How Local SEO Helps Service Based Businesses Generate More Leads?
Today, many businesses are already familiar with the positive impact that SEO, in general, can have on the traffic their website receives. However, SEO is about more than just getting traffic; it is about getting targeted traffic that converts to leads and finally sales. The more targeted an SEO campaign is, the more leads you can expect to get and consequently higher conversion figures. That’s why it is so crucial that local service-based businesses focus their attention on the pillars of local SEO and have a lead conversion strategy in place.
In this article, we’ll look at how local SEO can help specifically service-based businesses generate more leads. We’ll also briefly touch on common methods used to convert those leads to sales or clients.
Optimizing Your Google My Business (GMB) Account
One of the first things we often do is start with a business’s Google listing, also referred to as their business profile. It is one of the most effective ways to rank a business and is often a channel for initial contact by prospective clients. Also, ranking well on Google Maps means that your website may also rank well in local search results.
Many local service-based businesses don’t have a Google My Business account and are surprised that there is such a thing. Once we create an optimized profile, add all the required information and location information, it’s ready to start showing up in search results.
Creating a Google My Business Account requires the following:
- We need to create a GMB account and then verify that you own the business.
- Ensure that the listing has up-to-date information
- Respond to customer reviews when someone leaves one
- Include a logo, operating hours, payment methods, products sold and lots of images of the shop, workshop, employees etc.
- Publish posts, mainly announcements, special offers events, which are easily done via the Google My Business dashboard.
Optimize Your GMB Listing
Local service-based businesses that are already listed often don’t manage their listing. Also, a client or someone they might know probably just added them to Google Maps. They do not know of it, fortunately, though you can regain control of your listing and start optimizing it.
According to Jonas Muthoni – SEO consultant from LA Optimizing your listing has three significant benefits for service-based businesses:
- It gives prospects a way to find and contact you directly from the listing. Most people will just tap on a Google Maps listing for the service after checking out a few reviews and calling the company. However, if your number is incorrect or your office hours aren’t mentioned, it possible you will miss that lead. As a business owner, you know the value of a lead that calls in, so your business listing should be optimized to convert that lead when the calls start coming in.
- Replying to reviews is another essential aspect of your GMB listing management. Prospects searching for a service they need will start with going through the reviews. If they see that none of the reviews have been professionally responded .They assume the business either does not exist or does not have good customer service. Either way, you’re losing out on leads.
- It would help if you also started asking for reviews in person or online after you’ve successfully completed a job for the client. For instance, if you are a roofer, ask the homeowner to leave you a review after you’ve finished repairing the roof for them.
Optimize Your Listing Voice Search
We’ve seen the rise of voice search in the past few years, and this trend is only going to increase, which is why your listing should be optimized for it. That’s why it is so vital as local SEOs to optimize a website and associated service listing for the most common questions people ask their voice assistants, as opposed to what they type.
In our experience, prospective customers or clients will use more long-tail keywords when doing voice searches than regular searches. That’s why your content’s SEO will need to be optimized for a conversational tone, i.e. as if someone is speaking. One way to account for traditional questions is to use words like what, who, where, why, when, etc.
Our local voice search also focuses a lot on a searcher’s intent because people often search for a specific piece of information. For instance, if they are baking, they may ask Alexa to convert cups to tablespoons and want a quick answer. Also, your site needs to be optimized for voice searches asking for business hours. For instance, “What roofer is available right now?”
Have a Location Specific About Us Page
As a local SEO expert, we know the value of a localized About Us page on the main business website and the GMB listing. You need to have a location page for the area, which at the minimum provides information such as:
- Testimonials
- Store hours
- Phone number, name, address etc.
- Description of the business
- Any current promotions
- Parking availability
- Google Maps attached to each page
If you are operating the service in multiple locations, then you’ll need multiple pages for each location. Each page will also need to be unique to that location in terms of content and what you offer there.
Conclusion
Local SEO, when done right, can yield many leads for service-based businesses. However, services need to optimize their business processes to convert those leads to prospects and then sales. Part of doing that is having good customer service and active SEO, which consistently works on optimizing your local GMB listing and answering reviews left by clients.
