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How To Start Guest Posting: A Step-by-Step Guide

Guest posting is a popular and effective way of growing your audience, whether you are just starting out or are well-known in the field. Guest posts on sites with high domain authority can help you increase your own, while also improving rankings on SERPs. Moreover, a guest post can establish you as a thought leader and expand your network significantly.

To fully grasp the concept of guest blog posting, allow us to walk you through the steps of what makes a great campaign — from setting your goals to pitching a guest post and tracking your progress. 

6 Steps to Creating Your Guest Post Campaign

Creating a guest post campaign is a whole process, so we’ve broken down the steps for you to map out your strategy and progress at every stage.

1. Set Your Goals

As a business owner, goal setting should be the first step you embark on to know where you are and where you want to be. Define what you want to achieve by starting a guest post campaign — whether that is making your name known, enhancing your brand awareness, expanding your network, bringing back traffic to your site, building authority, or improving SEO rankings.

2. Find Guest Posting Opportunities

These days, it isn’t too difficult to find guest posting opportunities online. You can find guest posting opportunities that suit your brand’s particular goals, through the following:

  • Find Sites That Align With Your Audiences’ Interest - Define your audience’s buyer persona by listing down general topics and categories that they may be interested in. This will help you target sites and create meaningful content that you know your audience will like and appreciate.
  • Find Sites That Align With Your Industry - One rule of thumb to follow with guest posting is to reach out to sites within your niche and industry for better relevance. This is how you can meet your audience where they are at, and you will get to direct them back to your own site through your content.
  • Find Sites Where Your Competitors Post - You can also look into the sites that link to your competitors. This can give you the assurance that you will be able to submit a guest post on their site, and that they will be willing to link to you as well. 

How To Search For Sites That Accept Guest Blogs

To get started on searching for sites that accept guest blogs, you can test out the following strategies to see which gives you the best results:

  • Reverse Image Google Search - Look for thought leaders in your industry who are frequent guest posters. In many posts, headshots of guest writers are displayed so you can copy the image address or URL and search it on Google’s reverse image search bar. This will lead you to all the sites they’ve posted on.
  • Twitter Results - On Twitter, you can search for keywords related to your niche or industry, by typing the “[keyword] guest post.” In an instant, you will have a whole list of sites that accept guest posts on these topics.
  • Look Into Competitor Backlinks - Using Ahrefs, you can check out the backlinks of your competitors. Afterwards, you can filter out which of these results are guest posts – and you will even be able to identify sites that do not typically promote that they are accepting entries.
  • Check Out Google Search Strings - Google is the most basic way you can find guest posting opportunities. You simply have to type the following search strings — or iterations of them, and you’ll be led to sites to get started with: 
    • “[keyword] + write for us”
    • “[keyword] + contributing writer”
    • “[keyword] + guest post” 
    • “[keyword] + submit an article”
    • “[keyword] + guest article”
    • “[keyword] + guest post opportunities”
    • “[keyword] + guest post guidelines”

3. Filter Your Selected Sites

When you have your selected sites, you can then filter out which ones will help you fulfill your strategy or goals. Using the following metrics, you will have a narrowed-down list of sites that will help you see the best results.

  • Backlink Portfolio - A website’s backlink portfolio will tell you a lot about its quality, strengths, and weaknesses. This will help you improve your off-page SEO efforts as well.
  • Social Media Engagement - Your target site’s social media presence will tell you a lot about how audiences engage with the posts shared. Choose sites that promote posts on their social media platforms, with audiences who frequently like and comment on these posts.
  • Domain Authority - You can check a site’s domain authority on Open Site Explorer. Aim for sites with scores of over 30 so that you know you have a better chance of improving your own domain authority.

4. Plan Your Guest Post

When you have chosen which sites you are ready to pitch to and post on, thoughtfully planning your guest post should be your next priority. Site owners should ensure that their pitch fits well into the host site’s niche. Focus more on how your post will be relevant to the chosen site, above all other priorities — such as your own motives. 

