Guest posting is a great way to build domain authority and improve SEO. It’s the process of writing blog posts for other websites, typically those with higher domain authority, and inserting backlinks to your site in those pieces of content. These backlinks serve as signals to search engines that these reputable sites vouch for your content. With these signals, the same search engines may decide your own pages are worth surfacing on search engine result pages. But you can’t just write content, send it to authoritative sites, and expect them to publish it. This is where guest post outreach comes in.
What is guest post outreach?
Guest post outreach is the process of reaching out to authoritative sites to request guest posting opportunities. In other words, you’re requesting sites for the opportunity to write for them. This is different from a link insertion outreach where you reach out to authoritative sites so you can insert backlinks in those sites’ own already-published content.
You can reach out to authoritative sites in many ways. However, email is still a popular guest post outreach vehicle.
How to perform effective guest post outreach
In this section, let’s talk about how you can perform effective guest post outreach. Follow these steps for the best results:
1. Create a list of target sites
If you want to outrank your competitors, you must carefully pick which sites to reach out to for your guest post outreach campaign.
Ask yourself which sites cater to your audience. So, if you’re selling Instagram likes, you know your target audience should be social media and marketing practitioners who are engaged in purchasing Instagram likes. So you’d want to tap content websites that feature marketing and social media topics. These are the topics these practitioners are more likely to be interested in.
List down the websites that fall under this category. Just perform a search and note the domains ranking on SERPs (except forums and online communities).
Guest Post Outreach
Run each domain you get through a backlink checker and check out the other domains linking to those sites. Here’s what I get when I run Hootsuite’s URL through a backlink checker:
Guest Post Outreach
Once you’ve generated your list, cross out the websites with a domain authority lower than 50. Remember, you want reputable websites linking back to you for the best results. It’s better to generate backlinks from high-DA sites than from low-DA sites. That’s the best way to maximize your guest writing efforts. Once you’ve crossed those out, you have your final list.
2. Find the right contact information
You need to determine the key people to reach out to—writers and editors, among others—for each of those sites you have on your list. Websites usually have a “Write For Us” section which you can refer to for writing guidelines and contact details.
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But if the website doesn’t have an About Us page, just get their names based on a quick search of their company and use LinkedIn or an email finder to get their email address.
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Another way to get pertinent contact information is to look through the website’s blog section. Take note of the writers of the website’s blog posts. If their contact details are in the blog post author bio, great. If not, you may again use LinkedIn or an email finder to look for their contact details.
Compile the critical contact information for each website in a list. You may also want to feed this information to a platform that can help you nurture your relationships with them. You’ll need to write multiple blog posts to see good SEO results, after all.
Just make sure you treat the website staff as your customers. We all know updating your customers’ data is critical to CRM optimization and sales. In the same way, updating the website staff’s details is critical to effective guest post outreach and, therefore, in a way, SEO.
3. Build an outreach template-Guest Post Outreach
No one will be interested in reading a proposal that comes across as not genuine. You need to know how to approach the person who can help you land that guest blogging opportunity.
However, writing cold emails from scratch to each website point person isn’t practical. There’s no way you can scale your guest post outreach with this approach.
Build an outreach template
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So, the best way is to create an outreach template that will apply to all the websites you plan to reach out to. The template doesn’t have to be complicated. Just look at the example above. It’s straightforward and conversational. Leave the essential fields blank so you can fill them out depending on the websites you’re reaching out to.
Include your template in your B2C or B2B SaaS marketing plan, whichever applies, so your other team members can use it.
Also Read: Manage Guest Bloggers To Write On Your WordPress Website
4. Come up with guest post topics
Notice that your template above has a section for suggested guest post ideas. But how do you come up with these suggested topics in the first place? Well, just determine what piece of content your primary target market will be interested in.
You can do this by checking out community forums, using keyword research tools, and even using Google’s autofill feature.
Come up with guest post topics
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You have to make sure the topics haven’t been covered on the website you’re reaching out to. Your suggested topics should also allow you to incorporate your guest post link contextually. You’ll also have to implement proper backlink management later on.
Once you have your suggested topics and include the relevant data in your outreach template, send it away. If you don’t get a response, don’t be disheartened. Send a follow-up email. If they still don’t reply after you send your second email, they’re probably not accepting guest posts.
In Closing on Guest Post Outreach
Just as a business contract template is a critical component to focus on when you begin working with a new client, Guest post outreach is a critical component to focus on if you want to improve your website’s SEO and get more people to your site. But there’s a right way to do this.
You need to list the target sites relevant to your audience and find the right contact information. Then create an outreach template you can send to all your target websites. Come up with guest post topics and finally, send them away. Don’t forget to send a follow-up email to the website if you have to.
Go ahead and nail those guest post opportunities. Best of luck!
Author Bio
Nico Prins is the founder of Crunch Marketing, a SaaS Link Building Agency. The company works with enterprise SaaS clients, helping them scale lead generation globally across EMEA, APAC, and other regions.
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Guest Blogging Strategy For SEO And Traffic Generation
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