While local SEO can be challenging in some locations and for some industries, it is, for the most part, worth the effort and time spent. That’s why as a local service, if you’re not investing in professional SEO, it’s possible that you’re losing out on many leads and sales that come from people who fire up Google to search for dry cleaners, house painters, roofers, contractors etc.
How to Get More Responses From Your Outreach Campaign
Outreach for your brand is an important part of making sure that people can find your company. So that your consumers are aware of your products and services. If you are taking the time to do outreach yourself or you decide to outsource your link-building work or email blasts. You need to be sure that you are getting the responses that you are expecting.
Emails in particular, are commonly sent to spam folders by many consumers if they do not offer the value that they were hoping for. If you are trying to figure out how to make your outreach campaigns more effective, read on for more information!
How to Get More Responses From Your Outreach Campaign
There are some planning and design phases that you should always submit your outreach campaigns to before you roll them out to consumers. Doing the right planning and design process will make sure that you are delivering quality content and outreach with the right branding message.
1. Identify the Purpose of Your Outreach Campaign
This is the most important part of planning an outreach campaign. You should always take this step first before you design anything that you plan to use for outreach. The purpose of your campaign guides every aspect of its design and its delivery. Are you trying to convert to sales or are you informing your consumers about a new product that is going to be coming out soon?
Maybe you are trying to get new email list subscribers, or you might be trying to promote a book or another product that you get affiliate marketing payments from. These kinds of determinations need to be made well before you start to design any kind of outreach campaign that you are designing. This will make sure that you are not wasting money or time on outreach that will not generate engagement or sales.
2. Be Willing to Change Direction
You might have an idea in mind of an email campaign and then you realize that this will be content that is better. When delivered as a blog post or as part of your social media ad campaigns. It is important to make sure that you are not locking yourself into forcing round pegs into square holes. You can probably use almost any kind of content that you have dreamt up for some purpose, but forcing that content to fit the needs of an incorrect outreach style will never work.
Being willing to identify the proper placement of different kinds of information. Outreach is essential to being able to deliver content and outreach that fits properly with your branding and delivers maximum results for your money spent on ads, email campaigns, and blog content. You always want to avoid annoying or frustrating your consumers and you can spare yourself lots of lost subscribers by making sure that you are sending the right content through the right channels each time you provide outreach.
3. Define Your Target Audience
Always make sure that you know exactly who your target audience is for each kind of outreach that you are doing. You should never assume that your target audience is not changing over time. You should always be open to segmenting and retargeting your audience details. No matter what kind of outreach you are working on, you will have reduced success if you are showing this outreach to the wrong parts of your audience.
Your audience can grow, split, and change over time and you may find that you are going to need to do outreach to these different audience segments in unique ways. This is especially true of email outreach campaigns. Defining your target audience can make a huge difference in engagements and conversions.
4. Deliver Outreach at the Right Times
Believe it or not, the time of day that you submit your outreach to your audience can make a huge difference in the results of your outreach campaign. People are far less likely to take the time to read a blog post or an email campaign. If you send it during business hours when they will be at work. Likewise, if you send out an outreach campaign in the middle of the night, no one will see it until the next morning when they are busy heading to work.
You might also need to consider the time frames of different parts of the country as well. You do not want to be sending out email outreach based on Eastern time when most of your engagers are historically in the Pacific Northwest. Timing can be the difference between a successful campaign and a campaign that is a flop.
5. Make it Actionable
If you are sending out outreach, particularly via email, make it easy for people to follow your call to action. Make a big or obvious button or link for them to follow to buy an item or watch a video. Don’t expect your consumers to do a bunch of leg work to find out what you really meant when you reached out to them.
Consumers are increasingly impatient with technological issues, both on websites and within blog content or email outreach. Don’t annoy your potential customers by creating shoddy or hard-to-use outreach campaigns.
Getting More Responses From Your Outreach Campaign is About Attention to Detail
Paying attention to how your campaign is constructed will have a major impact on the engagement you receive from your work. You will need to be sure that the content is correct for your purposes, that you know what your stated intention for this outreach is, and you will want to be sure that you are delivering your content to the right audience.
Making sure that all of these factors are in place will ensure that you get great results from any outreach campaign that you send out and your brand will enjoy engagements and conversions in increasing numbers. Meeting your outreach goals just requires some planning and careful design practices to be a big success!
