One of the most powerful strategies to rank your website and gain visibility is through guest blogging paired with the essential blogger outreach best practices.
Successful internet marketers use blogger outreach since it can bring in favorable results in terms of visibility, search engine rankings and organic traffic.
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The Relevance of Blogger Outreach
Data shows that 60 percent of blog sites write one to five guest posts per month and that guest posting services have gained a 112 percent increase in interest among marketers since 2005.
When done properly, it’s an invaluable content marketing asset for any business. However, it’s crucial to apply only the best practices to avoid getting penalized by search engines.
We’ll explain what blogger outreach is and the best practices that can help you improve your outreach program for best results.
What is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging, or guest posting, is a form of digital content marketing and SEO strategy that involves publishing a blog on a third- party website.
Your goal is to gain brand visibility and target new audiences from the website that you’ve collaborated with. Guest posting is also a powerful way to increase backlinks or inbound links. Increase in backlinks from legitimate sites will boost a website’s rank in search engines, and a boost in rankings means an increase in visibility as well as an increase in traffic to your site.
More websites are encouraging guest postings because not only does it give them free content, it also lets them provide their audience with quality reads.
Both the web publisher and the guest writer should have demonstrated their credibility and legitimacy. Why? Google gives a penalty to websites that don’t abide by the webmaster guidelines.
What is Blogger Outreach?
Blog outreach is the method of looking for websites to partner or collaborate with and then submitting a guest post on that website with the aim of promoting a page from your own website.
This includes strategically choosing a keyword or anchor text and an effective landing page, then posting an article that you’ve written on that website. The article should contain the chosen keyword with the link to your landing page.
Note that you have to choose a website that has the same audience as you. You want their readers to be conditioned to check out your products or services as well. Not only that, but when ranking, search engine algorithms factor in the nature of the website that connects to yours.
Collaboration has always been one of the best ways to market your business, and blogger outreach is an effective marketing strategy for online collaborations.
What are the Benefits of Doing Blogger Outreach?
Before reaching out to websites (or hiring link building specialists and additional content writers) you should first understand the goals of a blogger outreach program and how it influences your online visibility.
Gain Backlinks
Blogger outreach and guest blogging are effective ways of getting backlinks from high-authority websites. Links can be included in the article of the author’s bio. Links can either be ‘do-follow’ or ‘no-follow’. Do-follow links are ones that are discoverable by search engines, therefore can get your site indexed as well. On the other hand, no-follow links tell search engines not to track your site — bringing little value as it doesn’t boost your page ranking.
Enhanced Brand Visibility
Since the goal of a blogger outreach program is to post to as many reputable sites as possible, having your name associated with those sites is a huge boost in reputation. That’s on top of your content being read by their followers as well.
Boost in Search Rankings
Backlinks are one of the main ranking signals search engines use. A quality backlink and an optimized landing page users can visit are crucial factors in ranking your website. Successfully doing so means more traffic and more sales over time.
Higher Domain Authority
The more external links connect to the pages in your website, the better your domain authority score will be. Domain authority pertains to the authoritativeness and credibility of your website. It also measures how well a website is likely to rank on search engines. Its grading system, developed by Moz, goes from 0-100, with 100 being the highest.
Social Media Shares
People are more likely to share content they find interesting and they think other people will find value in as well. High quality content has a higher probability of gaining shares from users.
Generate Leads
If your article is interesting and engaging, it not only promotes you as an industry leader, but it can compel readers to learn more, and click on the links you provided that will take them back to your own website.
Conversions, Sales and Sign-ups
Once you have funneled a user back to your website, the landing page should be able to convert them. It’s for this reason that your landing page, and the whole website should be optimized for conversion. Your blogger outreach efforts are wasted if the elements on your own website aren’t prepared to engage and convert users.
How Does Blogger Outreach Work?
Blogger outreach works by finding the right audience, writing the right kind of digital content that will appeal to those audiences, and applying proper link building strategy. It doesn’t sound too difficult, right? Maybe not.
But if you’re just starting out, then expect a lot of trials and errors. Outreach programs involve a lot of work, even link building professionals who are already equipped with the best tools are still looking for more efficient ways to implement their outreach strategy.
Here are the steps that you need to take to kick start your blogger outreach initiatives:
• List all the websites you want to collaborate with and submit guest posts to.
• Check which of those are accepting guest posts.
• Check their blog and how they write. Consider the type of content they publish. Observe their format, their brand voice and tone, as well as their writing style.
• Come up with at least three topics complete with description. Make sure that it matches the content that they have up in their blog.
• Create an email pitch that conveys your intention. Make sure that it’s not a generic email. Chances are, they receive dozens, if not hundreds, of blogger outreach requests daily. Your goal is to stand out. Always present the value that you can offer them.
• Once they’ve chosen a topic, follow their guest posting guidelines.
How to Boost Visibility with Blogger Outreach Best Practices
It doesn’t matter if you’re doing the outreach yourself or planning to partner with a blogger outreach company, what matters is knowing the right way of doing an outreach program.
Best practices pertain to the quality and long-term value of the outreach initiatives taken. There are dubious ways of doing link building and blogger outreach that go against Google guidelines.
In an attempt to beat the algorithm, some people use tactics like cloaking, paid links, keyword stuffing, spamming the comment section, and stealing content.
Since Google always updates its algorithm, these manipulative tactics backfire. These practices can lead to penalties that will drop rankings, and in the worst case scenario, your entire search presence will be deleted by Google, making it impossible to convert any users via search.
To be confident that you’re doing blogger outreach the right way, here are some of the best practices you can follow:
• Write personalized email that’s designed for each website. Even if you’re reaching out to hundreds of them.
• Cite a post from their website so they know that you really checked out their blog. This will also support your statement when you explain why your article is a good fit for their website.
• State the reason for your email. Tell them what you’re expecting out of the collaboration and what they’re going to get out of it.
• Keep the message friendly, simple and short. They probably receive a bunch of email outreach requests a day, so they don’t want to go through a long email conveying the same request.
• It’s best to have a prior interaction with the website or the blogger that you plan on emailing. You can leave a comment on one of their posts, whether it’s on their blog or social media accounts.
• Make sure you keep in touch with them even after you’ve been published on their site.
When it comes to the content you’re submitting, keep these best practices in mind:
• Always aim to write unique and high-quality content for the website.
• Avoid submitting spun articles. These are articles that are a slightly different version of the same content you have on your website.
• Write content that’s more than 1000 words. Articles that are less than 500 characters provide less value for readers.
• Avoid duplicate content or submitting content that’s already published on another website. It can prevent your pages from ranking.
• Don’t target low-quality websites. As much as possible avoid websites that deal in gambling, and mature content.
Expand Your Reach with Blogger Outreach
Done the right way, a blogger outreach program is a powerful way to rake in leads or those readers who matter and can be converted into clients. However, if executed the wrong way, it’s going to be a waste of effort and resources. It can even put a dent in a brand’s reputation.
Guest blogging and blogger outreach are your partners in boosting your business’ online performance. More eyes on your content translates to more traffic to your site. Just remember that it’s not all about you. Be courteous to bloggers and website owners you’ve collaborated with, and always provide useful content to readers — no matter what site they’re reading your articles on.