Increase the Effectiveness of Your Next Guest Post with a Landing Page

This is a guest post from Jade Craven from the Prolific Writer.

Are you using guest posting as a blog marketing strategy? Hook new readers in with a guest post landing page.

What is a guest post landing page?

A guest post landing page is a specific page in your blog that is highly targeted to the intended audience. Here, it’s the readership of a particular blog. Guest posts are a brilliant opportunity for additional traffic and you can capture those readers by offering the content that is relevant to them.

First, you need to decide on the type of landing page you want.

There are three types of guest post landing pages:

1. Blog specific

This is when you create a landing page based on just the one blog. You can even create a different landing page per guest post on that blog. These types of guest pages work best when the blog has a larger readership or is on a very niche topic.

2. Niche specific

This is when the landing page is targeted to a particular niche or sub niche. An example is collating all your posts on e-books, or social media. This is a really effective landing page and is one that requires the least work.

3. Audience specific:

This is the landing page that is targeted at audiences outside of your main niche. Many bloggers recommend blogging outside of your niche to learn more. This can be really effective for capturing the traffic outside of your main readership. This works best if your content is applicable to other audiences.

Once you have decided on your type of landing page, you can then focus on targeting it to that audience.

3 Steps to creating a killer landing page.

Step one: Explain in less than two sentences how your blog can help them.

This is your elevator pitch – a chance to influence how the readers will interact with your site. This is the perfect opportunity to provide a call for action regarding subscriptions. Explain how subscribing to your content would help them. Hint towards the content you will be providing in the future. Mention alternate forms of subscription like twitter or a newsletter.

Don’t be too heavy on self promotion. Quality blog posts are an advertisement in themselves. Your goal is to give them reason to delve into your best content.

Step Two: Link to the 5-12 posts that are highly targeted to that audience.

This is your opportunity to really hook the reader in. You have a couple of choices:

• Posts that are about the blogger.
• Personal case studies that the readers would be interested in
• Guest posts on blogs with a similar readership.

Step Three: Provide a small pitch at the bottom.

In the first step, you explained why the readers should interact with your content. In the second, you encouraged them to interact with your best content. This is the time to capture their interest with a related product or service.

If possible, offer something for free. If you are expecting a large rush of traffic, offer something that is exclusive to that audience. Make those readers want to click on your byline when they see your name elsewhere.

Struggling for ideas?

• Link to a free report.
• Mention your freelancing services.
• Show off your other blogging projects.
• If your landing page is blog specific, link to a product from the hosts blog.

By now you should have submitted your post and got your landing page ready. The final task is to decide how you want to direct the readers to your landing page.

There are two ways to draw attention to the page:

Referrer plugin.

This is a plugin that that identifies where your readers came from and provide a welcome message catered to that audience.

Using such a plugin allows the readers to see you other content while giving them to opportunity to see your targeted posts. I would use this if I linked to a specific article on my blog, or for landing pages that are niche/audience specific. This gives the reader the choice in how they interact with your blog. If you choose this method, make sure to give the reader a reason to click through to your landing page.

Link within the post

This is the best way to really capture the traffic is to provide a link from within the post. I link to it in both the byline and concluding text. Try to provide a

Have you used a guest post landing page? Is there anything else you would like to see on one? Let the readers know in the comments below.

If you want to see a guest post landing page in action, check out Jade’s blog at The Prolific Writer. She is currently seeking guest post opportunities and would love to hear from you.