How did we generate 100+ guest blogs without Spending a Single Penny?

Guest blogs form a very important part of the Digital marketing strategy for a company. There is a big debate on whether it really helps for off-page SEO or not considering the elusion around the Google Search Algorithm.

Nevertheless, a backlink from a High Doman Website should be helpful for your website not only for SEO but in some way for the brand and spreading its word.

When I joined my previous organization, the founder asked me to generate backlinks through Guest posting. With no experience at all, I was pretty puzzled about how to go about this.

However, in the last 4–5 months, I and my team have written over 100 guest blogs for various websites of high DA without spending any money on it. I thought it will be a good idea to share our experience of doing it and in the process learn from other industry experts.

Step1: Build a Pipeline

The first step is to find out websites that take guest blogs. This is the most important step as without a long pipeline of such websites, it will be difficult to achieve the objective. To find such websites, we followed the following approach(es)

1. Setup a tweet deck column with “Guest Blog” or “Guest Post” as the search keyword. Read the tweets around, you will know people who are bloggers or looking for bloggers for their blog. Find out the ones who do not charge and then you can approach those people.
2. Do a Google search of various keywords around this like “Guest posting service”, “Guest blog”, “Guest Post”, “Write for us” etc. Scroll the search results. Again, look around for the ones who do it for free and approach them.
3. Scroll through Twitter Influencers on the topic you want on tools like BuzzSumo. Look at their Twitter profiles. Most influencers will mention their website on their Twitter Bio. Check their guidelines on the website and approach the ones who are accepting guest blogs.

Most sites that take a guest blog have a separate section or page which spells out their guidelines for a guest blog.

Now that you have the pipeline the next step is to approach them. Refer to step 2 for it.

Step2: Approach

Some websites will have an email ID where you might have to send the pitch while some might have an onsite form to fill or some might have both. If there is an email ID, I will always prefer to send an email because forms may not be read at all and get buried.

Writing that cold email is the next important step. Assume your recipient is getting tons of emails, for the recipient to read and respond to your email, it needs to stand out.

This is how I structure my email and I have had a high response rate. (Scroll to the mail sample image to see all at one go)

Subject: Some sites will mention the subject line they prefer. Otherwise, the subject lines can be “Request for a Guest post”, “Guest post inquiry” etc.

Mail content:

The mail content has to be structured as below:

//Beginning of email

<Greetings>

<Introduce yourself, designation, company and what do they do in one line>

e.g I am Ashutosh Garg, working as a Product Manager for ABC Co.- A platform to collect payments at the lowest price etc.

<Give one line about the recipient website and content on it>

I went through your website (<website name>) and <few words about the content>

e.g I went through your website (xyz.com) and found the content is pretty rich on Marketing

I am keen to write a guest blog for your website. I recommend the following topics

<List down 5–6 topics which align well>

Please let me know which one do you like so that I can write a guest blog. If you have any other topic in mind, please let me know as well.

In case you want some samples to read here are a few:
<List down 3–4 samples preferably related and high DA>

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks.

<Greetings>

//End of email

In case the form has the capability to send a long description, it is recommended to send the same in the form also.

The idea is to establish a match with the website and the content you propose. By giving a list of topics, you make the decision-making process for the recipient easy.

Step3: Follow up

In case you can get the response soon, that’s brilliant. But the treasure of cold email lies in follow-up. In most likelihood, getting a response at the first go is rare. In order to ensure a response, a follow-up (At-least 3 more emails) in a span of 15 days is recommended. If you get a response, it is brilliant. Else, after 3 emails you can consider it as lost but not lost forever. Try after 3–4 months again and see how it pans out then.

Step4: Write the article

Once you get the response and go ahead, it is time to do the real thing, that is write the article. Send the article and follow up till it gets published. We always wrote well-researched, plagiarism-free articles for website owners.

Step5: Build Relationship and compound

Once your guest post is published, don’t forget to thank the publisher. This helps to build a rapport and opens a chance for future guest posts also. At the same time, ask if the person knows someone in his/her network who accepts a guest post and if you can be connected to them. If the website owners, does it, you automatically get a new list to reach out to. Repeat the process and leverage the power of compounding!

These are the five simple steps that we followed to get 100+ guest posts published in the last 4–5 months. Although a marketing activity, getting a guest post published is more of a sales thing. So, don’t be scared or wary of rejection, up your cold email game!.

Hope you learnt and if you have any problem in implementing this, write to me on ashutoshgarg273@gmail.com