How to Scale your Guest Blogging and Build More Links

Intro

You’re trying to publish more and more guest blogs to get more links and up your SEO game. You’ve played by the book and followed every tactic to push out as many guest blogs as possible. But despite your best effort, the results remain disappointing. What gives?

The problem is in your process.

Many companies fail to get a decent ROI from guest blogs because their process isn't optimized for blogging at scale. It's too slow to produce real output in an aggressively competitive space.

So, in this guide, we’ll help you crack the code to scale your guest blogging efforts. Stick with us till the end to get three actionable tips to make this link-building tactic work for you.

What is guest blogging?

Guest blogging is an off-page SEO tactic where brands and individuals publish a blog under their byline on a third-party website as a guest contributor/author.

Websites accepting guest blogs allow contributors to link to their websites or portfolio. This helps in link building for SEO. A blog published on a reputed website can also create more credibility for the author and their brand.

Besides, by accepting guest blogs, websites can publish high-quality content to educate their audience, rank for specific keywords, and get good traffic. So, it’s a win-win for both parties.

4 key benefits of guest blogging you can’t overlook

Guest blogging is more than just a link-building technique. Once you get the drill, you can gain so much from guest blogs. Let's look at the four most important benefits of guest blogging:

1. Build thought leadership

Publishing a guest blog on a reputed website in your industry is a reliable way to share your expertise and build thought leadership. Your blog demonstrates your knowledge, educates the readers, and makes a case for your brand—giving people enough reasons to trust you.

The blogger and startup advisor Eduard Klein built his thought leadership by publishing original, insightful content in industry-leading publications like Hubspot, Outbrain, G2.

He explains growth marketing and digital entrepreneurship to an audience of online entrepreneurs and published more than 80 blogs in major publications.

2. Generate referral traffic

Guest blogging can also help increase your website traffic and double down on inbound marketing sustainably. You can organically include links to your blog or company website within the guest blog. So, when readers jump to this blog, they can be easily redirected to your website.

A listicle or best-of post can generate referral traffic for the brands included, like in this post showing the best social media analytics tools. This traffic includes a majority of people looking to buy a specific solution who have a buying intent. The referring traffic can also bring direct business with this kind of content.

3. Get backlinks to your blog

The most obvious benefit of guest blogs is more backlinks. The more guest blogs you publish, the more referring domains you earn for your website—increasing your domain authority, traffic, and search rankings.

4. Maximize brand awareness

Ultimately, guest blogs expand your reach to newer audiences who didn't know you existed. When you publish a blog on a third-party website, their readers will become aware of you and your business. A quality blog would also deliver a strong brand impression and bring more people to your site.

How to create a guest blog? A 6-step guide

With all these benefits, guest blogging might sound like a jackpot for content marketing and SEO success. But in reality, your guest blogging efforts won't yield any of these results if you don't have a solid process to produce and publish content effectively.

We’ve outlined a 6-step process to make guest blogging work for you and create repeatable success.

1. Create a list of websites you want to write for

Before you send out guest blogging pitches, you have to be clear on where to publish these posts. To shortlist the best websites for guest blogs, you have to consider factors like:

• Relevance: how relevant is the website to your niche?
• Authority: what’s the site’s domain authority?
• Traffic: how many visitors does the site attract monthly?
• Trust flow: how much do search engines trust this website?

Besides, consider your goals for publishing guest blogs. Do you want to promote your Shopify store? Or do you want to create authority for a brand-new blog? Pick websites that best align with your goals.

Now, let’s look at three key ways you can find good guest blogging sites.

Research sites that are looking for contributors

You can start by searching for websites that accept guest blogs or are looking for contributors. The easiest way to do this is through a simple Google search with keywords like:

• Write for us + "your niche"
• Guest blog + "your niche"
• "your niche" + contribute guest post
• "your niche" + become a guest blogger
• "your niche" + submit an article
• Guest author "your niche"

Here’s an example of how this works. We searched for the term **write for us + technology **and found all these websites accepting pitches from guest contributors in the tech niche.

