How To Land A Guest Post Every Time
You only get one chance to get a guest post accepted.
That’s why writing a good pitch is so important. There are many different ways to write a pitch, but it needs to contain some important factors in order to work.
Process: How to Find Guest Posting Opportunities
I have a pretty simple process for using guest posting search operators to find guest posting opportunities. The first step is to figure out what topic you want to write about.
While it should go without saying, you should obviously plan to write about something you’re an expert for. You can substitute this “topic” for “keyword” in the guest posting search operators above.
This will typically yield a sizable list of sites where you may find guest post service opportunities.
The final step in finding guest posting opportunities is to evaluate the quality of the sites. It takes a lot of work to write a great post for someone.
You don’t want to spend a lot of effort writing for sites that aren’t going to pass you a lot of value. You can best measure this by looking at link metrics such linking root domains or domain authority.
Tools
Sites like ahrefs, majestic, and SEMrush all have their own link indexes you can use for these purposes. You also want to do a review of the site to make sure it isn’t spammy or low quality.
For me this is generally a gut check – I can’t always articulate what makes a site spammy, but I know it when I see it.
What Are Your Guest Blogging Goals?
When you’re taking on any project, it’s important to understand the whys before you start focusing on the hows.
Begin by asking yourself WHY you want to guest post. There are actually several reasons someone might start a campaign.
How Not to Waste Your Time Guest Posting
The wrong way to guest post is to jump in without a plan and start firing proposals all over the internet to any blog in any niche.
Remember that your goal is not only to be seen by as many new people as possible – but to be seen by as many new people who are likely to become fans of your content as possible.
Three Steps to Laser-Sharp Targeting Focus
If you’re going to put in the time and effort to write guest posts, you need to get as much out of them as possible. There are three important steps to targeting the right blogs for your niche.
1: Identify Them
2: Size Them Up
3: Qualify Them
You might also try searching some exact match phrases. Exact match means that you place your keyword phrase in quotations when you search “like this.”
When you place quotations around your search phrase, you will get results for that exact phrase exactly as it is written – not similar phrases. For instance…
- “top web design blogs”
- “best web design blogs”
- “list of web design blogs”
As you experiment with these searches, you’ll come up with other ideas for new searches. Try them all.
Conclusion
When it comes to pro blogging, thinking about location matters. There is no “build it and they will come”, and only 20% of your work is publishing posts.
By making strategic partnerships with other bloggers, you can produce content and put it in a great location, or you can get great content for the location you own, depending on which side of the partnership you are on.
Strategic partnerships can take a lot of different forms, but guest posting is the most obvious because it’s a one-off deal. There isn’t a need for a complex relationship or terms and conditions of the partnership.
What do you think of guest posting?
Have you had success guest blogging?
What’s your biggest concern about it?
Share your best guest posting story in the comments, whether it’s an impressive chance you got at a big blog or a horror story of ruined opportunity.