5 New Web Hosting Marketing Ideas That Actually Works
Summary: In this write up, we want to share some amazing web hosting marketing ideas that will help you grab the attention of your target audience and thus achieve more sales.
Initially, there were only a few ways to promote your business, like hosting small local events or printing flyers. However, the good thing today is THE INTERNET, which has opened a completely new world of enormous opportunities for everything Thus to promote a web hosting business online is not a big deal now until you know how to start.
One way to get started is by using some amazing web hosting management and billing automation platforms like WHMCS. It sets up your business on auto-pilot using great WHMCS Modules .
We know you want to promote your business to stay ahead in the highly competitive market, and we are here to support you with the same. In this article, we are going to disclose some amazing web hosting marketing ideas so that everyone gets to know about your web hosting business.
Internet Visibility The Eventual Goal of Promoting Web Hosting Business
When someone searches a query or a problem on the search engine and finds any digital trace of your products or services that can help them to resolve the issue and can learn more about your business is something called your visibility on the Internet.
Here when we talk about a digital trace, it can be anything related to your business, like your website, business profile, social channels, a video, an infographic, or anything that shows the credibility of your business.
To understand this clearly, let’s imagine yourself in this scenario:
I search for a peaceful cafe on the Internet and found one.
I checked out its interior, exterior and how people chilling over there.
I become a fan of their Twitter and Facebook page as I saw their reviews.
Eventually, I become a regular customer of this cafe and start others recommending the same.
Others found it amazing too, they wrote great reviews for that cafe, and search engines also started liking that business.
So, that’s the power of Internet Visibility!
How To Promote My Web Hosting Business For Better Internet Visibility?
Most of the SMEs and entrepreneurs think that it’s necessary to have a large marketing budget to promote hosting businesses, which is not true. Having a smart marketing strategy to promote your web hosting business is enough.
Now, we are going to present you the top 10 web hosting marketing ideas so you never miss your potential customers.
Idea 1. Create a Mind-Blowing Web Hosting Business Website
The first and foremost step to get started with promoting your web hosting business is to strengthen your roots — Your Website, Landing Pages. This is so because you want your clients to stay here and for that, your website must be optimized properly by using amazing CTA’s, so they don’t find it boring.
According to a recent study, there are around 4.66 billion active internet users all over the world, which is 59.5% of the global population.
So, the whole process of promoting your business starts and ends with your stunning business website on the internet.
Make sure your website is prepared to handle traffic spikes, receive potential customers, navigate them well, and convert them into loyal customers, prospects, or subscribers. For any kind of custom project requirements, you may refer to the best WHMCS custom development services
Idea 2. Create a Blog Category Within Your Hosting Business Website
Well, this tip is going to take a lot of effort to grab the attention of your target audience, however, it’ll all be worth. You’ll start seeing the results from this for sure.
All the web hosting businesses having a blog are twice as likely to generate traffic from their website as those that do not have one.
The reason behind this is clear, you cannot cover all the web hosting-related information on your product or business pages, but you can create blogs about them. Once you start writing about all the major issues users face with web hosting, your website will start appearing on all relevant search terms.
This way, search engines encourage the generation of trust and users will find your website helpful as will be offering them some really helpful advice. You can also offer them your products or services to ease their burden.
Idea 3. Connect Your Subscribers on Personal Level Via Email Marketing
An ideal and most professional way to promote your business is by sharing any valuable information or promotional items through a newsletter.
Did you know sending emails is the most preferred communication method for eCommerce and web hosting businesses and so email marketing has an ROI of 4400%?
Attracting visitors is useless until you retain them to contact them later. Therefore, you must ask your visitors for their email addresses so that you can always update them about your business.
This way you can find valuable content like eBooks, press releases, business guides, or even share your latest product or service offers with them that can drive great results to your web hosting business.
Idea 4. Accelerate Your Business Growth With Video Marketing
Creating helpful and informative videos that represent your brand, services, or products is a great way to make people aware of your brands.
An annual study into UK media habits says, “At the height of lockdown, we all are stuck indoors and spending almost 40% of our waking hours in front of a screen, which means 5-6 hrs each day”.
This is the reason why YouTube has become the second largest search engine on the Internet. So, you can create great videos about your brand and let people know everything about your web hosting business.
