on Search Engine Optimization. They also do a lot of SEO consulting as well.

This was a perfect site for us to write a guest blog post. They are running a site that is very relevant to our website, contentcustoms.com. they provide SEO services, while we do not. However, our content writing services for the web, go hand in hand with the service that seorabbit.com provides.

There are a great deal of web site owners that have experience in writing and are comfortable writing their own content. Yet, when it comes time, many of these business people still trust article writing services to handle their content. Why is this so? It is fairly obvious how important it would be for poor article writers to utilize the many benefits of an article writing service. However, good writers still have almost as many advantages for using such a service.

Article Writing Services and Time Constraints

One of the primary advantages of using an article writing service is to save time. Web site owners have a great deal of tasks and responsibilities that they have to manage on a daily basis. Considering that it takes the average good article writer about an hour to research, draft and edit 1,000 words, building a web site that requires 50,000 words can be a significant draw on time. Remember, one hour is the usual speed of a professional writer, not any writer.

It may be tempting to think that writing your own content is free. This is far from the truth. Consider the specifics of such a task:

• Add 10 hours to the 50 hour total for non-professional writing.
• For most web site developers, this totals about two weeks of work.
• Estimate how much an hour of your time is worth: For example $40.00.
• Add in time lost in content preparation vs. profitable gain: For example $4.00 per 1,000 words
• The total amount of money that you lose by writing your own content is: $2,200
• Remember that, after the content is prepared, you must also publish it and possibly hire an editor. This could quickly add up to another $1,000 in time lost and fees.
• The average writing service can prepare and publish the same content in about 3 days for about the same price.

Article Writing Service and Professional Writing

When you choose to hire a professional article writing service to handle your content, you can be sure that your content will be well written and focused every time. The content will be released to you as if you wrote it (hence, ghost writing) and you do not have to worry about mistakes such a grammatical or spelling errors that can plague Internet writing. You also gain a fresh perspective into the content to bring some new ideas to the table.

Well written content is much more likely to work when you are not. In can attract links from other web sites or blogs, ensure good traffic from search engines and impress visitors into trusting their money with you by ordering your products or services. Finally, you can focus your efforts on building your web site and refining your business while an outside company handles your expansion.

I’ve gotten a few requests to write this post and, to be honest, it’s probably about time. Creating a valuable and well written web site is a service that some people offer for free. However, do a simple Google search and try to find a web site in the top 10 that doesn’t have some sort of advertisement, store or banner. I’m willing to bet that, with most broad topics, you will be unable to find one within the first 30 results. The simple fact is that web sites are expensive to build and take a lot of time to develop. Why not be rewarded for your efforts?

Creating a Good Product

Creating a poor and rushed web site simply to make a quick buck is almost like inventing a product that serves little to no purpose. Sure, you could glue a toothpick to a bottle cap and call it an “automatic paper hole punching device,” but who would buy it? Treat your web site’s content as your advertising space. If you were to set out to buy a product, you would likely want to know as much about the product as possible. By investing the time and money required to get good Internet content can turn a plain black store sign into a sign that says “WE SELL COMPUTERS!” Your customers will know what you sell through an online search and they will know how to get there with multiple links from good content.

The First Step – You Guessed It…

Ah, Google. Nobody that has taken even the smallest step on the Internet has been able to avoid the god-like presence of Google. Not only is it the search engine that you MUST rank highly on, Google’s AdSense can turn a web site into a money making machine with only the click of a button. Although you will eventually want to move on to more targeted affiliate relationships that are set up with individual companies, AdSense can put advertisements on your web site in no time. Even when you do secure alternative affiliate relationships, there is no reason to abandon AdSense.

Banners and Links

After a while, you might begin searching for affiliates related to your industry. If you originally set up your web site solely to make money, you likely considered the affiliate relationships that you could obtain in order to monetize your efforts. For other web site owners, getting good affiliates might require adding content to suit their needs. This should always be related to your web site however. For example, if you operate a video game web site and want to take advantage of the huge amount of World of Warcraft players on the Internet, you might consider adding content about the game (perhaps 50 pages or so) and then applying for an affiliate relationship with Blizzard Entertainment.

Often, affiliate relationships can be built by simply reviewing products that are solid and relate to your web site and then linking to businesses that sell those products. Whatever the case, affiliate programs are usually free and easy ways to make money with your content. Don’t overdo it though. If your visitors trust you to provide solid and accurate information about your topic, they will likely trust that your affiliates will provide the same service, even if it is as small as a simple side banner. REMEMBER – no pop ups. Nothing turns visitors off like pop up ads or ads that force visitors to close windows to continue reading. If an affiliate uses such aggressive tactics, they are not worth obtaining.

Web Site Promotion

Finally, actively promote and market your web site through directory listings and Blog posts. One of the most effective search engine result boosts and traffic increasing tactics is simple link trading with related businesses or web sites. This can be as simple as offering a free guest Blog post to a popular Blog with a link back to your site. Provided that they reciprocate, you can support each site while promoting your own. With a good enough link trading relationship with another web site, you might be able to obtain a partnership and double your web site monetizing efforts.

However, remember that you should never link trade with a web site that offers your same products. They should be a similar supplier, not a competitor. For example, if you sell copy machines but not copy paper, you could find a great deal of value in link trading with a web site that sells copy paper but not copiers. Both web sites will benefit from the link trade and you can be sure that you will not lose business to your links.

One of the major considerations of running a content company, indeed running any business, is how to properly handle customer billing and invoices. With many content companies, this can become a major problem as someone, either the client or the company, must place a great deal of trust in the other party. No matter how you choose to handle billing for content sales, custom made content comes with its fair share of billing problems.

Project Deposits

One of the ways that Content Customs attempts to solve some of the billing problems is to require a 50% deposit on the total amount that will be due upon completion of the assignment. This is done for a couple of reasons. First, no matter what, the writers must always be compensated for their hard work. If a manager cannot secure payment for a piece of content, it is nowhere near the writer’s fault and they should never be punished.

As the writer typically receives about half of the total cost of a project, requiring a 50% deposit ensures that, no matter what, the writer will always be paid for their hard work. Of course, this requires trust on the part of the client.

Content Delivery

One of the policies that Content Customs uses to reward clients for trusting us by making their deposit is to send the content before sending the bill for the remaining amount due. We do this to share the trusting relationship with the person placing an order. As we are aware that some customers have lost money to shady content companies that enjoy stealing people’s money, we have also lost money to clients that have taken advantage of this system to only pay for half of the order and never contacting us again. Although we use security features to prevent this from happening, we can usually only hope to break even if such an event occurs.

Still, every member of upper management agrees that using a system that develops a two way trusting relationship between our company and honest clients is well worth the occasional loss.

Money Back Guarantee

Although we are very rarely put in a position where it is necessary, we also choose to trust our clients by offering a 100% money back guarantee on every piece of content that we produce. If a client is unhappy with their order after revisions, we will always offer a full refund for the order. We trust our staff to produce the highest quality content every time and very seldom receive requests for rewrites, let alone refunds. If you choose to develop a content company, one of the best things that you can do for your clients is take every step to make sure that they are confident in your services every step of the way.