Google is doing their best to make marketers and websites work for that prestigious #1 position in the SERPs. Large and small algorithmic changes are implemented every day to ensure that only the cream floats up to the top.

While 2019 continues to be a difficult year for SEO, with many updates rolled out, two things didn’t change (and probably never will):

A) Content is still king

B) High-quality backlinks are a website’s best currency for organic rankings

Which brings me to one type of content that every website needs to publish regularly to establish authority, build quality backlinks, and drive traffic – expert roundup posts. Expert roundups are blog posts that feature expert contributions on a certain topic.

If you want to learn how to create an expert roundup post the right way, I recommend this step-by-step guide published on B2C by Ann Smarty from MyGuestBlog. And, if you’re still not clear on how these roundups should look, here are a few excellent examples:

Ahrefs’ expert roundup post got backlinks from close 120 referring domains, as well as more than 400 shares on social networks. That’s a lot of ranking power (and a lot of traffic).

Source: https://prnt.sc/ojujgc

3 Expert Roundup Mistakes You Need To Stop Making

Roundup posts can be a great addition to your existing link-building strategy but not if you don’t put any thought and effort into them. Here are 3 common expert roundup mistakes I see marketers make consistently. Work on eliminating them, and your chances of attracting backlinks and traffic to your website will double.

Asking Boring Questions (& Getting Boring Answers)

A common misconception with expert roundups is that the experts you feature make the content go viral.

While they do help, it’s the quality of the content that makes these roundups valuable and share-worthy. And quality starts with the questions you decide to ask.

When thinking of your question, make sure that you’re specific and that you’re addressing an actual problem. If you’re a blogging expert, instead of asking “How can you grow your email lists?”, ask “How to get your first 1000 email subscribers?”. The answers you get are going to be valuable to beginner bloggers and allow your experts an opportunity to share a story or two that they haven’t had a chance to share before, making your roundup that much more unique.

Of course, don’t underestimate the value of combining value with entertainment. This roundup from the Logo Design Team does not go into the nitty-gritty of the logo design process but it does provide readers with a glimpse into the creative mind of their favorite designers, and it got a backlink from marketing and SEO expert, Jeff Bullas.

Not Including a Summary at the Top of the Post

Depending on how many participants you have, your expert roundup post can turn out huge – this one from Ahrefs’ is more than 20,000 words long!

While you probably won’t end up with something that big, I’m sure you can appreciate the value of summarizing your key points near the top of your post, like this:

By doing that, you lead with value right from the start, and you avoid frustrating your readers with a wall of text that they have to go through to get to the interesting bits.

Not Having a Promotion Plan

Without a content promotion plan, even the best expert roundup post is a shot in the dark. There’s just too much content out there for your post to float up organically any time soon – for example, in March of 2019, 4.4 MILLION blog posts were published every single day!

Instead of releasing your content into the wild as soon as it’s done, have a promotion plan in place before you hit that publish button. Not only will this help you with website traffic, but it will also help you convince those experts that your piece is worth their time because you’ll work on getting it in front of the right audience.

Here are a few ways to get started with expert roundup promotion:

  • Emailing your subscriber base with a link once the post is published
  • Notifying experts as soon as your roundup goes live
  • Including your best/most recent content as links in your email signature
  • Using push notifications on your website to drive traffic to your roundup post
  • Creating a social media publishing schedule and sticking to it

Whether or not these posts work for you will depend on how much time and effort you put into them, and how many expert roundup post mistakes you’re able to dodge. Your success depends on picking the right experts, focusing on the right questions, and having a content promotion plan in place. Did you publish a successful roundup post recently?

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