Why You Might Be Failing At Guest Blogging

If Tyrion Lannister were a digital marketer, he would have replied to John Snow like this:

“A digital marketing strategy needs guest posting like a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge. That is why I do guest posting so much.”

If you are a digital marketer, you know the undertone of this twisted dialogue.

Yes, guest posting is one of the most fundamental approaches to skyrocketing your rankings on the search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and Google.

Recently, many digital marketing experts have been whining about the death of the guest marketing approach.

It is not true. You should not fall for it. These people are just short-sighted. They don’t understand the value a genuine guest posting strategy brings to the table in the long run.

They want the best ROI from their SEO efforts in a short period. Well, SEO is a long-term process, and guest posting is as relevant as it was years ago.

As per the study by Adsy, Guest posting can help in achieving a 174% of audience extension and brand awareness growth.

Gregory Ciotti earned more than 36,000 subscribers through effective guest posting activities.

However, even though we know how crucial guest posting is for top ranks, most digital marketers don’t get desired results from their guest posting efforts.

There might be many reasons for it.

This post discusses a few possible reasons why your guest posting efforts are not generating results.

Before we delve into guest posting mistakes you might be making, let’s understand what guest posting is and its advantages.

What is Guest Posting?

Guest posting, also called Guest Blogging, is a strategy for writing and submitting high-quality posts on high-DA websites.

First, a digital marketer researches high-DA websites of the same industry and pitches them with a guest post request.

Once the website accepts the request, a digital marketer writes and submits the guest post and gets a backlink from the hosting website.

The main aim of writing a guest post is to attract more traffic to the website. This is the bottom line.

Now, let’s check out some of the benefits of guest posting.

Guest Posting Drives More Organic Traffic to Your Website 

One of the main benefits of guest posting is the genuine leads you get for your website. When you submit a guest post to another website, you will get a backlink that redirects users to your landing page.

Google identifies and believes you are offering valuable information to your industry audience. Google strongly reciprocates such genuine SEO practices and ranks your website accordingly.

Guest Posting Offers You More Content to Publish 

Educating your target audience is one of the most valuable things you can do to establish your brand as an industry influencer. Guest posting helps you to publish more content on other websites to get quality backlinks. Also, it allows you to offer valuable posts to your target audience.

Guest Posting Offers You an Opportunity to Offer Your Point of View 

With regular guest posting practice, your readers will get to know different points of view that you want to share.

For example, if you offer holistic natural remedies and medicines, your audience would get a chance to know your point of view on different medical research papers on other healthcare approaches. You will get an opportunity to educate them about that too.

Guest Posting Offers Many SEO Benefits 

Yes, Google believes that blogging is one of the most important activities to rank your website higher on SERPs. When you perform guest posting consistently and offer valuable information to your readers, Google will notice it and appreciate it.

For example, if you are in the food products or services. When you publish articles on other websites, you will get to cover as many recipes and other food products or services as you want.

You can write highly compelling content with relevant long-tail keywords to drive more traffic to your website. Your SEO efforts will drive more traffic and ROI.

Guest Posting Makes You an Industry Influencer 

It is probably one of the best advantages of guest posting activities.

Users love and appreciate it when you educate them with high-quality content.

When you present valuable content, they will look up to you with admiration. The next time they want some information, they will look up to you for information.

You will be an influencer in your industry, and Google will also notice it. It will reflect in your website rankings as well.

Now that you know guest posting and its advantages, it is time to check out some guest posting blunders that you can avoid to succeed.

Mistake 1- You don’t understand the guest posting approach. 

The first and foremost thing that fails you at the guest posting is not understanding the concept of it.

If you think you will pitch an unknown website about an amazing article you want to share, and they will accept your request, and it will be an all-turned-out-well story, you are wrong.

It does not work in that manner.

From writing your pitch for a promising publication to writing an engaging content piece, you need to plan everything.

A good, results-driven guest posting strategy is what you need to succeed. A lazy, unprofessional attitude will take you nowhere.

Make sure you hire a guest posting expert to help you with the strategy. Hire someone with a promising portfolio and a proven track record.

Guest posting is not a batman who will magically come from the sky and help you rank your website on Google SERPs.

You need a strategy to make a difference.

Mistake 2- You don’t research the website you are approaching. 

Making a list of websites and doing random pitching will not serve the core purpose.

You need to be very picky when it comes to finding a website.

Make sure that you make a list of websites that are relevant to your industry and your target audience.

The best way is to check out where your competitors are posting. It will give you an idea of where to approach guest posting.

When you approach a publication without knowing about them, they will straightforwardly reject your pitch.

Read about the website you are approaching. What do they do? What are they interested in? Do they relevant to your industry? Do they allow posts you want to write?

These questions might help you find the right publication that might be interested in your pitch.

Mistake 3- You don’t personalize your pitch. 

You will probably write an email for your pitch to a publication.

Now, most digital marketers send a random email without any personalized touch.

