Earlier in April we ran a fun experiment: we asked our members to create video tutorials of their most favorite MyBlogGuest features and promised to reward the best videos.

We were pretty much amazed by the response and the creativity of our members. We’ve learnt a lot about our own platform and how our members are using it. We’ve seen our members’ most popular features inside MBG. The mission is pretty much accomplished!

We’ll make sure to repeat the experiment some time in the future. Stay tuned!

Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for MyBlogGuest users’ video reviews and tutorials.

The contest was closed on May, 20 and here are the entries and the winners:

And the Winners!

Like I promised, we have more than one grand winner! Here are the lucky ones!

• Most viewed video => Ruth R Martin ( mini1000) wins the grand prize of $1000
• Second place => acheron wins $500
• First entry => User mridul9 wins $100
• Most commented video => Our awesome moderator socialwebcafe gets $200 for the awesome video
• The most creative approach (Editor’s choice!) => Psychguy wins $500
• The best free feature review (Editor’s choice!) => CollegeStudentAnswers gets $100

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube channel to track the competition and get notified of new videos!

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by The Fayj

And we are featuring the last screencast within our video review contest. The winners will be announced earlier next week – stay tuned!

Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for MyBlogGuest users’ video reviews and tutorials. Support our contestants by watching all the videos – the one that gets most views, wins!

This one is from one of our oldest members, hence it features a few quite geeky and advanced tips. Enjoy!

The video URL: Advanced Techniques for MyBlogGuest

 *** Author’s home page: ResumeBucket Blog

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube channel to track the competition and get notified of new videos!

This week on #myblogguest Twitter chat we were talking about links again: no matter how much we try, links will remain an important outcome of guest blogging, so we have to talk a lot about them

Today we are talking about guest blogging and link terminology we are using at MyBlogGuest.com

LINK TYPE #1 -> Self-serving vs natural

• Self-serving link points to the author’s site. It can be used ONCE per a guest article
• Natural link points to any natural and useful resource, page worth mentioning. Feel free to use as many natural links as you see fit.

=> An article with lots of great natural links looks more natural than an article with just one self-serving link

Also:

Self-serving links include links to the author’s site (+internal pages) as well author’s social media profiles. Authors are allowed (and even encouraged) to link to their social profiles (this shows the human being behind the article).

LINK TYPE #2 -> Keyword-Based vs Name-Based

• Keyword-based: the visible part of the link is a keyword or a key phrase
• Name-based: the visible part of the link is domain.name or the name;

We moderate keyword-based links more carefully because they are normally used to manipulate Google’s rankings and can thus result in a red flag (or even ban).

There are other non-keyword-based links (e.g. “click here”) that fall under “name-based”: they have no keywords so are less suspicious.

LINK TYPE #3 -> Relevant vs Irrelevant

These might be subjective but in most cases, quite obvious.

Irrelevant links are NOT allowed in a guest post (when in doubt, use name-based link).

LINK TYPE #4 -> Byline Link vs in-Content Link

• Byline link appears in “about author” part;
• In-content link appears in the content of the article.

In-content link should make PERFECT sense (a good example of such a link). You are not allowed to drop keyword-based links in content without making them flow naturally (this looks too salesy and you can be suspected of link buying)

Tips: In-content link can be a citation source, reference, tool, etc (anything that makes sense in that specific context).

Next week we are talking about MyBlogGuest FREE features and best way to use them to find great homes for your guest articles!

This week at our Thursday Twitter chat we were talking about penguins again. But if last time we were discussing the updated linking guidelines for our authors (using the Articles Gallery), this week we were warning our awesome publishers of why they should be even more selective and careful.

Enjoy!

STEP 1: Define Your Priorities

You need guest bloggers NOT for #free content but for breathing a new life in your blog! #myblogguest

• Example #1: One of the guest posts on seosmarty.com brought me an NYTimes mention
• Example #2: One of the guest posts our user placed turned out to be the HUGEST traffic source ever! Here’s her video

Conclusion: A guest post you host should be awesome – that’s when you start loving guest bloggers!

Step 2: Find Great Authors

• Create a very well-structured list of guest post requirements and stick to them (Tip: Feel free to use our guest post quality assurance checklist we use to moderate gallery. It lists most commonsense essential points).
• Create “Write for us” page on your blog,
• Monitor #MyBlogGuest Articles Gallery within your category

Step 3: Be Safe

Guest blogging is a 100% whitehat marketing tactic. Some guest authors don’t get it. With Google #penguinupdate you should be careful even despite you are doing nothing wrong.

*Being careful doesn’t mean going crazy. If you are selective and pick *awesome* relevant articles, you are safe!*

What to look out for (what makes a guest article less *awesome*):

• Nonsense link dropping (for example, a link in the article about SEO: “Oftentimes the longer search phrases attract more traffic for a niche website than popular keywords, like L shaped shower bath.”)
• Irrelevant links with obviously keyword-optimized anchor text (the above example also applies)
• Too linky articles (with more than 2 self-serving links; I usually encourage authors to link generously elsewhere)

What is a natural link?

• Use your common sense: If a guest articles and links in it look natural to you, human being, a Google bot will be ok with them. If you feel the link doesn’t belong there, ask the author to remove or edit it
• Articles with many links look more natural than articles with only ONE link to the authors site (so encourage your guest author to include references to official sites they mention, social media profiles, apps and tool, etc.)