Find lists of popular guest blogging sites

You can also take a shortcut and find lists of popular blogging sites. These lists will usually have a mix of 100-300 websites with a good domain rating and search authority from different niches. Here are three great lists of guest blogging sites:

• 150+ Sites to Guest Post in 2022
• The Ultimate List Of 200+ Guest Posting Sites & Blogs For 2022
• 350 Free Guest Posting Sites Where Can Submit Guest Posts in 2022 [Verified List]

Filter these lists using the four parameters we discussed to find the ideal guest blogging sites for your business.

Reverse engineer the guest posts of your competitors

If you want to publish guest blogs on high-authority websites and get an edge over your competitors, try reverse engineering their guest blogs. It’s simple—you have to see what they’ve posted, create more compelling content, and outrank them on the same websites. Here’s how:

• Find your competitors: Use a list of the most relevant focus keywords (create one with Keyword Finder) and search for websites ranking on top for multiple keywords. These are the main competitors you want to go after.

• Check competitor’s link profiles: Audit the kind of backlinks these competitors have. The Backlink Checker will do all the heavy lifting for you to make a list of backlinks working for your competitors. You can also save this list of links as favorites.

• Build your backlinks: This list is your opportunity to pitch, publish, and outrank your competition. You can start pitching to prospective websites to win your backlinks.

Work with influencers

Influencers in the blogging space can help you source quality links and boost domain authority. These influencers collaborate with multiple brands and have a decent network that you can tap into for publishing guest blogs at scale.

Moreover, you can partner with influencers to write these blogs on your behalf and build more credibility for your business.

2. Find the right contact person to pitch

Once you've made a list of websites for which you want to write a blog, it's time to find _who _you'll pitch to. This is tricky because you might not always know the best person to send a pitch to, and sharing it with the wrong person can reduce your chances of getting a response.

So, follow any of these steps to get the right contact for your pitch:

• Find the “write for us” page or guest blogging guidelines on the website to get the email for pitching

Here’s an example of guest posting guidelines by Magestore

• Do some digging about the company on LinkedIn and look for designations like the head of marketing, content lead, or content manager; then exports these leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

This is what you’ll get when you filter a company’s employees by a specific department, like marketing

• Use tools like Hunter or Snov to find the correct email addresses for these leads

They give you a list of emails available for any company domain, and you can choose the correct email to send a pitch

3. Decide a strong topic and content angle

For the next step, you have to pick a good topic that aligns with your expertise and is relevant to the guest site’s target audience. To find a strong topic, you can:

• Identify keywords the website hasn’t covered already using site:website.com keyword and see what kind of content is already existing

(e.g. site:ranktracker.com "guest blogging")

• Look for user-generated content for the website, like reviews or social media posts with many likes and comments
• Pick a trending topic in the news and add your spin to it for an original topic

For example, if you’re pitching to a digital marketing brand, explore topics around e-commerce marketing with a high traffic potential.

Your ideal topic should fall within your expertise and have good traffic potential. It should also resonate with the website's target readership to maximize visibility and redirect traffic to your site.

4. Prepare and send a personalized pitch

So, you know where, who, and what you want to pitch for a guest blog opportunity. Now, this is where things start getting real—you have to write the actual pitch.

A compelling pitch shows the recipient you've done the homework about their company, and you have something valuable to offer. Here are a few proven best practices to create a stellar guest blogging pitch and increase your chances of getting a response:

• Use Linkedin and cold email: Warm up your prospects on LinkedIn and send the pitch directly on LinkedIn or through a cold email. Make sure they recognize you, so your pitch message doesn't seem too random for them to ignore.
• Verify your email: If you send a cold email, maintain your sender's reputation by verifying your emails. This will prevent damage to your email deliverability rate, reduce bounced emails, and maintain a decent engagement rate.
• Personalize your email outreach: Instead of reusing the same pitch template for every recipient, add a personal touch and show your prospects you know them. Personalize your emails to stand out from the crowd and tell recipients that you’ve invested your efforts to learn more about them.

