If you ask about the fastest way of growing your website, then the answer will be using someone else’s. Bloggers have a lot of followers and anyone can use them to be benefited through guest posting. But, this isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Considering an in-point case, then Freelancers use guest blogging strategies the most for earning a full-time income. Guest blogging is also used by the business for getting backlinks, brand awareness, and a lot more.
Guest Blogging in SEO
In SEO, guest blogging is the process of writing the content on a website that is owned by someone else for growing your business and then winning a backlink.
If we consider the simpler terms, then it is the practice where you contribute your content to another website. Individuals and companies for growing their brand awareness use this tactic.
But, usually, for the major part, of SEO, blogging is for link building. And, why it shouldn’t be? Links are catered as one of the primary factors on Google for ranking. An excellent opportunity is offered by guest posting for securing a do-follow backlink from a particular website. While if we see then bloggers always are there looking for unique and fresh content to post on their websites. This then makes guest-blogging a win-win situation for both the parties who are involved in this.
A backlink is then acquired by the guest blogger, and unique content is received by the blog hosting website.
Is Guest Blogging Good For SEO?
If we give a one-word answer for the above question, then the answer is yes. But, just like any other tactic, over the years, guest blogging has been abused. Hence, search engines further value guest blogging on niche-relevant websites.
Difference between Guest Posting, Guest Blogging, and Blogger Outreach
Considering the definition and aspects of guest blogging then guest blogging is writing for a website, and having your content published, the preliminary step is blogger outreach.
Before the publishing of your content or even before your writer has started working, you will be required to connect with the guest posting website and for this, you will be requiring blogger outreach expertise. Since 100’s emails are received by an average blogging website for guest blogging, you will be required to stand out and strike the right chord with them. And, this is exactly where blogger outreach comes in.
Blogger outreach is defined as a strategic process for building a relationship with the guest posting website and then attaining a backlink. In many cases, you will be required to have a stronger blogger outreach program that you will be needed to acquire. And well, blogger outreach is more than just sending and writing emails, the relationship you tend to build is built over time, and this often results in more frequent and greater blogging opportunities.
Who Guest Posting Can Benefit?
Considering content marketing, then guest posting is considered something crucial. It comes to help anyone to have put a word out for their services/products. Hence, for individuals and companies alike, guest posting can be highly beneficial. Now imagine a situation where you have to secure a backlink through a guest post on a website that has around 10,000 to 15,000 monthly traffic. Now just think of the potential visitors YOUR website will be getting.
Benefits of Guest Blogging
Guest posting has numerous other benefits besides link building and brand awareness, for starters these are the following:
- Boost your following – by posting on authoritative brands in your niche, you will be allowed their followers to entrust your services and products. An example of this is, that a technology post on The Verge gives an assurance of maximum brand awareness and credibility.
- Boost social media shares – If you are there publishing on some site with great social media activity, you then expect your blog post for receiving the same level of attention if the content is all worthy.
Even in the conditions where you don’t own a website, and run your operations through social media, you still can get yourself benefited from different opportunities offered by guest posting.
Furthermore, guest blogging’s conversion-oriented benefits include:
- Generating qualified leads – Instead of bulk marketing, guest blogging further narrows down the target audience. Hence you further generate different qualified leads.
- Shortening the sales cycles – Sales funnel for content marketing has always been challenging. You can further give an introduction to the value proposition of the brand on another website through guest blogging. Now think of it this way, instead of sitting there and waiting for the customers to mark their presence in your store, you come forward and put your product in the supermarkets.
A Roadmap to Guest Posting
Having a Guest Posting Strategy in Place
This is the basis of your every guest posting operations. Without having any sort of solid strategy being placed, one can’t expect to have achieved the desired results.
If you are new in the industry, then as compared to a brand awareness guest post, a conversion-oriented guest positing strategy will be less likely to succeed. The reason behind this is that you require social proof before pitching in your service or product.
If you are someone who owns a small business or any business in general, a link that links back to their “money pages” comes out as an acceptable strategy that you can work with. While in the cases where you don’t own a diverse backlink profile then it is advised that you come forward with building a base of DA40, DA30, and DA20 links before you start spending thousands on different links or a particular link from Forbes. Your link profile could be diversified by sticking to low and medium DA guest posts, and this will give your website the basis for getting coveted DA75+ links in only a few months.
