Today there are over 500 million stand-alone blogs and counting. From merely a day to day diary, it has evolved into online money-making activity. A testament to the fact is that more than a quarter of all the existing websites on the internet are blogs. Ironically though, more than 60% of bloggers write for blogs, other than the one, they own. And every sane mind, would ask, why bother writing for other’s blog if you have your fish to fry?
I’ll try to answer and keep it simple and easy to understand and going to address the most common questions.
FYI, GRIN tech helps businesses publish content (both guest posts & sponsored posts) via its own outreach platform – GRIN launcher. Here are just a few samples of published articles.
Outline
How are Blog Post, Guest Blog Post, and Sponsored Guest Post different?
- A blog post is a content piece that is written and published by the blogger on his or her platform (website).
- Contrarily, if I post it on any blog, other than my own, it will be a Guest Post.
- And if I pay for the publication of my content it is then called Sponsored Post, Promoted Post, or an Advertorial
Why do you need these at all?
There is a whole multitude of reasons why one needs guest posts:
- Get traffic through the links placed in the content published & author’s bio.
- These links also drive up domain authority which helps drive up organic traffic
- Such posts on the leading websites help establish brand credibility (and show fancy logos on your landing pages too, lol)
In my experience running media coverage & link building campaigns there are following options:
- Content that gets published on (1) industry-leading websites (and smaller one of course) (2) for free have to come from some outstanding personal experience & authority. Here is an example of our client, Rob J. who is a personal trainer in the UK & Iron Man finisher, talking about How to Train for Triathlon on Betches (DA65)
- Sometimes, websites do not have a “free” option at all but ask for a reasonable fee, which is exactly what Sponsored Guest Post is. Is it worse than free placement? Not really, because money exchange means more formal relationships and more control over what content quality (cough) you can push through
Q: Hey, we have a plain, dull, commercial website, can we still get guest posts either free or paid?
A: Sure. Editorial fees paid to right people create miracles & backlinks too. Just get in touch with GRIN launcher team.
So, how do you land free & sponsored blog posts opportunities?
Obviously, you have to reach out to relevant websites with a pitch. So, in the nutshell you do this:
- Compile a list of prospects
- E.g. “fashion bloggers with Domain Authority 20+”
- Tools: I personally use Ahrefs & our own database
- Fetch their contact details
- Prepare outreach & follow up templates
- Follow up is extremely important as most people do not answer first emails
- & finally, do pull a trigger sending messages in portions – don’t do heavy emails blasts all at once.
What to pitch exactly?
In our pitches, I focus mainly on just two things:
- Hey, I want to contribute a guest post, which a free content for you AND
- it will be good quality because {{ reason why you or your client is authorized to write on the topic }}. Here is a recent example {{ non-clickable link * }}
Here are a few extra ideas (reasons) addressed to a publisher:
- This will lighten your publishing schedule. And you would find some free time to take care of other things.
- You will get good content for your readers to read. As, the author of that post, may have a better experience, even an interesting writing style in a particular niche.
- Quality content may increase traffic and broadens the scope, for yourself and your audience
* Is it really that simple?
Of course not. At least not on a bigger, commercial scale.
For personal use, to land few opportunities a month that will work just fine; beyond that level you’d need
- help with list building & contact info enrichment,
- & take care of minor pitfalls (e.g. avoiding spam words in your templates) that accumulate too quickly though
Can this hurt your rankings?
Selling & buying links are against Google’s policy for sure.
Does sponsored content as a form of online PR violate that as well? Nope; and it might happen to have some (cough) strategically placed links in it.
To Sum it Up on Sponsored Blog Posts
In short, sponsored guest posting has become a massive part of SEO & content marketing strategy.
And both brands & publishers reap the benefits of such partnerships as long as it doesn’t tread on murky paths.
If you have any questions or want to try a pilot outreach campaign – do not hesitate to get in touch.