Now, don’t assume that you need some fancy videos to promote your web hosting business, you can just help people with the right information and you will get more than enough social engagement on it.
Idea 5. Meet Professionals and Grow Your Social Network
Conferences, meetings, fairs… These were the ways to establish links with other professionals in your niche. But, again the Internet made it simpler with platforms like LinkedIn.
“Social networking is an excellent opportunity to grow your business enormously as it helps web hosting businesses to reach new generations, attract new customers, and increase profitability.”
To increase your social network, you just need a personal account to register and you are good to grow. Now, you can create some informative posts that solve common web hosting issues or post relevant videos.
Besides, you can strategically seek alliances with other professionals who have the same business goals and choose candidates to form strong teams to promote your web hosting business.
Some Other Smart Ideas to Promote Your Web Hosting Business
- Reach potential customers through paid online advertising
- Make webinars pointing customer challenges and offer appropriate solutions
- Promote your business on Google My Business and other major geolocation platforms
- Serve your potential customers through social bookmarking your credible resources
- People tend to trust other people’s recommendations, so share your client reviews with the world
- Launch press releases about your latest product updates and send them to local and international media
- Be active on blogs and forum websites related to web hosting. You can find many topics related to the comparison between hosting. Check cPanel alternative.
- Use your website link as your email signature so that everyone takes a look over that link and who knows if they find it helpful
- Broaden your reach and start searching for new guest posting, blogging, and link building sites for quality backlinks
- Write an eBook targeting all the major concerns of your potential clients
The Worst Mistake You Should Avoid At All Costs
With each passing day, you can see the increase in numbers of existing blogs, websites, business profiles, on social media platforms. Therefore, making your business visible on the Internet is super difficult and only a few businesses succeed in this.
Wanna know why?
Because they have a powerful social media strategy. Often web hosting entrepreneurs underestimate the actual power of social media platforms and leave their business profiles to inexperienced hands. This ruins all of their search engine optimization efforts.
Remember, cheap is expensive — always.
Therefore, we would like to suggest you hand over your social media strategy to experienced people who have achieved real results. This will create a good reputation for your business on all the major social media platforms.
Now That You Know
Your corporate image will have a lot to do with the immense success or failure of your web hosting business. Therefore, we have curated this list of the best web hosting marketing ideas that are tested and driven actual results. These web hosting marketing ideas will help you tremendously to attract the right audience. However, keep this thing in mind that there are no such “magical solutions” that will promote your web hosting business automatically on the internet. Or, these are nothing like a module or a service that you have to install once and then leave them to work on their own.
All the possible web hosting marketing ideas take enough time, continuous efforts, and lots of patience to get the actual results. Therefore, implement all these tips to promote your web hosting business and keep moving forward.
A/B Testing for Effective SEO
Running PPC campaigns or testing an email is deemed the most challenging task in digital marketing. But do you know what is more difficult? A/B testing for the SEO landing pages. Things become tougher if you are taking help from the Google Website Optimizer.
If this scared you and you are planning to ditch A/B testing already, think again. When I was running a marketing recruiting agency I was not paying much attention to A/B testing. However, I soon learned about its importance. So before I share how it helped me, let’s learn about what it is, and some terms that will come in handy.
What is A/B Testing?
People also refer to A/B testing as split testing. During this test, you change one or more features of your test page and compare the results with the original page’s performance. After you have a look at the results, you can analyze and decide whether you want to make the changes or not.
In case, the audiences’ response is overwhelming, you would want to try the test page. The ‘A’ in the test is your original page while the ‘B’ is the test page. There is nothing much complex about simple A/B testing. A very straightforward test that will display the comparison before you. A/B Testing is something that can be only done by experienced & Professional companies like long island seo or Miami SEO . Some of the most common features that people test using the split test are CTA messaging, color changes & much more things.
What is Multivariate Testing?
Multivariate testing is more complex when compared to A/B testing. This type involves the simultaneous testing of various sections on a single landing page simultaneously. Here, you get to test the multiple combinations of a single page. And you will have to decide which one receives the best response.