Such random emails will take you nowhere.

You need an expert email writer to write an email for a guest posting pitch.

Research the publication and make a pitch explaining things to them about your business and why you want them to accept your guest post request.

Tell them that you are impressed with their posts and would love to collaborate and contribute to their website.

Also, you can discuss some posts already published on their website and how you find them very valuable and informative.

Such personalized touch will surely work in your favor. You will get positive replies from the publications.

The thing is, most prestigious publications get more than a hundred emails daily. To engage them, you need a personalized email that talks about them, not just you and your business.

Furthermore, address the website owner by name and explain why your content can add value to their website.

Mistake 4- You are pitching to the wrong publication. 

If your email pitches are getting nowhere, there is a probability that you are sending them to the wrong publications.

For example, you cannot expect a chicken dish in a vegetarian restaurant. Right?

Similarly, sending your pitches to publications that are not relevant to your industry might not get proper responses. There is no need to waste your resources in such a way.

Sometimes, you might be sending a pitch to the wrong person.

Most guest posting websites have a valid email and a person handling the outreach department.

You need to address that person only.

Also, for any website, you can find a valid email address through tools such as Ninja Outreach.

Sending emails to a person not assigned to take care of the task is a wrong move and will lead you nowhere.

Mistake 5- Your emails have grammatical errors. 

Do you have a content writer on your team?

If not, hire one, as grammatical errors in the digital marketing domain is a big no-no.

Making silly grammatical errors in your pitch is the worst thing to do. Better you don’t send pitches altogether.

How can you expect a publication to trust your brand if your emails have grammatical or sentence errors?

What will be your first impression then?

Ensure you double-check your content before sending it to a concerned person.

Not just pitch; if your guest post has grammatical errors, they will be relaxing in a trash bin in the next moment.

Don’t ruin your first impression.

Hire a content writer if you don’t have one and write properly drafted emails that make an impression.

Mistake 6- Your pitch lacks confidence. 

Don’t underestimate the publications.

They get hundreds of emails every day, knowing which are genuine and which are not.

If you are bluffing, they are smart enough to identify it.

Also, you need to tell your story confidently.

For example, don’t be shy to admit if you are a new business. If you are confident enough, they will give you a chance.

Show your strength in the email. They will not consider your application if they find out that you don’t know about the industry.

Be confident and ensure you don’t give an impression to them that you lack knowledge.

Mistake 7- You are not following up. 

So you have written valuable content and sent it to a publication with a highly personalized pitch.

If you expect it, it will not be published the next day.

As I said earlier, top-notch publications get hundreds of emails every day, and unless you are extremely lucky, there are lesser chances that they will publish your article.

Even if they have seen your email and content, they might forget to publish it due to other unavoidable tasks or commitments.

Make sure that you follow up once you send the email.

You need to wait for a week and then send a follow-up email.

Draft a follow-up email in a manner that does not look arrogant. Simply ask them about your post and what they think about it.

Mistake 8- Your content does not have value. 

Many digital marketers who have written good email pitches still get rejected by publications.

What might be the reason?

Most of the time, they send valueless content to publications.

If your articles don’t add value to the website, they will never publish them. It is as simple as that.

In that case, you need to hire a subject-matter expert who can write high-quality, engaging content for your brand.

Highly-researched and valuable content is the first thing that you need to look after. If you are failing at it, nothing can lead to success.

Ensure that your content adds some value to your target audience. Come up with high-quality content with good readability and engagement.

Also, never send duplicate or copied content to publications. They will blacklist you if you do so.

Mistake 9- You are not following guest blogging guidelines. 

If you notice, each publishing website will have a guest post guideline page.

They want writers to write content as per the guidelines given.

If you are not following these guidelines, they will reject your content.

Hence, it is of utmost importance that you read guidelines and follow them while writing articles.

From formatting guidelines to word count, ensure that you follow them religiously to get success.

Mistake 10- You are flattering them. 

You are surely mistaken if you think you will flatter them, and they will keep you in their good book.

Blogging websites check only things- quality.

If you are not offering it to them, you are useless to them.

So, rather than putting your efforts into flattering them, try to create quality articles that add some value to them.

It will make things work.

Mistake 11- Your landing page does not look good. 

Even if you are producing quality articles and getting leads on your landing page, your efforts will go in vain if you don’t have an optimized landing page.

You want visitors to visit your page and spend time there.

However, if your landing page is not properly optimized, they will leave, never to come back.

Also, a wrong landing page can be a reason for guest posting disaster.

For example, keeping your home page, a landing page will confuse your visitors, and they might leave your website.

Conclusion

Guest posting is a fantastic way to earn organic traffic and improve your position in the industry.

Don’t blow it up by making silly mistakes.

Hire a Guest Posting expert who can take care of your guest posting campaign and work from all fronts to make your campaign a success.

Keep the above-mentioned possible goof-ups in mind while designing your guest posting strategy.