- Boring articles pitched to junk websites,
by tragic emails, with lame follow-ups,
to get spammy links, shatter dreams, Parkway,
and that is why most guest posting doesn't work.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Actually, writing for other websites,
ie, guest posting can be a pretty good idea,
particularly if your business likes rankings,
credibility, and money,
not to mention that getting your content published
on the sort of websites the audience
is already reading is a great way to impress them
with your wits and intelligence.
Alright, well, never mind,
but at least you might get a back link.
But when most people try guest posting,
they sort of poke at it with a stick for 10 minutes,
get nowhere, give up,
and then just go back to scrolling TikTok on their phones.
But not you, not today, got it?
Today we're gonna go through a guest posting formula
that you can use to get your business
and your content featured.
We use a variation of this formula at Exposure Ninja
with our clients all around the world.
Oh, and by the way,
if you're still wondering, does guest posting work for SEO?
Stick around to the end to find out.
Ready?
Step one, ideation.
Ideation just means thinking,
but marketing agencies can't sell you thinking,
so we call it ideation.
If you're gonna get your content published,
you need to have a good angle,
you need to have something that people
are actually gonna be interested in.
This is the main reason that guest posting usually fails
because boring gets nowhere.
When coming up for ideas for guest posts
imagine your perfect customer scrolling through their phone,
what sort of content angle could you put in front of them
which would stop them from scrolling,
catch them in their tracks?
That's the sort of thing that you're after.
Well, luckily we have some tools
that can help us in this task.
Let's do an example to see how they work.
Alright, we're gonna do a quick example
with a made up business,
and this business is going to have created a device
that waters houseplants automatically,
you can do it from your phone,
it's smart, all that type of stuff.
Why houseplants?
Well, I've got one here that has seen better days.
Shh, that's where I keep the dead leaves.
Anyway, so we've got a clear niche.
So how do we find a good guest posting topic?
Well, the first tool that we're gonna check out
is Exploding Topics at explodingtopics.com.
So Exploding Topics allows us to look at any topic
and see how interest is trending over time,
and whether this topic has already peaked.
Obviously, you wanna be posting about something
that's getting more popular than getting less popular.
Another great tool you can use to find guest posting topics
is answerthepublic.com.
Just go to AnswerThePublic stick in your topic,
and it'll give you all of the questions
that people are asking about that topic.
Some of these might make good guest post topics,
for example, can houseplants survive outside?
Can houseplants live forever?
Now my watering device is obviously designed
to help plants live longer or live.
Or just live.
So this could be a good topic for me
to guess post about because it ties in a common problem
with a solution that I have created.
Another great tool
for guest posting is BuzzSumo, stick in any topic
and you'll be able to see related content ideas.
When you click on these, you'll see the posts
that have been shared in this area,
so you can see are things on this topic
getting lots of shares?
Is there lots of interest in this topic?
Or again, is it trending down?
This can also give you some insight
into the sort of content that people
are most likely to share with and engage on social media.
Now, as well as talking directly about your topic,
in this case houseplants, you can also piggyback
on other topics that are popular.
For example, let's say I wanted to talk
about mental health and I wanted to talk about the links
between mental health and houseplants,
that would allow me to go after publications
that talk about mental health,
and use mental health trending topics
to get coverage for my business.
I could also do a similar thing about climate change,
something else which is really current
and in the news at the moment.
How can I link houseplants to climate change
in order to get coverage for my business?
Maybe something like, are houseplants good for the climate?
Or which houseplants suck out the most carbon dioxide?
If you're a specialist business talking
about specialist niche topics, then don't worry
if these tools tell you that there's not much volume,
you're gonna find your publications first,
and then write based
on what those publications are talking about.
Okay, so you got your topic,
now it's time to find some publications
to get some coverage in.
A few good ways to do this,
firstly, just Google it.
I've gotta talk about my houseplant,
so I might go into Google
and just search for houseplant blogs.
This is gonna gimme a whole bunch of blogs
about houseplants.
So I know that they're gonna be topically relevant,
because Google's ranking them,
and I also know they're gonna
have reasonable authority if Google is ranking them.
And I want to get my content featured
on reasonable authority blogs,
because I don't wanna be wasting my time writing
for spammy blogs, and if I'm gonna get links,
I want them to be from decent websites.
You can also search for houseplant magazines.
This is gonna tend to give you larger websites.
So here I've got things like "Gardeners' World",
like a UK gardening institution,
they'd be so proud of this.
But they've got books, radio,
TV, magazines,
they're all over the place.
So getting some coverage on a site
like this would be fantastic for my plant device.
Another great way to find publications to target
is to find your competitors and analyse their back links.
So let's say for my plant business,
waterirrigation.co.uk is a competitor.
So I might head over to Semrush,
free trial at thankyouninjas.com,
and do a little bit of backlink analysis.
So I stick 'em in here
and I can see what sort of sites they're getting links from.
