July 20th, 2020 | Updated on July 17th, 2021
Being a website owner you can find many different ways to increase the traffic on your site. But if you’re looking for something that is effective and will help in boosting the number of visitors, then guest blogging is what you need.
Is Guest Blogging Still Relevant?
Many speculations have been going on whether guest blogging is worth it or is it just a fad that will pass. In 2014, Matt Cutts, former Head of Web Spam at Google said, ” stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done.”
Declaring guest blogging “too spammy”, he said, ” In general I wouldn’t recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.”
However, Google clarifies: ” guest blogging is OK, but “guest blogging for SEO” is not.
It’s been more than four years since Matt’s announcing the death of guest blogging as a white-hat link building tactic.
Everybody has something or the other to say. A few will say it’s a waste of time. On the other hand, some people believe that their marketing strategy would be incomplete without it. So, where do we stand now? Did guest blogging die?
The truth exists somewhere in the middle: yes, it can be a waste of time and resources, but if used correctly and purposefully, it can indeed give a boost to your website’s growth.
That’s why we at Newszii wanted to create this comprehensive guide to guest blogging that anyone can start using right away. So what exactly is guest blogging?
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What Is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging is a content marketing strategy in which you write articles to get published on well-established websites. It is an excellent way to increase your reach and viability.
These articles are written under the name of “guest contributor” with a link back to your website, which is one way to give you recognition.
As a result, the editor may give you cash as a reward or simply link your website for an increase in the number of visitors.
So your article gets published and you get rewarded. What next? What else can you gain from guest blogging? Let us have a look.
What Are The Benefits Of Guest Blogging?
Some people get confused when they find out that guest blogging means writing content for someone else’s website.
“How can you benefit from writing for someone else’s website?” they ask. To clear this ambiguity, we have listed down some benefits bloggers can get from guest blogging.
1. Increases Targeted Audience
The traffic of a website is what keeps it thriving. If you’re writing engaging and quality content as a guest blogger, people will visit your website as soon as they finish reading your article.
They want more of your content and it will drive them towards your website. Hence, the traffic will start flowing, giving an upsurge to your website’s growth.
2. Broadens Your Personal Network
Guest blogging has made the process of reaching out to influencers a lot easier than it ever was. Once you start writing for a website, it’s easier to come into the limelight.
You can take part in email threads and community discussions. Just be active. This will act as a cornerstone to create partnership opportunities with influencers and other contributors.
3. Boosts Social Media Shares
If your content is engaging and successfully grasps the attention of the reader, there is a high chance that they will share it on other social media platforms.
This is one of the ways to expand your online reach – Highly shareable content with infographics.
4. Increases Followers
The more your content will be shared, the more people it will reach, hence increasing the number of followers. If you’re writing for an established website, it automatically goes in your favor.
A leading blog publishing your content means they are vouching for you. Their followers will definitely visit your website, boosting traffic.
Also, you can have a contributor’s profile on that website, where you can include links to your social media accounts. This way your target audience will become your active social media followers. It is a win-win situation for you.
5. Creates Brand Awareness
To establish authority in your niche, try sharing tips and pointers that nobody has talked about before. Tell the readers about your brand/company, what it does and how it would be able to provide solutions.
Talk about your brand in your posts. This will create awareness about your brand and will become more recognized.
6. Builds Domain Authority
Your Domain Authority (DA) is a numerical value (ranging from 0-100) that indicates how well a website will rank in search engines. Domain authority is a Moz-developed metric that combines several variables, such as the total number of links, connecting root domains, social signals, and TrustRank, into a single score.
Guest blogging is an excellent method to increase your Domain Authority. You may add a link or two to your website when you submit material to other blogs. Obtaining contextual, dofollow links from high-DA websites is one of the most effective methods to improve the domain authority of your website (and traffic).
7. Obtains Beneficial Backlinks
Backlinks, also referred to as dofollow links or inbound links, are connections to your website from other websites. Backlinks are seen as a vote of confidence by the referring domain, which increases your website’s reputation in their eyes.
These backlinks function similarly to votes-the more you get, the more search engines think your content marketing efforts are trustworthy, helpful, and worthwhile.
When creating guest articles, you may include one or two links to your own website, inside the text, as well as in your guest author profile.
8. Generates Referral Traffic
Along with gaining backlinks and SEO advantages from guest articles, your backlinks will also generate referral traffic. When a visitor reads your guest article and clicks on the links back to your site, your traffic increases.
When creating a guest post, carefully place your hyperlinks on pages you want visitors to read — a helpful article, an opt-in email page, or a service page.
