[Last Updated: 02 Nov]

📌 Note: If you want to start your guest posting process, this guideline and SOP will be helpful.

However, to scale the guest posting process, I’d recommend automating the email outreaching to save time.

Step 1. Finding and qualifying websites to pitch

Let’s discuss two sections:

• finding website opportunities
• qualifying websites for email outreaching

Part 1. Finding website opportunities for guest post publishing

Let’s take some examples of using search operators for a marketing related website (means that we’re looking for marketing-related sites that publish free guest articles).

• “Write for us” marketing
• “become a contributor” marketing
• “Write for us” marketing inposttitle:free
• “Write for us” marketing incontent:free

📌 Note: When you’re working on a website for guest article outreaching, chances are that the website has multiple parent topics. So in that case you can perform the above searches for multiple topics.

An example:

Domain.com (assume that this website provide services related to cloud application, marketing, app development)

Here, you can use search operators for each of the service type

• “Write for us” marketing
• “become a contributor” app development
• “Write for us” cloud application

Part 2. Qualifying websites for email outreaching

Not every website deserves our attention. Because some websites are full of spam content and low quality backlinks. Even getting backlink from these websites can affect our website negatively.

Solution?

👉 Qualify websites before sending email.

Here are some parameters you need to check on the guest site:

1. The guest site has to be in the niche as our website

If our website is about software development, then

• ✔️ we’ll outreach websites that publishes majority of the content related to programming, coding, app development (these topics are related)
• ❌ we’ll outreach websites that publishes majority of the content related to health nutrition (it’s off topic )

1. Use Mozbar (free chrome extension) and be careful when the spam score of the guest site is more than 15%
2. The domain authority (DA) of the website has to be more than 10 (you’ll get the data from Moz bar too)

1. Don’t pitch guest sites that use too much display ads or the guest site looks like a spam website with low quality content.

👉 Important links for using Moz Bar

• Download MozBar free

• Guide to setting up the extension

• More on qualifying websites for guest posting

1. Ignore websites that do not have any ‘write for us’ or any page that shows that the website accepts guest articles.
2. When you have two options to pitch via ‘contact us form’ and ‘email address’, always prefer to send emails.

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Step 2. Creating and maintaining sheets

To get started with the guest post outreaching, you need to create two different Google sheets.

• Sheet 1. One is to track the email outreaching
• Sheet 2. Second is for tracking content requirement with the writers

📌 Note: Never use your personal Google drive account to create any sheets or Docs or for any official purpose. Always use the official google drive account (under the same website domain) to maintain sheets.

Now, let’s go through the process of how to create and maintain sheet 1 and sheet 2.

Sheet 1: Guest post tracking sheet

Here’s a screenshot of how the sheet 1 (to track the email outreaching) should look like:

👉 Please find a demo of sheet 1. Your job is to create a google sheet with the same rows, columns, and with the same sheet name. This will help you to track the email outreaching process.

Sheet 1 has 5 columns such as:

• Time (add the date on which you’ve sent the email)
• Site URL (paste the website URL where you’re sending the email)
• Email address (paste the email address that you got from the website)
• Email status (once you send an email, tag this column as ‘Done’)
• Follow Up (we need to follow up websites that didn’t reply even after 3 days. Once a follow up email is sent, tag this column as ‘Done.’)

Please customize the sheet as per the need and requirement.

Sheet 2: Guest post tracking sheet

And, here’s a screenshot of how the sheet 2 (to track the email outreaching) should look like:

👉 Please find a demo of sheet 2. Your job is to create the google sheet with the same rows, columns, and with the same sheet name.

This will help you to track the content requirement.

This sheet (Sheet 2) has 5 columns such as:

• Topic (Paste the content topic approved by the guest site)
• Assigned date (Add the date on which you’re adding the content requirement)
• Guidelines (share a basic structure for the content along with the website URL. You may also find writing guidelines on some guest sites)
• Approx Word (give an approx word count for the writer. Mostly, you’ll find this from the writing guidelines of guest sites.)
• Deadline (normally, guest sites won’t give you any deadline to submit the article. But for efficiency, you may need to add a deadline of 5-7 days from the date of first assigned.)
• Writing status (will be updated by the writer)
• Content URL (will be updated by the writer)

📌 Your job once the content is written by the writer:

• Check whether the content is writer as per the guidelines given
• Check the word count range

Insert the link in the article (you can ask us for guidance on this)

• Published URL (once the content is approved from your end, please share the article with the guest site and paste the published URL in this column.)

📌 Usually, it takes 3-5 days to get your content published on the guest site. If not published in that timeframe please follow up.

Note: Once a site agrees on publishing guest articles, forward the required information to the content writing team.

Step 3. Email template with personalization

When it comes to outreaching email, you need to consider the following elements:

• Your email should have social proof
• Offer a fair game (you may offer to promote the article over newsletter, social media channels, etc.)
• To-the-point message

Here’s a sample email template we use:

Make a copy and customize the above template as per your business and requirement.

This is just a sample to help you understand how to prepare an email outreaching template.

For example, if you have social proof like your authors have published articles for large publication, you can add the URLs in the email.

Or, you can mention in the email that you’ll share blog topics that have search demand and low difficulty as per the guest site. This increases the value of your article as well.

Step 4. Follow up system

When you’re outreaching websites manually, please try to note down the date/ week of outreaching.

This helps you to know when to follow up which websites.

Generally, it is good to send a follow up email after a 3 day interval.

For example:

• 10th Aug, 2022: Sent the first guest post request email
• 13th Aug, 2022: If no reply is received, send a follow up email.

Follow up email should add additional value to the guest sites. It includes how the guest articles can drive business, traffic (showing the search demand, chance of ranking on the first page), etc.

Tip: Follow the email outreaching and follow up process with tools like Gmass (alternatives are also available).

Step 5. Common Type of Replies You’ll Get and what to reply

Let’s understand the types of reply you’ll mostly get and how to deal with them.

Reply type 1: Please share some blog topics

Reply type 2: You need to write on our preferred blog topic and with detailed guideline

Reply type 3: Link exchange

Reply type 4: We charge XX amount as editorial fee

Reply type 5: We’ll give no-follow from author’s bio/article

TIP: It is recommended to categorize all replies with labels. In Gmail, you can create and add label to each email.

An example:

This way, you can access all type of responses in seconds.