Getting More Guest Posts Approved
One of the businesses I run gets around 5-10 guest post requests a day, most of which are ignored because the writers all make the same mistakes.
Having recently started a second (new) business, we're now in the boat of wanting to post guest posts on other sites (to boost our site). Fortunately, having been on the receiving end of a lot of rubbish requests, we've managed to get really good at creating emails that get responses. So I wanted to share some useful findings -
Don't use templates online
Every template basically says something along the lines of "I'm a regular reader, I love your content, I really liked X post, I'd like to contribute". We all know they're likely not regular readers, they just want to post because they want to have a backlink. Given that of the 5-10 emails I get per day 90% are in this format, I'd imagine everyone else is getting the same.
Change it up. Be honest. Tell them you're a startup, you want some SEO gains. But you're willing to provide decent content to get that.
Know their audience
If you're pitching to a nutrition brand for example, don't try and sell them a post on dog leads. I don't sell anything relating to dogs, but have had several guest post requests for titles relating to dog leads.. Reach out to people who have audiences that will benefit from your knowledge, and your services. You can then offer content that will benefit their audience and will increase the likely hood of click-throughs to your own site.
Be Patient
Send a few really personalised emails, and produce content that is awesome and highly targeted, it's a slower approach to mass emailing but it'll likely get you better results.
Listen to feedback
In your initial outreach, ask if they're even up for guest posts. Don't just send over titles and articles off the bat. You're asking for permission to work with them in the first email. Once you have approval, then send them topic ideas, and let hem choose what they think will work best for their audience. It'll ensure they know the content is original, and especially for them. Not something you've churned out and sent to 100 other people.
Let me know in the comments if you've had anything else work for you!
Hope this helps!
@asveloper, @watus, @viperfx, @georges141 Hey guys, so having had quite a few messages relating to guest posting and the faff that comes with it, I've decided to put together a free newsletter to make it easier. It's not yet live (we're getting there), but hopefully you guys may all find some value in it when we get the ball rolling - https://guestpostjuice.substack.com/welcome
Subscribe if you think it'll be helpful to you, and I'll keep you posted :)!
love it, subscribed and looking forward to reading
thanks, done!
Thanks for sharing, great post @alex365
no ones wants to read templated stuff!
Great post though, I'm an avid reader, can I guest post ? :D
Really great points! What's your approach to getting backlinks for your content? We also get a lot of requests for backlink requests that seem unrelated - so we want to do it differently. Curious to hear what has worked for you.
We place backlinks to our own content in the guest posts. We just ensure it's done in a relevant and organic way (that is of use to the reader). A recent example was a guest post relating to increasing sales without paid ads. Within that we referenced content writing (what we do), and the impact of article lengths, allowing us to link back to our own post on content lengths in a very specific way. We also included a number of links to other high authority domains within the piece, as well as internal linking for the blog we were posting on (ensuring everyone wins). Every link was contextually relevant and useful to the reader.
One thing is critical, and that's making the website owner (or the person you've reached out to) fully aware you intend to link back to your site (or a specific article on your site). Make sure you do this from the off, not after you've written the content, as if they don't want to link back to you it's better to know this from the start.
Yea that last point is an interesting one - so many people email us just asking for a backlink, but have no strategic approach about how they want to help us or how it can be a mutual benefit. The best people we have worked with in the past is how they have approached it as a mutual benefit for us - and it was easy to build a relationship with them.
How do you or the team find quality places to put backlinks for your content? How do you approach who to target or what domains are worth the effort? (e.g. getting a link from a blog on Trello vs a small startup, or something in the middle).
When it comes to finding places to post, we generally look for those in similar fields to our own customers, or those in industries that sell to our ideal customers. It's then a case of checking that they have a blog, and the type of content they post (to ensure we are a good fit). Although it's quite lengthly/manual we find we get better results from fewer outreach emails by doing this manually and ensuring the website is a good fit.
In terms of whether places are worth the effort, although we will check the authority of a domain, generally if they're selling to our ideal customer & produce something cool they're worth talking to, big or small. As even if we can't reap great SEO benefits, we win on brand awareness and being in front of our ideal customers (as thought leaders).
Very good points. In my old job we'd get a few guest post requests per week. The only ones that stood out were the very genuine ones. So easy to tell when it's a template (even if you've never seen that exact template before). It doesn't take much effort to stand out.