9. Establishes New Connections with Bloggers
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, guest blogging allows you to develop new connections with other bloggers and influencers in your field.
It’s a very collaborative blogging approach. You’re should maintain communication with site owners long after your article has been published.
The trick is to be worthwhile. Respond to emails courteously and quickly, provide drafts on time, and, most importantly, produce great material. By taking these steps, you may increase your chances of sustaining a good relationship.
These connections may develop into more possibilities for guest writing in the future. Additionally, you may use your contacts to create additional interesting initiatives such as co-marketing, podcasts, e-books, and online courses.
Additionally, you may use these connections to get introductions to more powerful guest blogging possibilities.
How To Get Started With Guest Blogging?
To get started with guest blogging, you need to follow some steps. It’s not a piece of cake to get your first guest blog published. It requires time and effort.
Most renowned blogs get plenty of submissions on a daily basis. So, to be successful in getting your post chosen by them, follow the steps below.
1. Choose Your Goal
The first thing you should focus on is the goal which has led you to write the blog. You can set an individual goal for each blog post and then write the content based on those goals. You can choose goals like the ones mentioned below:
- Do you want to increase your authority in your niche?
- Do you want to increase your visibility?
- Do you want the audience to know about a new development?
- Do you want to increase the traffic on your website?
2. Find Guest Blogging Sites
Now that you’re clear about your goals, it’s time to find a website where you want to have your article published.
You can start by listing down well-established blogs that are popular among the readers and relevant to your niche. For this you need to ask yourself the following questions:
- Is the content of your target blog related to your product or niche?
- Will the targeted audience be able to relate to your niche or product?
- Will the website owner promote your content?
This means that if you’re writing about tourism, make sure the website is about tourist places and the readers are people who are inclined towards traveling and discovering new places.
Here are some ways to efficiently find guest blogging opportunities:
- Use Advanced Search Operators — where you use advanced search operators like these to find guest blogging opportunities:
- [your_topic] “write for us”
- [your_topic] “become an author”
- [your_topic] “guest post”
- [your_topic] “guest article”
- [your_topic] inurl:contribute, etc.
- Explore your competitors’ backlinks using tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush and others
Other Well-Known Guest Bloggers
Certain guest bloggers are known for writing posts for other websites. By searching for these people, you can easily find out all the platforms they have written for.
This will give you the names of authentic guest blogging platforms, and you can approach them to have your work published.
Prolific guest bloggers always write for top ranking websites, therefore it is evident that the traffic on these platforms is considerably high.
Once you have a list of various websites that accept guest posts, it’s time to shortlist them. Choose the ones that are related to your niche, will help you in attaining your goal and will help in the growth of your website.
3. Know How To Pitch For Guest Blogging
Now that you have qualified potential sites and topics that match the need of those sites, it’s time to start thinking about how to pitch your guest post ideas.
Approach your blogger outreach process very strategically, starting from the keywords you previously found and your target publication. Before pitching an idea to a site, it’s important to do your research. Go through their blog posts and find if there’s a topic that hasn’t been covered or an angle you could add to their existing posts.
Then, craft your pitch with their publishing guidelines in mind. Do keep in mind following points when you pitch for guest blogging opportunities:
- Create a compelling subject line.
- Make a personal connection to the person you’re pitching.
- Explain the benefit of the topic.
- Share examples and show off your authority.
Small-scale blogs only require you to submit a form about your content to see if your article can be published. Meanwhile, if you’re targeting a high-scale website, you will probably have to contact them via email and present your ideas.
A website’s guest posting guidelines should give you enough information about the criteria of selection. Therefore, you should prepare your pitch by keeping those guidelines in mind.
If everything goes well and your pitch is convincing enough, the editor will give you the approval to start writing.
4. Create A Post
Now comes the main part – writing the post. If you’re a first-timer, it would be a good idea to go through the guidelines of writing and formatting.
Writing
The key to writing quality content is to do your research before jumping right in. Consider the following points:
- If you’re giving references in your article, include their links.
- Use images or graphs to keep it interesting.
- Always mention the source of the images.
- Avoid using copyrighted images.
- Try using fresh words and phrases, not the ones that are used frequently by everyone.
Formatting
The presentation of anything is vital in capturing the attention of the audience. For example, if you serve food by just dumping it on the plate, nobody would want to eat it even if it tastes heavenly. But if you present it nicely, maybe garnish it with herbs or drizzle some honey, it will seem tempting.
The same goes for a written article. The paragraphs and spacing make it look appealing. Therefore:
- Writing short and concise paragraphs.
- Use bullets and numbering to make it easy to read.