Companies use this approach to optimize their landing pages better. Multivariate testing also gives you insights about how the various elements of a page are working together. It throws light on the impact of one element on the other. Some of the common combinations that companies test include the many combinations of images and headlines. Apart from that, combinations of buttons and body text also get tested quite often.
Impact of A/B and Multivariate Testing on SEO
You might be wondering that what is the need to get into such complexities and why do companies need to carry out these tests. The answer lies in the great impact that these tests are capable of having on SEO. In most of cases, these tests will have a positive and favorable impact. However, if you are not aware of how to manage them well, these tests can even have a negative impact on SEO.
There are many reasons for the tests going wrong and not giving the expected results. Some of them include:
Cloaking – In case there is a huge variance among the test versions and the search engine sees a very different version of the testing age, cloaking occurs. This can demote your website’s ranking. The worse yet is that your website can even get removed from the organic search altogether as a result of cloaking.
Page duplication – If your website’s pages are identical to each other, the search engine will treat them as duplicates. Hence, creating problems.
Inconsistent redirects – If your web pages keep redirecting to other pages, then that can pose problems as well.
What do Search Engines Want?
Because it is SEO aka Search Engine Optimization, you have to listen to what the various search engines expect from you. Only then will you be able to conduct A/B and Multivariate testing with success.
According to Google, it is the stability and consistency that matters the most. Google hates getting redirected to another page whenever the search engine crawls your test page. Everything that the search engine sees after visiting the page is what it thinks the audience will see as well. And that is how it is. Therefore, anything that causes inconvenience of any kind gets labeled as a red flag from Google. Thus, affecting your test.
Bing
As far as Bing is concerned, it is no different than Google when it comes to the stability of the website. According to the reps of Bing, you should run a test over a course of weeks and not hours to get a fair comparison.
How can I Improve My Tests?
Serve the Primary Content
Make sure that you feed Google the primary content that you wish to have a ranking for. If the original page contains a section that is missing in the test page, then Google will not accept this. It cannot access the page to make a fair comparison. Avoid Cannibalization and be very careful when it comes to title tags, internal links, and body content.
Not Very Different Pages
No doubt that if you wish to test something different, the test page will need some tweaking. However, you should be careful when making these changes. The two pages should not come across as very different from each other. In case they are, it gets labeled as cloaking and you would have to request a manual action to get it fixed.
302 Redirects
In case a split test involves redirection, then you should use a 302 redirect between the test URLs. This tells the search engine that the redirect is temporary. Thus, sending a message to include the original page in the index.
Retain the Original Page
Preserving the links’ equity is essential. If you run your test on the various URLs and your test page performs better than the original, you should not just go about switching the original page off. Instead, consider updating the old page with the changes that received a positive response on the new page. In case, this option is not available, you can always bring 301 redirect t to use.
Run Tests When Necessary
You might get tempted to run tests for a long period. However, it will do you no good. Run the tests as long as it is necessary for you too. This will help ensure that you have enough data gathered to make a fair comparison.
When I had to introduce a webpage on my site highlighting the importance of talent acquisition strategies, I remember creating 2-3 variants of it. Then I let the test run for 2 months. It was a great success because I took care of everything.
Guide on Guest Blogging: Tips To Write Guest Posts
If you write guest articles regularly, you know that it has becomebecame quite difficult to contribute across third-party resources nowadays. Guest contributors face more strict rules regarding content quality. Plus, it takes lots of time to get a guest pitch reviewed. Why does it happen? Let’s get back to the 2019 year for a second. According to statistics, there were 4.4 million blog posts published every day. And the numbers grow with each year.
Therefore, due to a high volume of guest post requests blogs receive, it became less possible to publish 2-3 guest articles per week. Despite the fact, the necessity of guest blogging is still in priority for marketers. How to turn the table on in this situation? In this guide, you will get familiar with the tips that will help you get your guest articles published without delay. Shall we begin?
Start With Exploring Guest Post Opportunities
Practice shows that the first thing that a guest post writer should do is collect a list of niche-related blogs that accept guest contributors. When you have the list of blogs, you should proceed with pitching your guest post ideas.
There are two things that you should avoid doing:
- Send a single guest post topic idea for review
- Start writing a post before a suggested topic has been approved by a blog’s editor
Let’s review what could happen if you make the above-mentioned mistakes.
