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