- Use headings and subheadings so the reader can easily skim and scan through it.
- Use suitable images
5. Promote Your Post
Once your post is published and goes live, the only thing left to do is to promote it. You can do so by sharing it on social media and persuading your followers to do the same. Write “please like and share” at the end of it so that people can share it with others.
You can post about it on all your social media accounts on different platforms so that you can reach more people. The more it will be shared, the more audience it will generate and vice versa.
6. Track The Outcome
This step is very important. Why? Because it enables you to see how far along you have come in achieving your goals; the goals you set at the very beginning.
It helps you see where you started off and where you are at the moment. There are different guest blogging tools available that can help you keep an eye on the metrics.
You can use these tools to check all the stats from fluctuations in the number of backlinks, referring domains, organic traffic performance, or even the number of keywords for which the website ranks in Google.
7. Repeat
Guest blogging is not a one-time thing. You have to keep doing it on a regular basis to make yourself known. Your first published article will give you a head-start. It will give way to further opportunities and with each published article, you will climb the ladder to success.
You may have to write a number of articles to make a place in the world of guest blogging and achieve your goals. So don’t stop at one article. Keep going and keep exploring different niches to be considered as an influencer and expert in your field.
Begin your Email Outreach For Guest Blogging
To summarize your work so far, you now have a list of blogs for which you want to write, the right person to approach, and a LinkedIn connection with them. Now is the moment to begin your email marketing plan for guest posts by using templates and customized messages.
There are many cold email techniques available.
Here’s a cold email template that you should use:
Hello (First Name)/Opportunities for Content and Link Building — Adam from (Company)
Howdy (First Name),
My name is Adam and I work at (Job Title) (Company).
I’m writing to express my appreciation for (Target Blog) and your (Target Article), which struck a chord with me because (Reason).
I was wondering if:
1) You’re interested in participating in link building. I write (X-X) guest posts each month and would be delighted to include a link to your site in my articles.
2) You enable guest bloggers to contribute to your blog.
I’d love to contribute to your (awesome/informative/useful?) blog and can suggest some topics I believe your audience would like. Here are a few current examples from my repertoire:
(URL for Sample 1)
(URL for Sample 2)
(URL for Sample 3)
Kindly notify me if you are interested, and I hope to hear from you soon!
Thanks,
Adam
That’s all-and this one is a touch lengthy. Finally, it comes down to treating each individual like a friend, customizing your material, giving value via links, and being succinct.
Email marketing becomes much simpler over time as you accumulate a big sample of content and begin to get attention for your posts. If you do not yet have any published writing examples, have a few drafts on hand to offer. Finally, provide a link to your blog.
Congratulations if you get an email response indicating that they are interested! The next stage is to propose your subject ideas. Occasionally, you’ll be given direction on the kind of subjects or themes the blog is looking for, but more often than not, you’ll have to come up with your own.
Compile a Target List
One of the most critical aspects of email outreach is ensuring that your outreach emails are sent to the appropriate recipients.
Here’s how to build an outreach target list.
Establish objectives
Different objectives need distinct outreach strategies. If you’re searching for press coverage, you want to find journalists that specialize in a relevant subject (such as startups if you’re a company or the food business if you’re a chef). If you’re attempting to create links, you may contact individuals who have previously connected to comparable sites. The lesson here is that you should determine EXACTLY what you want to accomplish with your outreach before sending mass emails to hundreds of individuals.
Create Your List
Create a spreadsheet containing the names of your targets, the reason for your contact, and the URLs of any relevant websites. For instance, you might write down the website from which you’d want them to link to you or a recent piece they published about your sector. Additionally, you may include a “status” column to indicate if you’ve contacted them and received a response (if you use an email outreach tool, status is usually tracked inside of the tool).
How to Pitch Your Guest Blog Post Perfectly
1. Begin With Your Relationship
It should be something like that:
How are you?
Greetings from another chronic traveler who made a pit stop in South Florida as well. While you were drawn to New York City, I just relocated to Delray Beach. As a public relations and digital marketing aficionado, I thought you’d be interested in the following content marketing study.
This indicates three things:
She recognized you and called you by your name. This indicates that she either visited the “About page,” went to the bottom, and discovered you.
She checked your Twitter page and referenced your bio’s “chronic traveler” phrase.
She checked your About Me page and saw that you lived briefly in South Florida before relocating to New York City.
If you really care about having your piece published, you must realize that your connection with the editor is as critical, if not more critical, than the quality of your writing.
Make me care about you as a person, and I’ll read what you have to say far more probable.
