Guest posting is a hot topic in digital marketing.
Bloggers and businesses can use this marketing strategy to boost their online presence, reach new audiences, and share expertise.
We will prove our point with a few examples:
- Elna Cain made a full-time living from freelance writing by using guest posting
- Buffer uses guest posting to attract 100,000 new customers
Guest blogging, as the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), points out, is a crucial part of your marketing strategy, as it provides offsite expert content. With a successful digital marketing strategy, you can create a personalized experience for all customers around the world.
You’ve come to the right place if you ever wondered what guest posting is or how you can get started.
This guide to guest posting will provide tips and insight for both startups and established companies.
What is a guest post?
Guest blogging is the act of publishing an article or blog on another person’s site. Guest blogging is a great way to share expertise and insights. It can be beneficial for both guest bloggers and host sites.
What is a guest blog post?
Guest posts are articles or pieces of content that are written by people who do not regularly contribute to a blog or website. The content is instead contributed by a third-party writer who often wants to promote a certain message or brand.
Guest blogging has many benefits
Let’s now look at the benefits of being a guest blogger. You can achieve the following by writing guest posts for blogs:
- Referral traffic: Increase your content marketing ROI and referral traffic by driving traffic to other reputable sites.
- Brand Recognition: Content on other websites can help you reach new audiences and promote your brand.
- Lead generation: You can increase your lead generation by attracting new readers to your landing page or site.
- Social proof: Credibility is gained when your content is published on authoritative and trusted sites.
- You can establish yourself as an expert in your field by regularly posting guest posts.
- Link Building for SEO: Backlinks from quality sites are a major SEO ranking factor.
- Ranking algorithms consider quality backlinks as signals, which can improve your site’s ranking on Google search results pages.
- Content Marketing: Guest posting is a great way for website owners to meet their content requirements, which is a key content marketing challenge.
Guest postings are a great way to get your site noticed. But the quality of the post and its relevance, as well as the reputation of the blogger, is crucial.
How to Post a Successful Guest Post
Know Your Goals Step
As with any other marketing strategy, knowing your goals is the first step to a successful guest blog strategy. You have to know your goals if you want to achieve them.
- Guest blogging strategies are typically designed to achieve the same goals as those described above. These include:
- Traffic to a landing page or to your website in general to increase leads and sales
- Branding your products and services to increase awareness
- Attracting inbound links to improve SEO
- You can position yourself as an authority to be cited and given speaking engagements.
Increase your email subscribers or social media audience
Find Guest Posting Opportunities
You’ll need to research a website that is looking for guest bloggers and accepts them. You’ll also need to make sure that the blog will help you achieve your goals.
You can, for example, use Google to locate sites that accept guest postings on topics you wish to write about. Some sample search queries include:
- “Write for Us” + [topic keyword phrase]
- [keyword phrase] + “guest post”
- [topic keyword phrase]+ “become contributor”
These queries will direct you to the blog’s guidelines for guest posts, submission pages, or guest articles from other contributors.
You can find more search suggestions by checking out this list from Optimize Smart.
Twitter also allows you to use similar queries. You can also use similar queries on Twitter.
You can use Google, Twitter, or any other search engine to find guest blogging websites. These will be useful later when you’re deciding if this is the right opportunity for you.
Check out your competitors’ guest posts to see if you can find other opportunities. Guest bloggers often share their articles to boost their reputation. You’ll see links to guest posts if you subscribe to their newsletter or follow them on social media.
You’ll see all the information you need in the report. This includes the backlinks themselves, the anchor texts, the domains that referred you, and much more. You’ll want to look for the Ref dropdown menu. Page platform, and select Blog. You will only see blog sites and guest posts.
Domain Authority
Use Moz’s Link Explorer first to determine the domain authority of the site that you are considering. This will tell you whether the site has a good reputation online. This will also let you know if guest postings on the site are likely to be beneficial in terms of referral traffic and links. As an example, here’s the domain authority report of the Content Marketing Institute.
Subscriber and Follower Count
Check the number of social followers and email subscribers for the brand. These numbers are usually published by site owners if the audience is large enough.
Check out the social media profiles of the website owners if they don’t have any numbers. Also, see if they promote their content (including that from guests) regularly. You can see if they post links to their blog regularly by looking back at the past month of content.
Blog Content
Then, check out the blog of the website. Check if the website’s blog matches the topics that you would like to write about. It’s normal for many websites to have low comment numbers. Even if your social sharing numbers aren’t high, a website that reaches the audience you want can help you achieve your goals.
You can check the author bios that are at the end of guest posts to ensure you get the credit and direct readers to your website, like in the example from the OptinMonster Blog.
- It’s now time to choose a topic.
- You already know the most popular pages on your site. Think about what you can do to add value.
- Response to the content on the website
- Additional information on a popular subject
- Write something original on a subject that is likely to be popular among the audience
Buzzsumo can be a useful tool when you want to narrow down your choices. Buzzsumo allows you to search for the most popular content within a particular site, industry, or topic.
Submit Your Pitch Submit Your Pitch
Avoid generic pitches for guest postings to ensure a successful strategy. You can create a personal pitch for each website owner if you have done your research as we’ve suggested.
The first rule to follow is to keep your pitch short to the point. Don’t waste the time of site owners, especially those who have authoritative sites.
Second, should use their name. Most site owners will not read pitches by people who aren’t bothered to look up this simple contact information.
Third, should include the title of your post. Some successful pitches include this as the subject of the email and as a subheading within the email body.
Buzzsumo’s results will also show you popular headlines. This list of headline tools will help you find the perfect headline. You’re already halfway there if the person to whom you are pitching likes your title.
The next step is to write a guest post if your pitch is accepted. If it’s your first time writing for a website, you should make it even better than you did before.
Craft a Stellar Headline
Begin by re-reading the headline of your pitch. It doesn’t matter if it was a hit with the owner of the website. You can still come up with some other options. Here are some of the best headlines.
- Include the benefit to the reader
- Use action words
- Tap into emotion
Our readers love the headlines we use on our OptinMonster Blog! This guide will help you write great headlines.
Research Keyword Phrases
Your guest content will be a hit with website owners if it ranks high in search engine results and generates organic traffic. Just as you would for your content you should do some keyword research and find a few core phrases that you can use to optimise it.
Search engines will be able to tell that your content is relevant if you use keywords correctly (not by stuffing them in). This helps both searchers and you. You can find help in our complete keyword research guide.
Link Appropriately
Ideal guest posts will have an impressive link profile. This helps to improve SEO and build authority. You should also include internal and external links that are relevant to the post.
Link to useful external resources and great content on the site for which you are writing. This gives the content an excellent link profile which is good for SEO, and also builds authority.
Be sure to follow the link guidelines provided by site owners. Some sites limit the number of links. You’ll notice this when you get to the bio.
Include Images
If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding images, suggest or include relevant images in your buy guest post services. They will highlight your key points and help readers scan the text. Our guide to free image websites will help you find high-quality images to use for your guest blog strategy.
Correctly format the post
Format the post to match the other posts on the website. Take note of how they format their posts, including subheadings and bold text. The more work you do for the site owner, the happier he will be to continue working with you. You can follow the guidelines provided by some sites for guest writers.