How To Find & Submit To Blog Carnivals

Phil Byrne of The H2 Companyrecently mentioned Blog Carnivals in his guest blog for us.

Phil has kindly written this follow up guest blog for us to explain more!

When you hear the word ‘carnival’, music, dancing, games and costumes are probably the first things that come to mind. Well now there’s a new carnival in town and, although it might be low on dancing and merrymaking, if you’re serious about your blogging then it could well be worth checking it out.

Welcome to the blog carnival.

What Exactly Is a Blog Carnival?

A blog carnival is a kind of ‘travelling’ blog consisting of a single post that contains links to a selection of other blog posts in a particular niche. Each blog carnival is set up by an initial organiser who chooses the subject area, the submission criteria and where the carnival will appear. Different bloggers then volunteer to host the carnival on their own blogs each week, fortnight or month, depending on the carnival.

Bloggers then submit their posts to the host for consideration in the next carnival, and the host collates these submissions and decides which of them to feature. If your blog gets chosen, you will receive a link to your blog post which will normally be accompanied by a short description or comment.

Find Carnivals & Submit Your Posts

There are many different blog carnivals on every subject imaginable, and you can find all of them at the Blog Carnival website. Head to the carnival index (click on ‘More blog carnivals…’ at the bottom of the home page), find a suitable topic and then visit the profile page of a carnival by clicking on its name. Here you’ll find out more about the topic, the guidelines for submission and the schedule for hosting, as well as previous carnivals so you can take a look at what’s expected.

Once you’ve found a carnival that looks suitable, sign up to the website (it’s free) and then simply submit your posts to your chosen carnivals (you can submit the same post to multiple carnivals if you want). It’s a relatively simple process, and if you’re lucky your post will get chosen to appear in the next carnival.

Excellent Tactic for Building High-Authority Links

The main reason that you as a blogger would want to submit your posts to a blog carnival in your niche is that it is a fantastic way to generate high-authority links. The host of the carnival will often have a high PageRank, and on top of that, because all blog carnivals are ‘human edited’, Google and other SE’s consider them a very high authority link to have. In short, your SE rankings will benefit!

As a secondary bonus, readers who find your post via the carnival and consider it worth reading might provide you with additional backlinks that you would not have gained without appearing in the carnival in the first place.

More Reasons to Join the Carnival

Building high-authority links is one of the main benefits of submitting your blogs to a blog carnival. But there are a number of other reasons for doing so:

Traffic Boost – many of the carnival hosts generate a lot of traffic to their blogs, so it stands to reason that if your post gets included you can expect to see a traffic spike.

Increased Exposure – a blogging carnival is a great way to attract target readers within your niche who may end up becoming regular readers.

Authority – the fact that someone has chosen your blog over many others increases your authority in your niche.

Networking – by getting involved in blogging carnivals you can make new contacts and network with other bloggers, which can often lead to new opportunities.

The Carnival Awaits

If you haven’t explored blog carnivals yet then it is a great way to get some powerful links, boost traffic and increase your blog’s exposure. It’s free, easy and won’t take long to make submissions once you get the hang of it, so try it out for yourself.