First of all, you waste your time writing a post. You are not a professional content writer who writes posts for money. You must value your time. Secondly, you don’t know if the topic will be interesting for a blog’s audience. You can’t predict if the blog editor will approve the topic and like the post. Hence, the chances that the game is worth candles are slim.
Instead, you should follow these steps:
- Explore as more niche-related blog opportunities as you can
- Pick up about 10-15 blogs and split them into sub-niches (email marketing, SEO, content design, web design, social media marketing, etc.)
- Brainstorm about five topic ideas per each sub-niche blog
- Send your pitch
- Start write content
Stick to this approach. It will increase the success of your bust blogging drastically.
So, how to explore niche-related guest post opportunities?
There are a few actionable ways that will help you find blogs that accept guest contributors. Let’s review them.
- Google + specific search commands
The very first place that can help you find guest posts service s Google. Hence, go to Google and use one of these search commands:
- [niche] + write for us
- [niche] + submit a guest post
- [niche] + become a contributor
- etc.
For example, you want to find several blogs related to design.
This approach of finding guest post opportunities is actionable. However, it lacks SEO-related metrics that can help you target more high-quality blogs.
Content Explorer tool from Ahrefs
The market is full of different SEO tools. They vary with the toolkit each of them suggests. When it comes to exploring blogs for guest posting, Content Explorer from Ahrefs can help you a lot.
In this case, you should search for blogs where either your competitors or niche influencers have published before.
A huge advantage of using this SEO tool for finding opportunities is that you can filter down the results by Domain Rating, Page Traffic, and other SEO metrics. Thus, you will be able to explore the most promising guest post opportunities.
Social media channels (Twitter)
Twitter can help you find guest post opportunities as well. Put your search command into Twitter’s search bar and reap the benefits straight away.
Now you know how to explore blogs for guest blogging services. Use these approaches and move to the next tip.
Brainstorm Topic Ideas That Would Spark the Interest
Guest blogging has one major drawback – the absence of fresh topic ideas. When you’re writing guest articles regularly, you start to notice that you lack unique ideas that you could suggest to the audience.
It leads to writer’s block – the state of inability to write something new.
How to escape writer’s block and be able to come up with fresh ideas all the time?
Here are a couple of tips that you can implement in your practice.
Use a “Skyscraper technique”
This technique was created by famous SEO expert Brian Dean. The idea behind the skyscraper technique is to cover topics that drive tons of traffic constantly.
How does it work?
First of all, you need to explore topics that have lots of social shares, backlinks, and traffic. Once the topics are identified, you should update the content with new information. You can do this by adding statistics, covering this topic from another angle, enriching it with related visuals.
Afterwards, you need to get in touch with the blog editors that have content on the same topic on their blogs. Introduce your updated version of the topic to them and ask if they could publish it.
Eventually, you can cover top content ideas over and over again.
Pick gem ideas across other popular blogs
Every niche has top blogs where different experts and influencers publish their content. You can find some guest post topic ideas by conducting topic research on these blogs.
For instance, you want to cover a topic related to advertising. You need to come up with a topic idea that would be related to PPC specifically. Type your request and see what posts have been published on the same topic before.
Now you have a list of the posts. Your next step is to review each topic and see what points it covers. Pick up a few best topics to your mind and create a new topic idea.
Visit Quora to find fresh topic ideas
Quora is a Q&A platform that you can use to find inspiration for creating shareable content that would be in demand. Put your query and filter down the results “by time” and “by type.”
From the example above, you can see what questions people ask on the “content design” topic. Some of the questions are out of interest but a few of them could be transformed into topic ideas.
- The question “How is a content designer different from a copywriter?” can work as a topic “Content Design or Copywriting: Key Factors You Should Know to Never Confuse”
- The question “How is collaboration key for SEO and content design?” can be turned into a topic “Content Design and SEO: How These Two Directions Can Complement Each Other”
As you can see, Quora is a good source of topic idea suggestions.
With the help of SEO tools
Yes, specific SEO tools can help you find guest post ideas easily. You noticed that there is a mention of Ahrefs’ Content Explorer tool that can help you find guest post opportunities. This tool can help you with topic ideas as well.
Assume that you want to come up with some topic ideas on sports supplements. Let’s see what other people covered across different blogs by using the tool.
