Most people believe guest blogging is a dead and stereotypical approach for building links, generating organic traffic, and promoting content.
Whereas, in reality, it is a strategic method to earn multifold profits. That’s why a vast majority of websites are using it to their advantage today.
As a website owner, the thought of leveraging guest posts to build backlinks must have crossed your mind.
In this article, we will develop this thought and help you transform it into reality.
Our key learnings from this article will be:
- What are guest posts?
- How do guest posts help you earn backlinks?
- How to get your guest posts published?
- How can you track your link-building progress?
Let’s begin.
What Are Guest Posts?
Guest posts are blogs and articles contributed by an external author to a website’s blog.
When a person shares their expertise in an article and gets it published on another website, it is called guest posting.
Here’s a guest post published on RankWatch:
The key characteristic of a good guest post is that it contains links to the author’s site at relevant and appropriate places.
These links transform into backlinks for the author’s site once the guest post is live on another website.
So, guest posting is widely used to build backlinks and improve search rankings.
The other key benefits of guest posting include:
- Getting targeted traffic
- Building brand recognition
- Generating leads and conversions
- Enabling networking
- Improving rankings
- Improving website’s authority
If you are also looking forward to guest posting, here are a few points you should remember:
- Write blogs that hold unbiased, logical and statistical information. Don’t stuff your blog with irrelevant backlinks.
- Determine goals for your articles and conclude your blog accordingly.
- Always keep your target audience in mind.
With that, your guest posts are sure to stand out. Once you have written a guest article, you should know how it gets published on another site.
How To Get Your Guest Posts Published?
Here’s a 5 step process to get your guest posts published:
Step 1: Find websites where you can get your guest post published.
Perform a quick google search for ‘top blogs on coaching sites’, etc., and you’ll have plenty of websites to reach out to.
Alternatively, you can analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles using a tool like Ahrefs or RankWatch’s Link Explorer.
With these tools, you can easily find out the domains linking to your competitor sites.
You can reach out to the domains that have given them backlinks and pitch them your guest post.
Once you have a list of potential linking domains, it’s time you find their email IDs to contact them.
Step 2: Get email addresses associated with the website.
Your guest post pitch must reach the appropriate person. In case it lands in the wrong inbox, your guest post might never get published.
There are several online tools that you can use to find email addresses. Here are some of them:
Using them, you can easily find emails of all the domains you wish to contact. You can save the data in an Excel Spreadsheet or Google Sheet for ease of use.
Sometimes, you will be able to find many emails for a particular website and sometimes none. Don’t get overwhelmed or disappointed with that.
Finding an email is one thing and getting a response to your email is another. Next, think of what you will write in the email.
Step 3: Draft a guest post pitch and email it to the websites.
The key to getting your guest post accepted is a killer pitch.
Write about your experience, give a gist of your content, and don’t forget to mention why you think this guest article will benefit them.
You can also include your previously published articles and contributions (if you have them) to give the recipient a flavor of your writing.
Here’s a sample pitch for help:
Hey <Reciever’s Name>,
Hope you are doing well.
I have been an avid reader of your blog and found something strikingly common between us – love for comprehensive and well-researched posts.
So, I’d like to contribute to your blog and add value to it. I believe your readers will benefit from the expertise and insights I’ll share.
If you approve, I would like to work on the topic, ‘Why Should You Have A Coach For Personality Development’.
In my article, I will throw light on the following pointers:
- Why is personality development important
- How a coach can help you improve your personality
- What changes will it bring in your life
If it sounds interesting to you, I would love to write the whole article and see it published on your blog.
Please let me know your thoughts.
Waiting for your reply,
<Sender’s Name>
Similarly, you can create your own guest post pitch. Once you have your pitch ready, send it to the website using the email you found.
It is preferred to email the content manager, outreach manager, or editor in chief of the website.
Since these people are decision-makers in this regard, the chances of hearing back from them are high. Plus, they can quickly give you feedback.
Rest leave it on the charisma of your pitch; it will pull them towards you.
If it doesn’t, you need to rework your pitch and try approaching them again. But remember, don’t spam.
Step 4: Work on the guest post after getting approval.
Once they reply to your pitch, approving your guest contribution request, it’s time you start working on your guest post.
To begin with, do thorough research, collect necessary information and data, and prepare your outline.
When you start writing, make sure you include everything relevant and cut out on the fluff. Also, add links to your resources, blogs, etc., at appropriate places.
Once it’s ready, run it through Grammarly for a quick error check and through Hemmingway Editor to assess its readability.
If everything is on-point, go ahead and share it with the website.
Step 5: Submit the guest article and ask for a review.
While sharing, make sure you submit your content with images, infographics, gifs, etc., in a Google Doc or Word document. (It should be easily accessible.)
Also, it must contain a headshot or a small bio about the guest author (you). You can choose to include a display picture of yours too.
Post submission, ask for feedback. Every website has its likes and dislikes for content. So, it will help you improve your guest post and understand how you can better your writing in general.
If they ask you to make changes, do it and let them know. If they don’t want further changes, they will happily accept your guest article.
Sometimes they will give you a publishing date; other times, you’ll have to follow up with them on the progress.
But, once it’s according to their wish, half of it is done. Just be patient, and the link to your guest article will show up in your inbox soon.
As a general rule of thumb, most people first submit guest posts to websites that approved topics more than 15 days ago.
Why? Because the email thread doesnt get lost, and your contribution request stays afresh in the other person’s mind.
Bonus: Update your guest post calendar from time to time.
Since you are reaching out to many websites, it is always advantageous to have a guest post calendar in place.
You can list out the websites you approached and got approval from, along with the date of approval and the topic on which you’d be writing for them.
It will help you see how many guest posts you currently have in the pipeline and prioritize your tasks accordingly.
When you submit a guest post, you can mention the submission date against the website and follow up if you don’t hear from them soon.
Also, you can keep collecting the published links in the content calendar to see their performance from time to time.
With that, you are ready to build as many backlinks as you want and get better results from your SEO efforts.
How To Track Your Link-building Progress?
After putting in all that effort to create and market your guest article, it is necessary to track your link-building progress.
Maintaining a progress report might look like an extra task, but it will give you an idea of what works best for you.
Using RankWatch’s backlink checker tool, you can easily monitor and track your link-building progress.
You can check it from time to time (weekly or monthly) and prepare a link-building progress report.
In the report, you must include:
- The date when you checked your backlinks
- The current count of backlinks to your site
- The new referring domains and their referring URLs
With that, you’ll be able to see if your guest posting efforts are paying off or not.
It will give you a clear overview of the strategies and ideas that worked out well and that need change.
Over time, you will have a well-optimized plan, and there will be no looking back.
Conclusion
Guest blogging is one of the top strategies a coach or expert should use to generate high-quality backlinks.
Sending engaging pitches that showcase your expertise and getting your guest posts published is not as hard as it looks.
Just follow the 5 step process mentioned above and be consistent with your guest posts. Results will follow. Good luck!
Will you be using guest posting for your website? Let me know in the comments.