Learn How To Write A Guest Blog Like A Pro With Our Beginner’s Guide

The first step to consider is penning down your campaign’s goals, objectives, and intent to clarify what you want to achieve and convey through your guest posts.

One of the most prominent and coherent strategies to make this task straightforward is implementing the S.M.A.R.T technique. It involves jotting down the Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-oriented outcomes you want to accomplish from your guest blogging.

It will create the right mindset for content writing and ensure you focus on driving your energy to attain the bull-eye goals.

After prioritizing your goals, look for industry-relevant and reputable websites that accept guest blogs and external creators and contributors. There are two primary ways to simplify this process.

First is searching with Google and other search engines, social media platforms, online directories, authoritative resources, and using websites specifically for connecting publishers and bloggers.

An excellent tip to make this task effortless is to search for a list of top blogs in your niche on the Google search engine or use resources like BuzzSumo and Alltop. They are illustrious for filtering high-performing blogs in your industry and relevant keywords.

Another worthwhile technique is entering strings like “industry keyword”+“submit a post” in the search engine that redirects you to appropriate guest blogging opportunities.

Also, it is advisable to surf through social media with similar strings, which will keep you updated on the latest industry trends and publications. These handy tips will help you list prospective websites and bloggers suitable for guest blogging.

Pro Tip: Keep an eye on the traffic and quality of the shortlisted websites, as it will refine your data and help you shortlist the targeted blogs.

One best practice we suggest from our personal experience is building a strong rapport with the website owner or blogger before pitching your guest posts to them, as it amplifies the chances of getting your content published on the top platforms.

It is a crucial step involving proposing your guest blog ideas to the shortlisted websites and bloggers. It should be performed meticulously because editors and blog owners get innumerable emails daily.

If we convert it into statistical figures, it will be around 150-200 emails associated with guest blogging per day. They rarely open each one of them, and it’s like once in a blue moon.

Hence, ensuring your email headlines are catchy, attention-grabbing, concise, and to the point is paramount. By working on a compelling pitch, you can get past tons of emails and captivate bloggers into opening it.

Make sure to mention the contact purpose precisely and personalize it by addressing a small remark about their recent blogs or engaging them in an open-ended small conversation.

One best practice we suggest from our personal experience is mentioning your successful work, as it increases the credibility of your brand and its content.

Once the website owner or blogger accepts your pitch, the next step is working on the “actual” content to be emailed for publishing.

For that, request guidelines from the editor or blogging site owner about the post length, formatting, and style.

Ensure your content complies with their guidelines. Also, perform extensive background research and fact-checking to prepare guest blogs online.

It will help you ensure that your content is relevant, meaningful, and will resonate with the target audience.

It will help you double-check whether you have covered all the aspects you need to discuss and empower you to maintain a proper and precise blog structure.

You will thank us for suggesting this tip, as it will greatly help while writing the guest post. Also, once you start practicing this, you will get habituated to it.

One best practice is penning raw thoughts for overview and giving authenticity to them later during the editing and refining stage.

It will give you ideas for composing compelling headlines and catchy titles. Make sure to keep backup options for them in case the source demands.

Most importantly, use copyright-free and original high-quality images to make your content visually appealing. We suggest using infographics as they generate 3X more views and shares.

You can place visual images in different sections to support the content and keep readers hooked. Remember to add image alt tags to every visual to help you generate organic traffic from Google images.

You can also add relevant graphs and statistics to enable readers to visualize your content and thought processes.

After the first draft is completed, meticulously skim through it and make the necessary adjustments to ensure it is 100% accurate for the final composition.

Once you have completed and submitted the draft, the next step is creating respective landing pages for the backlinks provided in the guest post. It will redirect the user to the dedicated section to read more about the resolution and dedicated offering.

Do you know that businesses that optimize their landing pages experience an upliftment of nearly 30% in average conversion rate? Also, landing pages generate around a 6% conversion rate.

Though the numbers are below 10, which is the benchmark, you can attain a perfect 10 by creating compelling landing pages, incorporating relevant keywords, putting a solid message, and cleverly pitching your offerings as solutions to readers’ issues.

Also, landing pages will help you convert incoming traffic into potential conversions because they are focused on one goal: converting visitors into sales. It is possible by keeping a persuasive call to action to encourage visitors to contact you.

You can keep landing pages as your eCommerce site or an offer page, free content entry, or something tempting that allures to submit their contact information in exchange for a beneficial outcome.

Apart from setting up landing pages, it is imperative to perform on-page optimization. These SEO factors play a decisive role in your search engine rankings.

Some of the best on-page SEO practices are avoiding keyword stuffing in the title tag and keeping it as natural as possible. Maintain 60-character titles so they appear entirely on search engine result pages (SERPs).

It is advisable to add appropriate Headings (H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5) and image alt tags in every guest post as it contributes positively to search engine rankings.

Moreover, strategically place supporting links and backlinks of anchor text in the guest post. It will help generate traffic on your supporting pages and simplify visitor purchase decisions.

If you are wondering what anchor texts are, let us tell you they are hyperlinked words and can be of various types, such as branded, keyword-rich, a URL, or some white noise.

They provide hints to the search engines and users about what the page is about and significantly impact its rating.

We recommend keeping the keyword-rich links less than 20% of all links to avoid unnecessary penalties from Google for violation of its guidelines. It will also keep your content free from perceptions that your link acquisitions are manipulative.

Apart from the above information, particular factors that contribute to boosting SEO are:

• Page loading time
• Mobile responsiveness and friendliness of your website
• Meta descriptions of your guest posts

These are critical in ranking your content in the top 10 on SERPs. Though it will not be of much help as a guest contributor, it will have a significant role in the same content on your website.

After content optimization, thoroughly checking it, and ensuring it adheres to Google and publisher guidelines, the final step is submitting the article.

Also, if you have mentioned a quote from an author or taken the reference to facts, figures, statistics, news, or images from another website, do mention the source by adding proper citations.

These factors enhance your credibility in the eyes of the editor and blog website owner, demonstrating that you have paid attention to every detail. It exhibits the quality of your guest post and ensures less or no follow-up for edits after submission.

Once you have emailed the guest post, the editor or owner will review it and if they want any changes, they will request you to make them. Ensure you make the requested edits without compromising your guest blog quality.