One of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert, build credibility and get more traffic to your website is to guest post on other people’s blogs.

Here’s how guest blogging can help you, as well as how to land your first three guest blog posts.

Writing for Others, Writing for Ourselves: Telling Stories in an Age of Blogging

Build Credibility and Establish Yourself as an Expert

Imagine this: Someone in your market, researching a specific topic, is browsing through a few different websites to see what they can learn. Within ten minutes, they’ve seen your name three times already on three different websites providing information on the topic.

What does this person think of you? They’re thinking, “This person is an expert.”

Why? Because three different websites are implicitly vouching for you by having your name and your content on their site.

Having your content on many different websites is an incredible way to build expertise and establish yourself as an expert in any field. It moves you from the category of someone who’s just running their own site to the category of respected experts.

Get Backlinks and Traffic

In addition to building credibility in the field, you’re also getting backlinks and traffic. What’s great about these backlinks is that they’re 100% relevant and you’re often the only link on the page. That means these are high quality links that can do a lot for your site.

The traffic will also be extremely high quality. People coming to your site from the sites you’ve guest posted on will already see you as an expert.

How to Get Your First Three Guest Posts

Getting your first three guest posts is the most difficult part. Once you’ve got your first three, it’s much easier to point to those three as references to get a lot more future guest posts.

There are a few ways you can establish relationships with other bloggers to do guest posting.

The most common way is to simply email blog owners and ask if they’d like a guest post. When you do, start with less popular blogs and work your way up to the more popular ones.

Never send a copy and pasted letter. Always read through the blog and get to know them a little bit before you email them. Let them know why you think it’d be a win-win for both of your audiences for you to guest post on their blog.  Is also extremely important to begin your email to a blog owner with their name. Showing that you know who they are and that you have taken the time to read about them on their blog.

Another great way to find potential guest blogging opportunities is to go to industry trade shows, conventions, workshops, local meet-ups and other events. If you meet a blogger in person, they’ll very likely be inclined to say yes if you make a good connection.

Finally, remember that bloggers want you to guest post. It’s a lot of work to generate content. By offering to create great content for their audience, you’re actually offering to do them a big favor.