2. Conduct Research
This one seems self-evident, but unfortunately, it is not for everyone. If you really want to write for someone, avoid sending out an anonymous proposal. Make reference to the blog’s contents, express appreciation for a recent concept featured on the site, and consider riffing on a common theme or creating a follow-up post to a particular piece.
3. The Subject Lines Are Critical
A good pitch, like a successful email marketing campaign, begins with the subject line. If you can’t convince an editor to read your email, how are you going to get her to examine your post?
Research indicates that 85% of editors read emails based on the subject line. This requires you to convey something personal, useful, or intriguing in a few short words.
Consider the following example of an excellent pitch subject:
Your intuition is correct; video is the next frontier.
And a less-than-stellar one:
Inquiry Regarding Guest Posting
The first is particular and provocative, whereas the second is generic and uninteresting.
4. Provide Choices For Original Content
If you discover that a specific site hasn’t addressed your chosen topic area throughout your investigation, you may believe you’ve struck gold. However, keep in mind that with a long lead time and a pipeline of material, the editor may have something quite close to what you intended.
Spend some time brainstorming subject ideas that you know you can nail and include several article ideas in your pitch. This demonstrates to your editor that you are adaptable in your expertise and ready to collaborate to create the greatest possible fit for their readership.
Then, after you’ve settled on a particular subject, provide 2-3 titles and graphic alternatives. This enables the editor to focus on what he or she does best.
5. Concise Is Sweet
Do not spend your time composing a colossal love letter in an attempt to capture the editor’s attention. A compelling pitch requires just the following:
- A brief description of who you are
- A rationale for why your work might be of interest to our readership
- A concise summary of possible topics
6. Readers’ Takeaways
It is not required to provide a final manuscript with your first pitch. Rather than that, you may spend your time convincing them of your ideas and then presenting a draft.
Is Guest Blogging Still Relevant For SEO?
Historically, guest blogging was seen as an efficient method of increasing a website’s SEO via the acquisition of backlinks from high-authority websites. However, some are increasingly questioning the usefulness of guest blogging as a genuine link development strategy. Indeed, this goes all the way back to 2014, when Google’s then-Head of Web Spam, Matt Cutts, said:
‘stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy’
Indeed, strong words. Additionally, Google released formal advice in 2017 about what it considers to be poor guest blogging practices. What does this imply for SEO guest blogging in 2020? To that end, in this article, we’ll determine if guest blogging is dead or still helpful for SEO.
Guest Blogging For SEO: Basics Explained
To begin, let us briefly discuss the relationship between guest blogging and SEO. It’s all about backlinks. Even with Google’s growing intelligence and machine learning capabilities, backlinks remain critical in determining a website’s authoritativeness. If you lack backlinks from high-authority websites, but your rivals have, they will almost certainly outrank you on Google for the majority of relevant terms.
As a result, the basic issue for every website owner interested in optimizing their SEO is “how to get backlinks.” That is where stage right guest blogging comes in.
What Does Guest Blogging Entail?
A guest blog post is a piece of material that you create and then submit to a third-party website under your name. These will often contain an author byline, which is a phrase or two describing the author and will frequently include (you guessed it) a link to the author’s website. You may often include hyperlinks to your website inside the main content of the guest post.
Guest Blogging And Link Building
While guest blogging is by no means the sole technique of link building (far from it!), it is unquestionably one of the most popular methods for generating backlinks for SEO. Additionally, it’s an excellent method to maximize the effect of your PR and SEO efforts.
Guest Writing For SEO Purposes: Major Issues
Anything that is seen as an efficient method of gaining backlinks will soon become misused in the SEO business. Google is all too aware of this and constantly engages in a cat-and-mouse game.
Guest blogging is most definitely not an exception to this norm, having been subjected to a great deal of abuse and manipulation. Some guest writings for SEO purposes have devolved into extreme spamminess. And it is for these unethical tactics that Google may penalize you. These include the following:
Guest Posting On Low-Authority Websites
The boom-and-bust cycle of digital publication has resulted in an oversupply of low-quality “news” sites starving for material and seeking to make a fast profit. These typically have lax editing standards and therefore often accept low-quality guest articles (sometimes in exchange for payment).
Content May Be Spun In An Infinite Number Of Directions
This is the “skill” of slightly altering already published material in order to post it on a new website in order to get more backlinks for SEO.
Sparse Material That Adds Minimal Value
This is when someone publishes a guest post only for the goal of obtaining a backlink, rather than providing an informative and useful piece for the readers of a publication (which should always be the primary purpose).
