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Once you understand the value you can provide, it's time to start building your Guest blog reach list.
This list should be a simple spreadsheet with five columns: website, name, email address, status (you'll write down your reach dates here), and notes.
To start populating your spreadsheet with guest blogging sites, find the blog site's monthly visitors and Domain Authority by plugging your URL into an SEO tool like Ahrefs.Target blogs with a domain authority of 50+. Also, check if your blog is hosted on your main domain or subdomain; often, a blog on a subdomain will not provide as much backlink strength as a blog on a root domain.
You can also research and find the website email subscriber list size. A quality guest post can be shared with your subscribers after it is published, increasing your visibility.
Once you're done adding blogs to your spreadsheet, research these sites in depth to find their guest posting guidelines. Many blogs have a dedicated page that outlines exactly how to contribute, what they're looking for, and the requirements for tone, word count, and more.
To find these guest post guidelines, do a quick Google search like: “site: blog.com blog guidelines”. This searches the blog for any content related to the guest posting guidelines.
So you've narrowed down your list of blogs based on the above criteria. It's time to find the right person to contact.
First, use LinkedIn.
Start by filtering your search results by the blog company page, then within the Best Article company search for people using terms like: “Content Manager”, “Blog Manager”, “SEO Manager”, “Publisher” or simply, “Content”. “
After you find 2-3 potential contacts, connect with them on LinkedIn. Remember, second degree LinkedIn connections are better than third degree ones, and if you have a mutual contact, even better.
Don't spend too much time on your connection message either, often your text gets buried or shows up as spam.
You can also use social networks to communicate on Facebook. Find the company's business page or blog and send them a short message. Businesses are likely to respond to Facebook messages because they want to keep their “quick response” metrics on their Facebook pages.
Once you've reached out on social media, use a tool like Hunter.io or ContactOut to find the correct contact email addresses. Even if you can't find your exact email address, a tool like Hunter.io displays the structure of the email, like firstname@blog.com or firstname.lastname@blog.com.
ContactOut has a handy Chrome extension that works on top of LinkedIn and adds people's email addresses, phone numbers, and social media channels:
Finally, to stay ahead of the curve with your outreach strategy, check out Respona. They are creating an all-in-one search, outreach and engagement platform that will launch very soon.
By using AI, they plan to be the most comprehensive solution for finding content, getting contact information, and sending dynamic email templates. You can join their early access beta list to try them out before they go live.
Once you have this information, add it to your spreadsheet and note the date of your attempted connection to LinkedIn.
If you ever hit publish on your latest blog post, look forward to the readers and then.
* crickets *
You're not alone. Since your blog posts need time to move up the organic search rankings, it becomes daunting when you don't see traffic right away.
Writing guest posts is one of the best ways to improve these rankings and build your credibility. By leveraging the audiences of other bloggers and the Domain Authority (DA), you build your backlink profile and gain exposure to a larger audience.
These are my main benefits of guest blogging.
Your Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score (from 0 to 100) that predicts how well a website will rank. Domain Authority is a metric created by Moz and measured by many factors, including total number of links, root domains linking, social signals, TrustRank, and more in a single score.
One of the best ways to create a domain authority is through guest posting. When you contribute content to other blogs, you can include a link or two back to your website. Getting these contextual links and dofollows from high DA websites is one of the best ways to increase the domain authority (and traffic) of your website.
Backlinks, also known as dofollow links or inbound links, are links from other websites to your website. Sites like Google view backlinks as a vote of confidence in the referring domain, which increases the credibility of your website in their eyes.
These backlinks are like votes: the more you get, the more search engines believe your content marketing efforts are credible, useful, and valuable.
When writing guest posts, you can add a link or two to your own site within the content, and you can also link to your site in your guest author bio.
In addition to getting backlinks and SEO benefits from writing guest posts, your backlinks also drive referral traffic. A user reads your guest post and clicks the links to your blog, which increases your traffic.
When writing a guest post, strategically add your backlinks to URLs you want people to read: a helpful article, an opt-in email page, or a service page.
Ultimately, the most important benefit of guest blogging is the new relationships you build with other bloggers and influencers in your niche.
It's a very collaborative blogging strategy, and chances are you'll stay in touch with site owners long after your post is published.
The key is to be valuable. Respond courteously and quickly to emails, submit your drafts on time, and most importantly, create great content. By doing these things, you will have a better chance of maintaining a healthy relationship.
Eventually, these relationships can also turn into more guest blogging opportunities in the future. Also, you can leverage your connections and turn them into other exciting projects like joint marketing, podcasts, eBooks, and online courses.
You can also use these relationships to get introductions to more influential guest posting opportunities.
Before you start your journey, there is one central issue that you need to understand.
You have to add value.
Don't go into the process of guest blogging for SEO just thinking about what you'll get out of the deal. First of all, you need to focus on the benefits that you will bring to the site.
Ask yourself: what value are you bringing?
The first step to launching and finding blogging opportunities is to understand their value and what you can do to help. This information will be vital in your initial email outreach strategy.
Guest blogging is the process where a blog owner writes a guest blog post on another website's blog. Guest bloggers offer to write content for other blogs in their niche, with the benefit of increased referral traffic and backlinks.
