I am Ann Smarty blogging at SEOsmarty.com for (I guess) 6 years. I am former Editor-in-Chief for Search Engine Journal, guest contributor at Mashable and Lifehack (as well as quite a few other high-profile marketing blogs). I am also the owner of MyBlogGuest.com, content marketing consultant and self-funded entrepreneur.

My main goal is to learn as much as I can and try as many things online as I manage to. I also love the freedom online entrepreneurship provides me with.

2. What was the reason that you came up with the idea of launching MyBlogGuest? Is there a story behind its creation that you would like to share with our readers?

I didn't expect I would love blogging so much. Some of my oldest online friends still remember how humbly I started. But since I found the real passion in blogging, that soon started paying off: I started getting many invites to guest contribute.

That couldn't help getting me thinking: people love the content I am providing them with. And my personal brand is getting more powerful with each guest post going live (actually, I owe my whole online career to guest blogging).

So that's a total win-win!

So why not create a place where people could meet to exchange free content?
That was a from-top-of-my-mind project. I started it when sitting at home with my new-born child. You can imagine how swamped I was. I didn't mean it to grow that much :)

3. In your opinion what are the benefits of guest posting on other blogs? 

The major outcome is building connections and thus influence. Bloggers will remember you by your comment. They will be happy to re-connect whenever you need them!

4. Do you feel that there are any benefits of publishing guest posts on one's own blog apart from the fact that you get content for your blog?

The best benefit is bringing in new perspectives. This can result in absolutely unexpected results!
Example: I have always been unwilling to accept guest contributions at my personal blog (simply because I wanted it to be *personal*) but when I did at last, I got the huge traffic boost from NY Times that cited my guest contributor. That was a huge power boost for my little blog as well!


That may vary. Some powerful multi-author blogs like Social Media Examiner and Mashable publish content from various contributors weekly (while still keeping their identity using some weekly columns).

For a regular blog, if you struggle to publish content daily, 2-3 guest posts a week can be a great help to maintain the editorial calendar (while still being perfectly natural).

5. How should one select the blogs on which to publish guest posts? Can it be any moderate to high traffic blog if one can adapt their writing skills to the niche of a given blog?

The only thing I pay attention to is the *community*. How many comments does each article tend to receive? How actively each guest post is shared on Twitter and Facebook? After all, guest blogging is all about entering a community. I don't care if it's a new community. The main thing is that it's an active community of people who may follow me after reading my guest post.

6. What are the biggest mistakes that you see the blogging community making, as far as SEO is concerned? How did you personally get into the SEO arena?

When working for my very first (and the only) employer (where I started working when still in the university), I got promoted to the SEO manager (I started as the customer support person). That resulted in plenty of learning and experimenting.

I can't say I liked all the methods my former employees used but I am very thankful to them that they introduced me to SEO.

I don't think bloggers have to think too much about SEO. Wordpress is very-well built in terms of structure and crawlability. You can do almost nothing to optimize it (except for choosing a clean lightweight theme).

The worst mistake I am seeing quite a lot is using plugins that "nofollow" all external links (for God knows which reason). Come on, people! We are part of world wide *web*: we need to link out to sites for them to link to us!


Oh those poor unloved tools I (and my dev team) struggle to find time for. Like I said, my main goal is to experiment a lot, hence a few little tools that were born out of curiosity.
I wouldn't say they don't have potential. They need time and work - which I always plan to find :)

• TweetedRanks will track your Google rankings and DM your position daily,
• Backlink Tracker will crawl your guest posts daily and report if your links were deleted or nofollowed. It will also measure the guest post effect in terms of social shares and incoming traffic;
• ViralMom is a small blog I was once invited to co-launch.
• WhoICompete is an old tool that will take a few of your key phrases and return the list of your most successful competitors (those that rank high for a number of those key phrases).

8. We personally think that MyBlogGuest is a superb idea and should help the blogging community by enlarge. How are you promoting the site? How many guest authors and guest post publishers have you signed up so far? What is the kind of feedback that you are getting?

The only way I've been promoting the site is through personal guest posting. We have also launched Facebook ad campaign (for purely branding purposes) and Google Adwords campaign (to beat mirror sites that try to copy what we do).

For the growth stats, please refer to our infographic. To get an idea of the growth rate, the infographic was published in April and claims we have 28,000 users. Now it's more than 33, 000
The main complain: poor usability which we totally agree with. Like I said, the site was launched as a hobby. We never expected that growth. And thus the features have been added quite spontaneously. We still need to better organize and market most of MyBlogGuest features.



9. Apart from working on your blogging related activities, what leisure activities do you enjoy? Which is your absolute favorite?

I love crafts and upcycling. Too bad I almost have no time for that.
I spend most of my time with my family and working.

10. What are your future plans for SeoSmarty and MyBlogGuest? Are you working on creating any cool new tools?

No major plans for SEOsmarty - I just blog there when I have a spare minute - which doesn't happen often. For MyBlogGuest, we are working to let that project get some rest. We've been working on it too actively. We now plan to step aside a bit and get some fresh air - before making it even more awesome :)

As for the new tools, I am working on Viral Content Buzz together with Gerald Weber now.

11. What valuable advice would you like to give to aspiring and budding online marketers?

I am not in the position to give advice, I guess. The only thing I have understood now: you need to love what you do in order to be successful. So don't move forward until you feel inspired!

 You can find out more about MyBlogGuest at:

Website
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Twitter