Excessive Optimization Of Backlink Anchor Text
If you cram a lot of terms into the anchor text of the backlink (for example, “best value travel insurance”), this may be seen as spammy.
Excessive Number Of Backlinks
Including a half-dozen hyperlinks inside the body of the guest post is another sign that you’re attempting to influence it.
Repeatedly Tapping The Same Websites
Because outreach and connection building for guest blogging may be time-demanding, individuals may be tempted to write guest blog articles on the same few websites with whom they have a good relationship. Avoid becoming too reliant on a few sites to publish your guest posts, since this may also be seen as spammy.
Employing Inexperienced Authors
Not being informed about the topic you’re writing about, or employing inexperienced authors. Similar to the argument made before regarding thin content. To offer real value to a website’s readership, you must understand what you’re writing about.
As a result, some in the business have exploited guest writing for backlinks, and spamming tactics have crept in. However, is guest blogging still effective for gaining SEO benefits? Without a doubt! We’ll explain more below.
Best Practices For Guest Blogging
Consider Guest Blogging As A Public Relations Effort, Not An SEO One
Occasionally, those working in the SEO business lose sight of the larger picture. When it comes to guest blogging, the main objective should be to show your experience and understanding of the topic at hand in order to enlighten and educate the reader. In public relations, we refer to this as “thought leadership.” As a result, consider any backlinks you get as a bonus, not the primary objective.
Verify Domain Authority Of The Website
Download the free Moz Toolbar to check the domain authority (DA) score of any website. This is a scale of 1 to 100 indicating the authoritativeness of a website. While this is not a Google-approved measure, it does offer a helpful “sniff test” of any website. As a general rule, avoid sites with a DA score of less than 30, and keep in mind that the greater the DA score, the more valuable the backlink from that site.
Guest Articles Must Be Unique
Avoid gently rewriting a post that has already been published or rewriting material that already exists on your site. Each guest post you create should be self-contained as a distinct piece of material.
Include Only Relevant Hyperlinks
If the guest blogging rules for a newspaper allow for the addition of hyperlinks to your website inside the main body of the piece, they must be editorially relevant. This means they must provide links to other resources on the topic of your guest blog post, such as related blog articles. Avoid stuffing your homepage or product landing pages with backlinks! Additionally, just one or two of these hyperlinks should be included.
Backlinks That Are Followed Vs Those That Are Not
One last and critical point to remember is the distinction between ‘follow’ and ‘nofollow’ backlinks. While this point is unrelated to remaining on Google’s good side, it is critical in determining if you get any SEO benefit from guest blogging after following all of the preceding recommendations.
Backlinks are classified into two types: follow and nofollow. While follow backlinks transfer “link equity” to the websites to whom they connect, nofollow backlinks do not. Thus, in Google’s view, a nofollow backlink provides no SEO benefit (or very little SEO benefit) to the website that receives it.
As a result, you must determine if the backlinks provided by a website in its guest articles are ‘follow’ or ‘nofollow’. Verify the hyperlinks in both the author’s bylines and the body of the article.
How To Scale Your Guest Blogging
The effect of guest blogging on companies and its continued relevance in today’s environment has sparked much discussion. However, it is generally accepted that guest blogging (when done “ethically”) continues to function.
While Matt Cutts stated that “guest blogging is obsolete”, he was referring to the spamming technique of acquiring fast and dirty connections for your website.
Indeed, he has publicly acknowledged the advantages of guest blogging, saying, “There are a lot of excellent reasons to do some guest blogging, such as enhancing brand awareness, increasing outreach, and getting the right exposure.”These reasons existed before Google and will continue to exist in the future. Additionally, there are some excellent, quality guest bloggers available. ”
And, in all honesty, that is quite accurate. Guest blogging may provide many significant advantages, including the following:
Assisting you in acquiring backlinks to your website that contribute to the improvement of your organic search rankings.
Increasing traffic to your website through referrals from other media and blogs.
Establishing a connection between you and/or your brand and a totally new audience.
However, guest blogging is a lot of effort and is not something that can be accomplished quickly. A guest blogging campaign requires advance planning and consistent, relentless work.
If you’re wondering how to successfully start and manage a guest blogging campaign, fear not. This blog article will assist you in streamlining your procedure for guest writing for your company.
This article will walk you through the process of developing a scalable guest blogging strategy. But first, let us discuss something critical.