*So what makes an *awesome* article: interesting and trendy, with style and images, modest in linking!*

Conclusion: Accepting guest posts does grow your traffic and popularity but only when you approach that properly!

>>>Next Thus (3 p.m. GMT / 11 a.m. EDT) we’ll try to structure all link terminology we are using!

Our spring video review contest continues. We have had quite a few awesome video tutorials created by our users.

Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for MyBlogGuest users’ video reviews and tutorials. Support our contestants by watching all the videos – the one that gets most views, wins!

Monday’s video is a fun one: it explains in lots of details one of the most neglected features of MyBlogGuest: it’s always been kept as “being tested” and we are still wrecking our heads over making it usable and useful.

MyBlogGuest direct works as follows:

• Upload a great guest post to our gallery;
• (In case no great offers seem to be coming in), use the internal search feature to send that article to a chosen blog;
• Wait for a couple of days to see the article published.

Here’s the whole process visualized by our user:

• Video URL: HOW TO: Send a Guest Article to a Blog Using MyBlogGuest DIRECT
• Video source: Using MyBlogGuest Direct

*** Author’s home page: Viral Mom

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube channel to track the competition and get notified of new videos!

Those penguins are so cute..

Today’s #myblogguest chat was “special edition”: We were talking about the recent Google update and our revised self-linking rules.

Last week’s Google update was not a surprise but we had to take measures because of the increased publicity and FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).

The key: our rules have not changed. MBG has always preached “quality” and “non-made-for-links” content.

However since not many people get *guest blogging* we now have to keep a closer eye on our main rules being observed.

Updates!

• Read the full transcript of the chat here
• Bookmark and read this *awesome* article on “Panic at the Zoo” @SEOmoz  -> especially the points on what to do and what NOT

Linking Rules:

Let’s list our linking rules first:

• You don’t build links with guest blogging -> you *earn* them by providing quality
• Links should be relevant to content. That’s NOT writing about apples to link to apples BUT staying in the same line. For example, apples & SEO => NOT relevant; apples & recipe apps => relevant
• No more than ONE *self-serving* link (total!) per article (that’s NOT about linking to relevant tools, news & stats sources, etc). You are free to link to your social media profiles, resume pages, G+ pages, etc as well. +++ Google seems to treat brand links with less suspicion, so when in doubt, use them!

The main RULE: Your links should be useful and relevant. They must make perfect sense -> No link-dropping!

The Tips

• For relevancy -> Please re-focus your content. Here are some essential tips.
• For making things natural -> Do add other (not yours) links to useful “further reading”, apps, image credits, etc
• Vary your self-linking: Link to your brand properties outside your domain (sm profiles, etc) -> own branded search results

For publishers -> Mind your own editorial guidelines. Make sure you are linking to relevant and useful sites

I understand it’s getting more difficult to get links, but it’s not worth taking the risks.

Get more creative! Vary your self-linking: Link to your brand properties outside your domain.

• There are video sites that allow dofollow links, or resume sites that allow dofollow links, etc. Link to them from your guest posts from time to time: build platforms that accumulate your link juice.
• Link to your Twitter and FB pages -> This will help to own search results for your brand name.

Join us next week 3 p.m. GMT / 11 a.m. EDT for more guest blogging tips and help!

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Hot Rod Homepage

And we keep updating our blog with the cool screencasts our users create and share with us as part of our Youtube video contest.

Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for MyBlogGuest users’ video reviews and tutorials. Support our contestants by watching all the videos – the one that gets most views, wins!

Today’s video tutorial describes how one should use “My Articles”section (which is our PRO feature).

A very detailed and informative screencast which I enjoyed watching. It helps you:

• Better understand what you can find in that section;
• Find out how to publish an article into the gallery;
• Understand what other people see when they are viewing the gallery;
• Figure the anatomy of our gallery article listing:

• Video URL: HOW TO: Use MyBlogGuest “My Articles” Section 
• Video source: MyBlogGuest My Article Section

*** Author’s home page: Halyard Consulting

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube channel to track the competition and get notified of new videos!

As I have said previously, MyBlogGuest has never been built with money in mind. Yes, we had to monetize it at some point to cover the development and maintenance costs, but we take pride in our fully usable free features.

This is why today’s video from one of our users is so special to me: it shows that our members do appreciate the free features we have built and they find them 100% functional!

Enjoy!

Video URL: My Blog Guest Favorite FREE Feature

*** Author’s home page: College Student Answers

This video is part of MyBlogGuest video screencasting contest.

Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for our users’ video reviews and tutorials. Watch all the videos – the one that gets most views, wins!

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube channel to track the competition and get notified of new videos!

If you are wondering why we have suddenly started sharing so many videos here, that’s because we have our spring official contest running: Create a video screencast showing any part / feature of MyBlogGuest and get a chance to win $1000 as well as many other cool prizes (we have not disclosed yet).

Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for our users’ video reviews and tutorials. Watch all the videos – the one that gets most views, wins!

Today we are featuring a video from our very awesome social media moderator. Deborah is our community builder and social media manager. She operates our HELP FORUM which aims at helping our members to get more social media love for their guest posts.

Very informative screencast. Well done!

Video URL: *Social Luv* @ MyBlogGuest.com

Author’s home page: Social Web Cafe

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube channel to track the competition and get notified of new videos!