Take your time combing through the host site’s previous blogs. Look at their most popular posts, and search for patterns that will tell you about the topics they usually publish, or their preferred writing style. You will also need to understand the specific details of their audience – what level of expertise they have on the topics, and if they are regular consumers or a B2B company.

Gathering all this information about the host site, and tailoring your content to suit it will heighten your chances of getting accepted as a guest blogger. 

5. Reach Out To Your Desired Site 

Double-check again if your content follows the site’s guest posting guidelines. When you are ready, send in your content with a pitch. Pitches should be personalized to help you stand out and appear more interesting. Get to know the backgrounds of the site owners or editors that you are pitching to as well, so you can address them accordingly.

In your message, make sure to attach all the common requirements beforehand, such as your headshot, credentials, author bio, and links to previous blogs so that you have better chances of getting accepted right away.

Tips For A Successful Pitch

Pitching to a host site can be tricky when you are just starting out, so here are a few tips to increase your chances of success.

  • Match your formatting, content, and writing style with the existing posts of the host site, so that they know you did your research.
  • Take your time creating the pitch and post to ensure that it is of good quality and that it adds value. A host site will take notice of this right away, and so will Google.
  • Include internal links from the host site for better SEO.
  • Do not try to oversell your brand or your site in the content of your post.
  • Conclude your post with a call to action for reader engagement.

6. Track Your Results

When your guest post has been approved and published, it’s time to track your results. Monitor the traction your post gets, as well as the comments. Reply to people’s comments as soon as you can, and promote the post on social media as well. 

Metrics that you should analyze after posting include the number of comments and likes, number of shares on social media, the number of new site visitors you get, movements in your rankings on SERPs, new mentions, and referral traffic. These are very clear indicators of how well your post performed. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to start guest posting, but want to make sure you’ve understood the whole process? Check out these guest posting FAQs!

What are the benefits of guest posting?

The benefits of guest posting include enhancing your brand awareness, increasing your domain authority, improving your rankings on SERPs, establishing authority in your industry, widening your networks, improving your writing skills, bringing in the quality referral traffic, and shortening the sales cycle.

When should I start guest posting?

You can start guest posting any time, even when you are just starting out. Guest posting works at all stages, and if you are new to the niche or industry, this strategy can help you boost your brand awareness and establish yourself in the field while also increasing your domain authority.

Does guest posting still work?

Guest posting still works for as long as you are willing to devote time, effort, and other resources into creating quality content. It is a tried and tested strategy for link building and domain authority, so it is definitely worth doing for your brand.

When you get the hang of guest posting, you will soon notice the wonders it will do for your brand. Need more convincing? Automatic Growth can help you with that. Check out some of our posts on guest posting services or reach out to us if you need help with your link building strategy!

Testimonials

  • chris
    Chris Castillo
    CEO - Propel Digital Marketing
    "Automatic Growth is no doubt one of the best link building providers we've worked with. Turnaround was quick. The domains we got links from were high quality and passed all of our internal quality standards and metrics for both domain quality, as well as contextual relevance."
    Brian Hong
    Brian Hong
    CEO - Infintech Designs
    "I highly recommend Automatic Growth for anyone looking for a reliable and effective guest post outreach link building service. Their team secured high-quality guest post placements on relevant websites that had a significant positive impact on our search engine rankings and website traffic."
    Charles Henry
    Charles Henry
    Founder & Managing Director - C.H. Local Media, LLC
    "I recently used Automatic Growth's Link Building service and I have to say that I was thoroughly impressed. The team at Automatic Growth was professional, efficient, and easy to work with. What impressed me the most about Automatic Growth was the quality of the links they built for my website."
    Cory Hubbell
    Cory Hubbell
    Owner - Purge Marketing, Entity Clouds
    "The quality of service we have seen from Automatic Growths' unique link outreach and placement system is simply exceptional. We pride ourselves on making sure that we always are persistently focused on getting only the best exterior assets for our clients, members, and partners."
    Charles Labbate
    Chris Labbate
    Owner - SEOBANK
    "I recently used Automatic Growth for SEOBANK, and my digital marketing agency's link building needs, and I was super impressed with the quality of service. The ordering process was smooth, and we had our link orders back within a week and a half."
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