- Product
Preview a demo walkthrough
Outranking the competition with our cutting-edge SEO strategies.
Guest posting is one big strategy that can help you boost your website traffic, gain authority, and accelerate conversions in 2021.
However, finding these high-authority guest posting sites, writing these posts effectively, and pitching your ideas in a way that gets your guest post accepted is tough.
Many people do it very effectively, though. And with the right strategies, you can do it too.
In this article, we cover the five steps you can use to guest post effectively and use them to your advantage.
Here are the steps covered in this article:
(click on the links to jump to a particular section)
Without further ado, let’s begin.
Empowering writers, not replacing them.
The first step to guest posting is to find a site where you can submit a guest blog post.
There are several ways to find guest posting opportunities. Here are some of them:
The best way to find guest posting sites is to use Google search strings with your keyword. You can use the following string combination for this:
Your keyword +
Say you were looking for a marketing website to accept your guest posts.
You could use “digital marketing + guest post” or “online marketing + guest post” or any other similar combination to find out the list of websites where you can guest post.
You can also use your competitors’ sites and run them through a tool like Ahrefs to find some amazing guest posting opportunities.
All you have to do is run a backlink profile analysis and export the results.
Some of their backlinks may not come from guest posts, but many do.
You just have to filter the results to see highly relevant and specific guest post opportunities in your space.
Many online sites list the places where you can send a guest post.
Yes, they have done the work for you. All you have to do is search for them.
Here are some of the ones we’ve got on our list:
Now that you’ve found some good guest posting sites, your next task is to find out some topics that the site would be interested in covering but hasn’t already.
You can use a tool like BuzzSumo to do this.
Just pop in the URL of the website and run a search. To be sure it’s SEO-friendly, use our SEO friendly URL checker . You’ll find the list of potential keywords and popular topics that you can target.
Finding the content gaps in the blogger’s site and pitching those selective topics will solidify your chances of getting your guest blog post accepted.
Plus, the editors will always push the content harder to make sure it gets the needed traction.
Once you’ve found some good guest posting opportunities, you need to send a dedicated email with your topic idea.
Here’s where most people get stuck.
Why?
Because they mostly send generic emails to site editors and hope they’ll respond.
If the site you’re targeting is super authoritative, it’s unlikely for you to get a response to a generic, non-exciting email.
So, how do you make your emails stand out?
You need to personalize the emails that you send out and give them a solid reason to care about your post.
You can do this by starting your email pitch with something very specific about their site. You can write something on the lines of “Hey [name], I just loved this thing about the last article on your site.”
You can also warm up your targets before you email them and add something like, “You must have noticed my opinion on your post about [abc] topic (great article, by the way).”
If you are wondering how to find the editor’s email, you can check out this article on the 33 best email finder tools in July 2021.
Once you’ve told them why they should be listening, you can give a short introduction about yourself and some topics that you would like to submit for a guest blog post on their site.
So now that a publisher has accepted your pitch and you’ve found your awesome post idea, it’s time to write your guest blog post.
Here are some tips that you should keep in mind:
Create a detailed outline for your post. That way, you’ll be able to give it a strong structure.
Guest posting sites often have detailed guidelines that you should follow.
You can even print them out and work through, point by point, checking off everything you’ve done.
One big reason for you to guest post is for traffic and backlinks, right?
Use this opportunity to the maximum by including some internal links to your sites inside your post.
Don’t overdo it, and ensure that you include links from the contributor’s site as well.
Guest posting allows you to link your website from the guest’s website directly.
While this first-tier linking is invaluable for drawing some direct traffic, building second-tier links is equally important.
What are second-tier links?
Second-tier links are links that go to a webpage that has links to your website.
When you share your guest post on social media accounts, you’ve created second-tier links to your webpage.
Visitors viewing your guest post from these pages will also be redirected to your website through links in the guest post. The more links you create, the more people are likely going to reach your website.
But it’s more than that. You can create a chain reaction with your second-tier links.
The more high-quality second-tier links you create for your guest post, the more Google believes that the two sites are in a friendly relationship. And the more Google does that, the more it’s going to trust the links sprinkled on the guest post.
