What is Guest Posting?

Guest posting is producing an article on someone else’s site. At the end of the article, you’ll be credited with a by line and a link to your own site.

 

It involves a lot of work, but it works great. It’s one of those things that’s tedious and time consuming, but has a really high chance of working out in your favor.

 

The downside is, you need to write a high-quality article that’s going to be published on someone else’s site. When you’re just starting a niche site, you’re usually busy enough trying to build content for your own site.

 

Focusing on producing articles to place on other sites can seem unproductive.

 

HOWEVER… there are times when guest posting works better than anything else. And we will show you exactly how to go about the entire process so that your success rates are through the roof.

 

 

Should you use Guest Blogging for Link Building Strategy?

 

we recommend going with guest posting if:

 

1. You’ve tried the other outreach link building strategies with minimal success.
2. You’re in a niche where guest posting is actually accepted.
3. You want a link on a specific site and guest posting seems like the best strategy to use.

 

The other link building strategies are much easier and faster. We just have to do outreach and try to acquire links.

 

With guest posting, we’re adding on another task: creating content… high quality content. So this is a link building strategy you should  choose carefully, depending on what niche you are in.

 

When other outreach link building strategies aren’t working… guest posting is one of the strategies that you can rely on to land a few strong links.

 

 

Other Guest Posting Benefits

The effects and results you get from guest posting will vary by industry. Some niches will be perfect for guest posting, and you’ll find endless sites where you can guest post on.

 

Others… may not be ideal for it.

 

Usually, the niches with a lot of blogs/sites that are frequently updated with new posts will be perfect for guest posting. (Media companies and bloggers are always looking for new content to fill into their posting schedules)

 

• Promotion benefits

If you’re in such a niche where guest posting is a good option, then you have a lot of promotion opportunities.

 

Guest posts send a lot of traffic your way, and you get more engagement with readers of the site you guest posted on. Having your site listed in a resource page, or a list article will boost rankings, but guest posting can boost rankings + give you exposure.

 

With guest posting, the site features you and the entire post is revolved around you. If it’s a large site with a big audience, then influencers in your niche are likely to be readers as well.

 

This creates opportunities in the future to pick up links naturally, connect with influencers, and to promote yourself within your niche.

 

 

How to Guest Post like an elite SEO

The biggest mistake that people make when guest posting is they treat it like normal outreach. They just send emails to a bunch of sites they want to guest post and ask if they can write on their site.

 

While that’s a long-time strategy that’s still being used today, it’s ONLY effective if your site or you yourself are already established as an authority in your niche.

 

For new sites that are just getting started, you NEED to show the goods upfront if you want the deal to happen.

 

So here’s how it goes…

 

Step 1: Find 10 sites that you would want to get Link from

Only 10 prospects. With the way we’re approaching this strategy, we don’t need hundreds of prospects for one guest post.

 

How to find prospects ?

This part is easy. Just google your keywords. Find the biggest and most popular sites in your niche.

 

Look for sites that have:

 

1. High rankings for major keywords.
2. Lots of traffic. Check their stats in SimilarWeb
3. Lots of engagement. Look for things like a lot of comments per article, a big social media presence.
4. Authority. Check their backlinks using a backlink checker like Moz. If they’re ranking highly for major keywords, they’ll likely have a lot of links, but run through them to see which ones are your best prospects.

 

Once you have 10-20 sites as prospects, note their url and contact info.

 

After running through the 4 criteria listed above, list out the prospects in order from strongest to weakest. This will come in handy when we start reaching out to them.

 

Step 2: Write the article

Instead of contacting sites and ask for a guest post, you’re going to write the article first and use that to entice them into saying yes.

 

If you haven’t guest posted before, and your site isn’t a recognized site in your niche, then you NEED to do it this way.

 

Instead of saying, “Hey. Can I guest post on your site?”