Step 1: Preparation
As with other undertakings, conducting a successful guest blogging campaign needs a well-defined strategy outlining your objectives and responsibilities before you begin. Create a project plan document that includes the following critical information:
Goals
Make a list of the objectives you want to accomplish with the launch of this project. Are you seeking to rank in the top position for a few high-volume industry-related keywords? Are you hoping to increase your business’s referral traffic as a result of this campaign? Establish your objectives first so that you may plan appropriately. You do not want to find yourself in a situation where you have labored for months only to discover that your campaign’s objectives were unclear and the results were disappointing.
Timeline
Before you begin, choose precisely when you want to start and finish your campaign. You’re going to have to work on other projects, and failing to specify this before you begin your project may result in you deferring tasks until a “later” that never comes.
Monthly Goals
Establish monthly goals for the amount of emails you’ll send and the number of guest posts you’ll produce throughout this campaign. This will assist you in staying on track with your strategy and achieving your objectives more efficiently.
Five Distinct Components
Once you’ve specified all of this, you’re ready to start! Guest posting campaigns may be broken down into five distinct components:
- Prospecting
- Opportunities for sourcing
- Keeping a schedule of editorial events
- Obtaining publication of the article
- Increasing awareness of your guest posts
Consider these steps in more detail.
Step 2: Prospecting
When considering performing things on a large scale, you’ll need to prepare ahead and adhere to a procedure. Prospecting should always be the first stage in your guest posting strategy, since here is where it all starts.
Consider that your emails will most likely get a response rate of between 7% and 10%. Ensure that you have plenty of prospects in your queue.
Assume you want to rank highly on Google for five major keywords over the next eight to ten months. This is how your project’s timeline should look:
Create a database of 1,000 marketers/blog owners. Make a note of their first name, business name, and email address. You may do this task efficiently by using a program such as Buzzstream.
They should be placed in buckets/batches of 100 apiece. You may accomplish the same effect by using tags on Buzzstream or by creating segments/groups in your prospecting and email marketing tools. (Note: Ensure that you are only collecting prospects with a DA (Domain Authority) of 40 or more, or at least equal to the DA of your website, since the quality of the host website and the backlink is important.)
Step 3: Opportunities For Sourcing
While everyone does it differently, the most efficient method to ensure that things go well is to create a list of content ideas for your guest articles before you begin your outreach. This way, you’ll know exactly what you’re going to write about, and you can even include the content ideas in your outreach email and ask recipients to choose their favorite.
After that, the simplest method to find guest post possibilities on a large scale is via email outreach. When you send bulk emails, you may build a template and utilize merge tags to dynamically incorporate your prospects’ first name, business name, and other information into your emails. (Note: Your email marketing program may refer to this as a “personalization variable” — Autopilot, for example – but it basically performs the same function.)
Step 04: Maintain Editorial Schedule
Once you get approval to begin writing your guest articles, you must keep note of your blog posts and publications. That is why an editorial schedule is necessary.
Step 5: Publish The Article
Once you’ve completed the post, ask a member of your team to modify it internally before sending it to the appropriate publications. Frequently, the publisher will propose changes that you must approve. Another potential snag is a delay in replies from the website’s point-of-contact. Maintain contact with them on a frequent basis until they post it online.
Ascertain that you always get a do-follow backlink for your target keywords, particularly if the purpose of your campaign is to generate backlinks. The standard is for your guest articles to have at least one do-follow link.
Additionally, write a succinct, creative author bio that the website may utilize when publishing the blog article.
After your guest article is published, there is one last step!
Step 6: Spread The Word About Your Guest Posts
After your guest post is published, promote it on social media and encourage the host website to do the same. You may also request that they include a link to your blog post in their blog email to enhance exposure.
Additionally, promoting your guest articles demonstrates to others that you are actively engaged in writing about your business and sharing your expertise. Educating others about this is an excellent way to begin establishing yourself as a thought leader in your field.
Let’s take a short look at some of the most frequent errors individuals make when conducting a large-scale guest blogging campaign:
Ascertain that your backlink approach is targeted. Avoid attempting to get backlinks for an excessive number of keywords via your guest blogging campaign-you will end up spreading yourself too thin. Consistently acquiring backlinks for the same few search phrases can help you improve your ranking for those target keywords.
Step 07: Keep Track Of Your Progress
Ascertain that you are using a specialized rank tracking tool such as Unamo or a solution such as Synup that has an integrated search engine rank tracking function.
That is all! This should provide you with everything you need to develop a scalable plan for guest blogging on your business’s website.
Frequently Asked Questions About Guest Blogging
Is Guest Blogging Effective?
Guest blogging still works, and it is a good way to establish relationships with other bloggers, reach a new audience, improve your SEO, and build your blog’s reputation.
Do Guest Bloggers Get Paid?