The tool suggested a wide range of articles related to this topic solely. The results are sorted by the amount of traffic each post drives. Your purpose is to review top topics and brainstorm how you can cover them from your end.
Now you have a list of blogs that accept guest contributors and topic ideas you can pitch them with. But how to do it correctly?
Read further and you’ll find out!
How to Pitch Your Guest Post Ideas Effectively
The success of your guest post pitch depends on the email template you use.
What should your email template include?
First thing first, draw attention to the pitch requirements each blog has. Some blogs suggest what you should point out in the subject line of your email. If you don’t follow recommendations, your pitch will be rejected.
However, if there is no strict rule regarding this, you can use the following subject line that works pretty well.
“A guest post request from [your company brand name]”
Talking about the email template, it should be short and sweet. Here is the example you can use.
“Hi there,
It is Ann from Technotronic here.
I was exploring blogs related to “[niche]” to pitch my guest post suggestion. I couldn’t pass your blog because it looks good + highly authoritative.
Therefore, is there a chance for me to contribute?
Here are my topic ideas to choose from:
1) Topic idea
2) Topic idea
3) Topic idea
4) Topic idea
5) Topic idea
Here are the examples of my past publications.
1) Sample of work
2) Sample of work
3) Sample of work
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Ann”
Reach out to the blog editors and wait for their replies.
A Few Suggestions That Will Help You Speed Up Guest Post Writing
Guest post writing is an unpredictable process. You can never know when you will get a reply from a blog’s owner and what topic will be chosen. Hence, you can’t predict what type of content you will have to create.
Therefore, you should be aware of the major types of content. It will help you manage your time and efforts more productively.
There are four main types of content. Let’s review them one by one.
Case study
If you want to say a word for your product or service, writing case studies is what you need. A case study allows you to explain to your target audience how your service can help solve people’s issues. However, you must understand that you can’t promote the product blatantly. You can underline the avid benefits that people might have if they use the product.
What’s more important, you can apply various visual elements when creating the case study. Especially if you need to present some statistics. Enrich your case study with infographics, graphs, charts, and other forms of visual content.
Keep in mind, if you want to add visuals to your case study, you might need to use design tools for this. For example, an online graph maker can help you create a beautiful graph that would work great to visualize the data.
Other than that, any case study is way time-consuming. Hence, you will have to take your time to create it.
Review
Review articles help your target audience to find answers to the questions they have regarding some product or service. As a rule, you will have to test all the services or products that you are willing to cover in the post by yourself.
It takes lots of time and forces you to analyze every service perfectly. You will have to explore all pros and cons of each product personally and introduce your findings to your audience.
“How-to” article
This type of article aims to provide your target audience with a step-by-step tutorial on how to do something. It includes all the stages of an educational piece of content along with some actionable tips.
It depends on the topic you cover of how long you will have to write this post. Plus, the “how-to” article requires you to have firsthand experience in the subject you’re covering.
It should be admitted that “how-to” articles demand you to apply visuals in the body of the post. Thus, if you don’t have time to work on infographics for your post, you can hire a graphic designer who would do this instead of you.
Lists
“Lists” articles remind “review” articles at some point. You will have to present different tools or services with all their pros and cons included. However, in contrast to “review” articles, “lists” ones illustrate a huge number of products in a single post. That’s why you don’t need to go into detail about each tool. Just a short description, pros and cons, and conclusion.
By knowing the types of posts you will be able to predict how much time you will have to spend working on the post.
Other tips that you should be armed with are:
- Create a comfortable place for work (no noise, air-conditioning, no distractions)
- Decide for yourself when you’re more productive (an early bird or a night owl)
- Don’t forget about breaks and physical exercises
- If your process of writing lacks inspiration, don’t write
- Remember about deadlines
Follow these simple tips and you will see that you can write guest posts on autopilot.
To Sum Up
Guest posting is extremely important for brand awareness, gaining more traffic, and earning backlinks. You should not neglect it for all costs.
In this guide, you found out how to find guest post opportunities, brainstorm fresh topic ideas, pitch them effectively. Plus, you got a few actionable tips that will help you write guest articles without any stagnation.
If you have something to add, feel free to share your ideas in the comments.