Here’s a great pitch template:

Hey [First Name],

I’m [Your Name], and I’m the [Job Title] at [Your Business Name or Website].

I’m reaching out to you because I am a huge fan of your blog and your [Article Title] really resonated with me because [Reason]

I have some really interesting content ideas that I strongly feel will be perfect for [Blog Name]’s audience.

I can send you the topics I have in mind if you’re still open to new guest authors.

Should I send them?

Thanks for your time and I am looking forward to working together.

Best,

[Your Name]

• Create a pitch video: A video pitch message is another great way to make a solid impression on your prospects. Make a short video to emphasize what you can offer as a guest contributor and how they’ll benefit.

By adding personalized video pitches to your plain text emails can help your outreach campaign deliver better results, gain the attention of potential partners faster and give your outreach a human touch.

Remember to follow up with your recipients to increase your chances of getting a response. They might be too busy to check your pitch, or your email deliverability might be an issue. A few follow-ups can go a long way for you.

5. Write the guest post

Now, it’s time for you to work your magic and write a powerful blog. Use this handy checklist to ensure everything is in order before you submit your blog:

• Include relevant internal links to the host website
• Add key links to your website and send people inside your sales funnel
• Double-check the guest blogging guidelines to see if your blog is missing anything
• Optimize your blog for search and link to authority sources for generating good traffic
• Convert Word files to Google Docs to submit your blog in the proper format

Remember: writing the blog is just the first step. You have to review and refine it to secure good search rankings for months and years.

Pro tip: Add links to potential publishers where you want to publish your next guest post. Then use this blog as a starting point in your pitch.

6. Submit your post and get published

Editors and content managers usually have a lot on their plate. This can make it difficult to track every guest post request and respond timely. If you've submitted a blog for review and are still waiting to hear from the editor, follow up with them.

Make your follow-up messages courteous. Besides, try to space out these follow-ups, so they don't seem spammy to the recipient.

How to scale your guest blogging efforts and build more links

We’ve revealed an airtight guest blogging process to hit all your goals. But here’s the catch: how can you scale this process to maximize the ROI?

Let’s look at three game-changing tips to streamline and scale your guest blogging efforts.

1. Build an efficient guest blogging team

If you want to scale your guest blogging process, know that you can’t do all of it single-handedly. Bring more hands on deck to delegate different responsibilities and work seamlessly with a dream team. You’d need to hire:

• Content manager
• Outreach expert
• Writers and editors

Use any project management tools like monday.com to create a frictionless process and boost your team’s efficiency.

2. Outsource the writing part

Another proven way to scale your guest posting strategy is by outsourcing content creation. Hire freelance writers or work with a content writing company to produce high-quality, optimized blogs while you take care of finding relevant websites and sending pitches.

Don’t forget to create a review and approval process for the writers/writing team to fully understand your expectations and meet the quality benchmarks.

Leverage automation for the heavy lifting

Automating different parts of your guest blogging process makes it easy to scale your outreach. You can use outreach automation tools for various purposes, like finding and verifying emails, sending pitch messages, and taking follow-ups.

Besides email, you can also use LinkedIn outreach tools to collect leads, personalize the pitch, create message sequences, and track deliverability and responses. But make sure they mimic human behavior so you don't get your linkedin account restricted.

Put simply, automation can speed up the most time-consuming part of the guest blogging process: outreach. So, put your outreach efforts on auto-pilot and reach out to a massive audience to find the best opportunities.

Scale your guest blogging to new heights

Guest blogging doesn’t guarantee overnight SEO success. You have to do it at scale with consistency to see any tangible results. That’s exactly where businesses falter—not optimizing their guest blogging process for scalability and consistency.

Thankfully, you don't have to look far to find the right process. We've created this exhaustive guide to help you scale guest blogging and produce excellent results.