Usually, guest bloggers are not paid, they only contribute to other blogs for relationship-building and to get backlinks. Many sites that require content and have a pool of writers will pay you for your guest posts. However, some sites may require you to submit a certain number of posts before they consider your application.
If you are looking to monetize your site, it is best to look into sponsored posts. It’s a great way to make money and get exposure. In general, sponsored posts range from $100 to $2,000, but the normal price range is roughly between $250 and $750, depending on the blog’s visibility and reputation.
Would It Be A Good Idea To Accept Guest Posts?
Before you decide whether or not to accept guest posts on your blog, it can be helpful to understand the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. The upside is you can publish free content that you don’t have to write, increasing traffic and the number of articles on your blog.
The downside to guest posting is that you have to be careful when accepting them. In order for the post to represent your brand well, it needs to be high quality and written in a familiar style. Otherwise, you’ll confuse readers who won’t know. Ensure the content and external links are high-quality and adhere to a strict editorial policy.
Do Guest Blogs Help SEO?
You can gain referral traffic and backlinks through guest blogging as it helps you get backlinks. Linking to these guest post sites serves as a do-follow link to your blog, which passes Search Engine Optimization value. It helps you increase your Domain Authority (DA) over time, which may help you rank better in search engine results.
When choosing a site to guest post on and adding links to your articles, remember that both must be done with caution. Write for reputable, quality blogs with high-quality content that have a strong DA in your niche.
If you include links to your blog in your guest posts, make sure that the anchor text is optimized. Making anchor text seem natural will help it flow seamlessly with the content and provide added value.
It’s also important to avoid over-optimizing your anchor text or using the exact keyword your blog post is targeting. Use keyword-match anchors (which contain the target keyword + additional searches), branded anchors (your blog name), and anchors that do not have your target keyword in them.
What Is The Ideal Number Of Links For A Guest Post?
An individual site’s editorial guidelines will determine how many external links a guest post can contain. For every 1,000 words of content, it is recommended to include 3 to 5 links. To get SEO benefits from your posts, ensure you include 2-3 links to your own blog in the content.
Guest Blogging: 7 Best Tools You Should Use
1. BuzzStream
This popular outreach tool allows you to manage the process from identifying influential members of your target audience and then managing your campaigns once those members are identified. A few of its most prolific clients are Airbnb, Glassdoor, Indeed, Canva, Shopify, and 99Designs.
What are some of the best features of Buzz Stream?
- Collect Leads -By using BuzzStream’s browser extension you can quickly and easily collect leads when you browse the web while capturing email addresses and social profiles on the fly. In addition to searching keywords and URLs, you can also discover influencers.
- Segmentation – The filters and segments can be modified based on the relationship status, tags, domain authority, and the number of followers of a lead. Segments can be used to split information into different categories. These segments can then be applied as filters to the data for further analysis.
- Email – Compose emails with BuzzStream by connecting your email program. One of the best things about emails is that you can schedule them, so they get sent at a time that’s appropriate.
- Email Templates – You can choose from several different email templates and create your own for future use.
- Follow-Up Campaigns – Mailings should be labeled at different stages of the campaign, from none opened to emails opened but not responded to. Furthermore, in addition to sending follow-up emails and alerts that remind you to follow up, a follow-up email can contain a reminder too.
- Reports – Review detailed reports enabling you to analyze the effectiveness of each individual campaign as well as the campaign as a whole.
2. JustReachOut
Consider making contact with a blogger, podcaster, or journalist who would be a good fit for your pitch. Its software displays what makes you a good guest for particular podcasters, and why journalists link to your website.
During the revision and sending of your pitches, its editors provide you with feedback, its Academy provides you with the best strategies and tactics so that you generate consistent exposure over time.
Your search results should provide you with the following action steps:
- Topics and keywords covered by journalists
- Getting published in other publications related to your niche
- If you are an expert in your niche, there may be a press opportunity for you
- You have broken links coming from high authority domains that point to your own niche-relevant websites
- Get notified of new press opportunities based on your searches every day, every week, or every bi-weekly
3. SEMrush
SEMrush is an application that can be used to perform a wide variety of marketing tasks. Domain and keyword overviews, for instance, are some of its best-known tools. They enable you to perform extensive keyword research and research your competitors. Besides backlink research and social media and advertising analytics, the application contains tools for tracking backlinks.
People often do not realize that SEMrush has a fully functioning outreach tool that enables managers to manage outreach campaigns, prospect, send emails, and monitor response rates.
In terms of outreach campaigns, what are the features SEMrush has to offer?
- Link Building Tool – You can use this tool to track your progress in finding prospects, sending emails, and following up.
