Day 11 – 40 Day Challenge

Today’s Forbes Task

“Guest post on relevant blogs – There’s not much point guest blogging on a site in an unrelated niche; make sure you only contribute to highly-relevant, high-quality sites in your niche. See “The Ultimate, Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Business by Guest Blogging.”

My first thought when I read this, was oh no!  Don’t I have to be invited by a more influential blogger to guest blog on their site? Doesn’t my site have to be discovered first?  I was happy to discover there are many sites in my niche (and no doubt, all niches) that accept guest posts.  And I learnt a quick, easy way to find them. (See PJ’s Free Bonus Tip below).

I started by doing this training on Wealthy Affiliate:  Increase Website Traffic with Guest Posting by PJ Germain, creator of Pure Residuals, which led me to this training: Moz Toolbar – Page Authority, Domain Authority, MozRank, MozTrust also by PJ Germain.

I installed the Moz Toolbar and Created a Moz Account and it’s proving to be an invaluable tool.  I’m instantly able to see the Domain Authority (amongst other metrics) of any website I google or visit, with a score of 1 being awful, and 100 being outstanding (think sites like Wikipedia). A high domain authority is 40 or more. Huffington Post (US) and Forbes both have a DA of 97.

Of course, I also looked up the Domain Authority of Inspiring Mompreneurs.  It’s currently 16.  Ooh… long way to go… one small step at a time. At least I have another excellent way of tracking my progress.

How to Find Guest Blogging Gigs

As mentioned, PJ’s Free Bonus Tip at the end of his Training has been awesome: How to Find Guest Blogging Gigs Quickly

I followed PJ’s advice and googled: “Mompreneurs submit a guest post”

Which kicked up some great results.  I ranked them in order of Domain Authority. Click the links below to get details on how to submit a guest post.

1. The Mogul Mom (DA: 38)
2.  Mompreneur Media (DA: 31)
3. International Christian Mompreneur Network (DA: 30)
4. Mom Resource (DA: 30)
5. More with Less Mom (DA: 27)
6. Boss Mom (DA: 26)
7. Tuned in Parents

I also followed Jayson DeMers’ advice and googled the “Top Mompreneur Websites”. These include some higher ranking sites:

1. Entrepreneur has the Topic: Mompreneurs  (DA:91 – now we’re talking!) And they accept article submissions but you must add links to samples of your work.  Best to get published on smaller publications first.
2. Mompreneurs® – Canadian Women in Business (DA: 47) But they don’t seem to be calling for freelance article submissions.

And I discovered this brilliant article, which gave me a few more great websites to consider: 130+ High Domain Authority Sites To Get Valuable Backlinks.  The sites

Community Sites for Women or Moms:

1. Blogher (DA 86) – already signed up (a few months ago), haven’t added any blogs yet
2. Cafe Mom (DA 75) – Joined as a Member. Instant Access. To write for them email StirWriting@CafeMom.com
3. Modern Mom (DA 64) – Applied to their Modern Mom Influencer Programme. Awaiting Approval.
4. She Writes (DA 56) – Applied on 29 November. Yay! Application accepted on 30 November.
5. Mom Bloggers Club (DA 49) – Applied on 29 November. Membership approved on 1 December.
6. Bloggy Moms – Could not join because I didn’t meet all the requirements. (No Facebook Fan Page, Twitter or Instagram)

Mom Bloggers Club led me to Bloglovin (joined on 6 Dec).  Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Article Marketing

PJ also mentions Article Marketing in his training and lists the Top Sites. Here are the Top 4:

1. HubPages: (DA: 88)
2. EzineArticles (DA: 87)
3. ArticlesBase (DA: 77)
4. Buzzle (DA: 73)

I registered for Hub Pages and Ezine Articles, just for practice on submitting articles,  and to test just how much traffic these kinds of tools can bring to my site.  I can see how submitting to article websites can be quite a time-consuming exercise in itself, and am thinking of skipping this step, and going straight to writing guest posts on authority sites. (Big gulp).

So, here’s my Guest Posting Strategy:

I’ll write and submit articles to The Mogul Mom, Blogher and CafeMom with my end goal in mind – to get published on Entrepreneur and Huffington Post.