Blogger Outreach: The Ultimate Guide to a Successful Outreach Campaign

You know the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”? That couldn’t be more true when it comes to SEO and online visibility.

If you’re running an SEO agency, blog, or website, then you know the importance of getting your content seen by as many people as possible. But what’s the best way to go about doing that? You could spend hours manually promoting your content across social media and other websites. Or you could take the easier route and focus on blogger outreach.

Blogger outreach is a process where you identify influential bloggers in your industry and reach out to them in the hopes that they’ll share your content with their audience in the form of guest posts. It’s a simple and effective way to get your content in front of more eyeballs without spending a ton of time or money. In this post, we’ll show you how to do blogger outreach like a pro.

Bad news: Blogger outreach is time-consuming and requires meticulous research and delicate communication.

Good news: The payout can be significant, yielding both quality traffic for your site and valuable backlinks.

Here’s a comprehensive guide to conducting a successful blogger outreach campaign.

How to Prepare For an Outreach Campaign

Google’s approach to ranking content is based on the idea that providing valuable and relevant information to users will help them find what they’re looking for. This means ranking websites higher when their content helps answer questions or provides alternatives to sites with less-than-desirable quality standards.

In other words, you need to create content that’s better than what’s already out there to rank for a keyword.

You can get an edge by focusing your efforts on creating high-quality backlinks through guest posts. But before you start an outreach campaign, make sure your content deserves a high ranking because there are many factors involved in how Google ranks pages.

Google’s key ranking factors include:

The quality of your content
The number of high-quality backlinks points it to your site
How long users stay on your site after landing on it from a search engine results page (SERP)
Your internal linking
Your site’s speed
On-page optimization (meta description, title tag, and schema)
The local (for businesses on Google). This is based on relevance, prominence, and proximity.

The next step involves comparing your content to existing content that appears top on the SERPs. Does yours compare equally or better than those currently ranked above it in terms of quality, word count, and page design? If yes, proceed with your blogger outreach campaign.

How to Assess How Many Backlinks You Need

How many backlinks do you need to rank for a keyword?

Short answer- the number will vary depending on factors like industry and niche.

Keyword research tools like Ahrefs can help you assess how many backlinks you need to outrank the top websites. Simply enter a keyword into the Site Explorer and check their “Top Pages” report. This will show you the number of referring domains each page has.

So if we look at the top pages for a keyword and we can see that the average number of referring domains is around 40, it means that, on average, it would take about 40 backlinks to rank in the top ten results for this keyword.

Let’s do this practically,

I searched the keyword “what is digital marketing” on Ahrefs. According to the results, the top pages are from Mailchimp, Neil Patel, and Investopedia.

The pages have backlinks ranging between 3,700 – 4,800, therefore, it’d take around the same number to beat these pages and rank for the keyword.

However, as I mentioned before, many factors come into play in Google ranking factors, so this is just a rough estimate.

Having looked at how to prepare for a blogger outreach campaign and determine the number of backlinks you’ll need, it’s time to look at how to actually land these posts.

How to Find the Perfect Site to Guest Post On

While guest posting can be a great way to get your name and your work out there, it’s important to make sure that you’re guest posting on the right sites. After all, there’s no point in writing a great guest post only to have it appear on a site that nobody reads. So how can you make sure that you’re choosing the right sites for your guest post campaign? Here are a few tips:

The Site Traffic

Before you write a guest post, it’s important to check the traffic of the site you’re writing for. After all, there’s no point in writing an amazing article if no one is going to read it.

Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to check a site’s traffic. The easiest and most accurate way is by using web analysis and keyword research tools like Ahrefs. The Site Explorer feature on Ahrefs allows us to see the number of organic visitors a site has, along with other key metrics like referring domains and top pages. This gives you a clear idea of how much traffic the site is generating and whether it’s worth contributing your guest post.

Another great option is SimilarWeb, which provides traffic data, including the site’s global and country ranking, traffic sources, and engagement metrics like average visit duration and bounce rate.

If the site owner allows, you can ask for access to their Google Analytics data, which will show the most precise traffic numbers, user demographics, and engagement stats.

Site’s Content

When you’re looking for a site to post your guest posts, it’s crucial to choose a site that will give your work the exposure it deserves. For example, there’s no point in posting on a knitting website if you’re a financial advisor. You want to make sure you’re reaching your target audience with your post, and the best way to do that is to choose a site that covers similar topics. So take a look around and see what kind of content the site has before you submit your post – it’ll save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

Site’s Editorial Standards

As a guest poster, you always want to be mindful of the sites you’re posting on. After all, you are representing your own work and should make sure that it is being featured somewhere that is high-quality and relevant.

A great way to gauge whether or not a site is up to your standards is by checking the content that is already on there. If it is well-written and on point, then chances are that your guest post will be in good hands.

However, if the site seems to lack focus or the content is all over the place, it might be best to steer clear. In short, when looking for the perfect place to post your next masterpiece, be sure to take a look at the current site content. If it’s up to your standards, then go ahead and hit publish!

Domain Rating

If you’re looking for a place to post a guest post, you’ll want to make sure that the site has a good Domain Rating. After all, you don’t want your hard work to be for nothing, and a low Domain Rating means that your post is likely to get buried in the depths of the internet.

The Domain Rating is a measure of a website’s authority, and it’s based on things like link popularity and trustworthiness. In other words, it’s a good way to gauge how likely your post is to get noticed by potential readers. So when you’re choosing a site for your next guest post, be sure to check the Domain Rating – it could make all the difference in whether or not your post gets seen.

It’s Time to Pitch…

Once you’ve found a site with good traffic, the next step is to reach out and pitch them your article idea.

The best way to do this is by emailing the site owner or editor directly. You can usually find their contact information on the website itself, or you can use a tool like Hunter.io to find it for you.

When reaching out, be sure to personalize your message and explain why you think your article would be a good fit for their audience. If you have any specific ideas for how you could improve upon one of their existing articles, be sure to mention that as well.

If everything goes well, they’ll agree to publish your article, and you’ll have generated a high-quality backlink to your website.

But what if they say no?

Don’t worry; it’s not the end of the world. Just move on to the next site on your list and try again. With enough persistence, you’re bound to land a few backlinks from high-authority websites. And those links will go a long way in helping you improve your search engine ranking.

So there you have it: a simple guide to landing high-quality backlinks through blogger outreach. Just remember to be polite, persistent, and offer something of value to the sites you contact, and you’ll be well on your way to improving your SEO.