- Backlinks – If you want to find out which sites link to a URL or domain, backlink data is available at any time. By doing this, you can find lead generation opportunities for the keywords you’re trying to rank for.
- Domain Overview – Visualize traffic and keyword analytics for any domain, enabling you to determine which sites would be most beneficial for guest posting and link building.
- Topic Research – One of the best ways to get guest posts is by creating a list of blogs that accept them. When you’re conducting large-scale outreach for content, this is especially helpful.
- Backlink Gap – Find out how many competing sites have backlinks that you don’t.
- Rank Tracking – The best way to see how your SEO is progressing for a target keyword is by tracking its position changes.
- Brand Monitoring -Analyze all mentions about your brand on multiple platforms and those of your competitors.
4. BuzzSumo
A few different ways are available for you to discover influencers and trending topics when using BuzzSumo. A number of publishers, including BuzzFeed, The Telegraph, and HubSpot have used it.
What are some ways BuzzSumo can help your outreach efforts?
- Influencers – Identify top influencers on multiple social media platforms by viewing who receives engagement versus who has the largest following.
- Monitoring -You can create alerts for the mention of keywords, your brand, competitors, and products. In addition to generating new leads, you will discover top and trending influencers.
- Content Discovery – You can search by keyword or domain and find the top and most shared content. Using this, you are able to come up with topic ideas and find influential blogs.
- Content Research – Find out what your competitors are doing right on social media by looking at their data. Backlink data is also available, so you can view dozens of opportunities for link building.
5. Follower Wonk
Instead of simply prospecting for blogs with search operators or conventional prospecting tools, how about starting with authorities and influencers within your industry?
If you already have a rapport with the blogger and you’re familiar with them, you’ll make it hard for them to reject your pitch. Then, blogger outreach can be successful just by email.
Following Wonk makes it easy to identify the influencers and authority figures within your industry – you can use keywords to help you find the users and then compare, analyze, and track their followers.
In addition, this tool helps you find the optimal times to contact your followers and other users of Twitter by highlighting when your followers tweet and where they are.
6. Link Research Tools
As with SEM Rush, this isn’t the kind of tool you would use to reach out to bloggers or post guest blogs, and it may be overkill for what you need, but it’s an impressive toolbox for SEOs with some very useful metrics.
In terms of reaching out to bloggers, LRT (Link Research Tools) comes with the following incredible tools:
- Contact finder – this is a remarkably powerful tool that will provide you with all the contact information for a website and its author, making it easier for you to connect.
- Backlink profiler – If you think the site owner is engaging in bad practices, then this tool brings up all of the website’s backlinks, breaks down the site type (blogs, directories, social networks, wikis, etc), and gives you a breakdown of the anchor text for each link.
- Link juice tool – This tool will tell you what sites will be best from an SEO perspective. While I think there are more important factors such as engagement and audience size, this tool can be helpful nonetheless.
- Link alerts — It’s important to know what links are coming into your website in order to identify problems as well as what campaigns are working because you will not only see the links from your guest posts, but also any additional links over which you have been able to build your authority through guest posting and blogger outreach.
7. Hunter
In 2015, Hunter was founded as an outreach tool. As time goes on, outreach campaigns can take advantage of additional features focusing on finding emails in various ways. In addition to Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe, it has been used by over 1.8 million customers.
What features does Hunter have?
- Domain Search – Find all emails in Hunter’s database associated with a particular domain.
- Email Finder – Find out a professional email address by entering an individual’s name and company name or domain.
- Email Verification -Verify an email or several in a single step. A number of concerns, including hard bounce rates, email formats, and domain information, are checked with the tool.
- Chrome Extension – Find email addresses from any domain on the fly with Hunter’s extension for Chrome.
- Campaigns – G Suite and Gmail users can track outreach campaigns by integrating their Gmail or G Suite accounts with Hunter. Using the tool, you can keep track of when emails are opened and replied to.
- Email Templates and Personalization – Sending outreach campaigns is easier with email templates. Whenever necessary, you can customize individual emails in a campaign.
- Scheduled Emails – Scheduled Emails are a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to be more productive. As the name suggests, it allows you to schedule emails and easily manage follow-ups.
Final Thought
While you’re at it, always remember to focus on the content. Don’t write for the sake of getting your articles published. This will tire you in the process and affect the quality of your writing, which will in return damage your reputation and performance.
Write engaging content which captivates the reader and holds their attention. This is what helps to build your audience and give fruitful results in the long run. Also, don’t deviate from your path. Stay focused on your goals, create posts, and share them as much as you can.