Considering the situation for established brands, if your brand acquires an existing backlink profile that was built over some time, then you can further go forward to the guest blogs with high traffic catered in your mind. This guest posting strategy has its emphasis on the high traffic over a domain authority, and since the website you acquire has already a strong brand image and a high PA/DA, so you don’t value link building as much as leads.
List of Guest Blogging Sites
After deciding the purpose of your guest posting, the next step is listing down the relevant sites. According to Google’s professionals, spamming doesn’t encounter value to be added to the website. Such sites are devalued by Google with spam guest post links.
So what is the solution to all this? It is finding niche-relevant sites.
According to Google standards, it abandons websites that have links from different sources that don’t have any relevance to the business. Hence, one will always find different credible online platforms that lie the best within the specific niche as per the guest posting.
These are the different relevant examples of guest blog websites that are related to the technology businesses: Forbes, Entrepreneur, CMS Wire, Cloud Small Business Service, and Martech Series.
While the relevant examples for guest posting sites for the beauty niche are: The Health Care Blog, Chicago, Fit n Diets, The UK Time, and Fibre2Fashion.
Some examples of guest posting sites for the home improvement niche are Icyviolets, Flexhouse, Home inside, Balcony Garden Web, Humidgarden, etc.
Guest posting examples for the digital business niche are Quick Scream, Content Marketing Institute, Resultfirst, Hop Online, and Thrive My Way.
Writing Email Templates
Once you have shortlisted your guest posting websites and have added them to your sheet, then you can further start by writing different email templates.
And of course, it is important to get to the point and not waste the time of the one who is reading, but adding a little personalization will work for sure.
If you write more than one email template for your further use, then this indeed is a great idea since it will let you identify a more fruitful approach. But, before sending outreaching emails to the bloggers you require a strong plan of action.
The formula for Blogger Outreach
A concrete step-by-step master plan is established by the blogger outreach formula that further assists in reaching out to top bloggers. By using this formula, you can land on different levels of guest posts submissions in top publications. But what is the blogger outreach formula? It is awareness + desire + interest + action. This is a simple sales formula, but the way one uses it affects their blogger outreach campaigns.
For blogger outreach, with “Twitter” the real power lies. Many gifted and industry-leading writers are on this social media platform, so all you need is to build a relationship with them before asking them about a guest post. Here is a bit of a tip that you might want to do that:
- Engaging with them – you may need to follow the bloggers who are specifically for your niche and engage with them on their tweets, you might also feel the need to read their content and share different genuine compliments on their work for seeking their attention.
- Giving them credit – blogger outreach comes as pure sales pay. You might need to read the content of your bloggers and give them an awareness of your existence. For this, you will be needing to give them credit for their work. You should go through the latest publication of your blogger and share a quote that you loved. This will work as showing them your interest in their work.
- Agreeing, but with an explanation – opposing someone who you are trying to please is not nice but blatantly agreeing will of course put your efforts in jeopardy. You might want to agree with the bloggers on Twitter but sharing an explanation always is the key.
- Creating a discussion – this is the final step and so this is not easy, but it will become easy if you are aware of the niche of your blogger. But for starting with a discussion, you require to disagree. You have to do it politely, and share different references of the reasons why you think otherwise. This is going to depict your desire.
If you will be following these steps then you will be able to build frequent communication which will allow you to step into the bubble of your blogger. Once you are there, you can move forward by pitching in your request which will be your action plan. But, as with everything, it is not as easy as it is sounding or as it looks, but of course, if you will keep practicing you will gradually get perfect with this.
Follow Up
Once you have received the green light from the publisher, then comes the time when you start writing your post.
It must be made sure by you that you are there following the criteria for guest posting acceptance that is shared by the publishing site. Usually, it is found on the “write for us” page.
This criterion is shared by most of the publishers when they are there responding to your emails, in case you are unable to find this, you may outright ask them through a formal email.
Once your post is ready, you may send it to the publishing site by making a mention of “draft post”, this mention will further allow the publishing site to further send it for revision in the case where it doesn’t meet the criteria.
While if you send the final draft as the first mail, then it is highly possible that the publishing might reject your proposal.
The best time for sending a follow-up email is between 9 am to 12 pm, the reason for this is that from 1pmn to 3 pm there is a lunch hour in most organizations, and later to that editors are restless to get back home. While you can hear back from them in a span of 3 to 6 months so don’t lose hope as of yet.