I can then work out, are any of these sites
that I might want to target with my guest posting?
In this case, probs not.
Maybe this one.
Which leads us onto a very common question
and a bit of a stumbling block with guest posting.
You might find some sites where you think actually
they look kind of junky,
do I really want to include them in my guest post outreach?
Well, here's how to tell.
You wanna think like Google, so ask yourself,
firstly, is this site mobile friendly?
Any site that's not mobile friendly in 2022
needs to have a serious word with itself.
Secondly, are they secure?
Is it using SSL, https at the start of the domain?
Again, if they're not in 2022 and onwards,
what is going on?
Thirdly, is the subject matter on this site
a fairly close match.
If they're posting about all sorts of stuff
it might not even be a decent site
that actual humans ever go and visit.
Fourthly, do they have a good backlink profile?
Do they have other websites linking to them?
Fifthly, do they have good domain authority?
And you can use Moz's link research tool
to find out what domain authority of site is.
And finally, do they have a good spam score?
We're usually aiming for a spam score of less than 10%.
How many publications do you need to research?
We typically allow maybe 20 publications
that we'll reach out to, to get one or two articles placed.
So you need to build up a good database publications
that you want to target.
Messi, Ronaldo, goals, pitch.
Speaking of goals, let's talk about your pitch.
Now once you found the publications
that you want to contact,
you need to find someone who you can actually talk
to at these publications.
Usually you don't just wanna go
to their contact page and fill in a form.
Usually you want to find an actual person to talk to,
either an editor or writer.
Now on a lot of websites,
you can click on their link to go to their author page,
which will sometimes have a direct contact for them.
If it doesn't, then you can often research their name
and find them on Twitter,
and they'll often have an email address in their bio,
because they actually want people
to give them ideas for articles.
Well, you want to be friendly,
but you also wanna be straight to the point,
because these people get a lot of pitches,
they know the deal.
So I'd write them a personal message, something like,
hi Tony, loving your article about how to propagate orchids.
A cutting from my mother-in-law's moth orchid
is still going strong in my lounge 15 years later.
Would your readers be interested in an article I've written,
it's called,
"The Five Most Effective Ways to Rebloom Orchids".
I've tested a whole bunch of methods
and found that these five things work the best.
I'd love to send it over, if you think it might be suitable
for plantmonthly.com,
Tim from plantwaterninja.com.
Now don't be waiting up for Tony's reply.
You want to reach out to all the writers and editors
at the other publications that you've researched too.
And then you want to get stuck in with follow up.
You know the saying, great books aren't written,
they're rewritten?
Trust me, first version of this was rubbish.
We're on about rewrite number six now
and half of it is about 35% good, so I hear.
By the way, you can get free copy of
"How To Get To The Top of Google"
by clicking the link in the description.
I've never been any good at winking.
Just like great books aren't written, they're rewritten,
great guest post opportunities aren't pitched,
they are re-pitched.
These journalists, and writers,
and editors, they are super busy,
so you're gonna follow up with them
usually two to three days later.
There's no particular art to this,
you're just gonna reply to your first email
with a gentle message, hi Tony,
just following up to see if this was of interest?
Now, remember,
you haven't written your article yet.
Before I give you some tips on how to write your article,
check out the free website and digital marketing review
from Exposure Ninja.
Go to exposureninja.com, click the big button,
one of our team will record you a 15 minute video showing
you how to generate more leads and sales from your website.
And by the way, some of the world's biggest brands
have had this review, and they freaking love what they get.
Okay, writing,
so when a publication says
they're interested in publishing your content,
now it's time to write.
Now you're not gonna write
as if you're the marketing manager
for the business that you're working for.
You're going to write as if you are a journalist.
Yes, you are now a journalist.
Good journalists write to interest their audience,
they write to match the publication's style,
and when they mention a product service or business
they do so in a natural way that makes sense for a reader.
Now, of course you are going to want to talk
about your business in your guest post,
that's kind of the point.
But you don't wanna do it in an advertorial
or over the top way,
that's ironically gonna give you less credibility
in your article.
Back to my plant watering guest post,
I might write something like,
one of the keys to keeping your orchid reblooming over
and over it's to make sure it's adequately watered.
Any serious houseplant owner knows the ice cube trick,
leaving an ice cube or three to melt,
gradually watering the orchid without soaking the roots.
There's also a range of more technical solutions,
including smart plant watering systems,
like PlantWaterNinja, allowing greenfingered geeks
to control their plant hydration using an app.
When you send over your article to the publication,
you're going to include your author bio
and your website link,
and of course you're gonna be linking
from in the body of your article too.
And because we've been well raised,
once your article is published, reach out to the editor
and thank them for publishing it.
Also let them know
that you've sent it out to your audience as well.
And once you've nailed guest posting,
there's another 17 ways to build back links in this video.
So check that out, choose one,
and master that one next.
See you soon.