 

Your saying, “Hey, I wrote this in-depth article about X that I’m sure your readers will find interesting. Could you take a look at it? I would love to guest post this on your site.”

 

Now it’s not about your name or your site’s credentials. It’s about the quality of your article.

 

If they like it, then you got yourself a link – and it’s going to be published faster since you already have the post written.

 

This is a much more effective way to guest post and your success rates will skyrocket.

 

How to write the article ? 

 

• Choosing the topic

The first thing that you need to worry about is what the article will be about. It needs to be a topic that your niche is interested in, and one that the major players in your niche will be interested in publishing.

 

The best way is to go through each of the sites that you’ve listed down and check to see what kind of content they’re publishing.

 

You don’t need to get too nitpicky about this. Just skim through each one.

 

If you really want to dive into it, run each site through BuzzSumo to see which of their pages have the most social shares.

 

You could then create content based around a similar topic, or even a follow-up post referencing one of their old posts.

 

• Writing the article

The next part involves writing the article. You NEED to make it a very high quality article backed up with a lot of sources. If you want a guest post on a high quality site, your article needs to match their high quality standards.

 

The best type of content for guest posting are list posts. They’re easy to digest, easy to organize, and easy to write.

 

Once you’ve written it and are happy with it, save it into a text file. If it has images, just leave everything as is even if they’re being served from your servers.

 

 

Step 3: Outreach

The next part is to start reaching out to your prospects. What we’re going to do is contact just 5 at a time… starting with the strongest 5. We don’t want to contact all 10 because of the success rate using this guest posting strategy.

 

Out of the 5, if the article is good, someone will usually accept it. That’s why we’re starting with our strongest 5 prospects first.

 

• How to write your outreach email ?

BEFORE you send the article over, you’re going to start a conversation with them. Because you should only try to guest post on sites that would be worth writing a high quality article for.

 

• What if nobody replies?

Not everybody will reply within a day. And you won’t always have your #1 prospect accept your post right away.

 

If nobody from your first 5 prospects list replies to your email, wait 5 days, then move onto the next 5 prospects. Because you already have the article written, though… you’ll likely receive a response.

 

• Guest posting AFTER your site is established

Once you have an established site, and a few guest posts already published, then you don’t need to write the article first.

 

People know you already. And if they don’t, you can use your previous guest posts, and articles on your own site, as your credibility checks.

 

Step 4: Commenting

In step 2, we have mentioned that we should try to include 2 links with our guest post. One goes within the content, and the other in your author by line.

 

But there’s one more link that you need to create that will make sure that you send a ton of traffic to your own site.

 

• Be the first to leave a comment

For any guest post,you make sure that you are the first to leave a comment so that it’s at the top.

 

You can do this for 3 reasons:

 

1. You want people who skimmed the article to know that you wrote it.
2. You want to leave another opportunity for people to click through to my site.
3. You want to genuinely thank them for having me on their site.

 

Not everyone reads every single line in an article. However… people usually always read the first few comments to see what others thought of the article.

 

By being the first to comment, it lets readers know about you , and gives them the opportunity to come to your site.

 

Here’s what it looks like:

 

 

Usually, when the post goes live, the site owner will let you know about it so you should go in immediately to leave your comment. And then… of course answer any questions from reader comments.

 

 

Check more interesting Articles:

Steps To Effective SEO Copywriting – Help You Rank Higher

How To Increase Traffic To Your Blog : Beginner’s Guide

What Is The Blog Business Model : Make Passive Income

5 Proven Ways To Increase Website Traffic

 

 

Conclusion

As you can see, guest posting can be pretty powerful. For some sites, guest posting will be the ideal way to go about getting a link.

 

Guest posting was the perfect way to connect with them. The hardest part is getting your first few guest posts published as a new site and a new author.

 

But with the strategy we mentioned in this article first, it has a surprisingly high success rate.

 

Although it takes a little more work than the other outreach link building strategies. this is the one that works quite well.

 

 

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