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We’ve been pitched a blog post about hoverboards.
While hoverboards are pretty cool and I’d like to own one, our business and our blog have absolutely nothing to do with hoverboards.
Why did we get pitched a post about hoverboards? Most likely because the person pitching the post saw we have a decent domain authority and they wanted to get a piece of it by getting a backlink from us. I’m sure their blog post on hoverboards would have been very interesting, but it likely would have caused our audience of B2B marketing professionals to scratch their heads in confusion.
We know who we are, and who we are not
We are a boutique digital marketing firm that focuses on creating websites and providing content marketing services.
Writing about anything else doesn’t provide value for our brand.
Over the past eight years, we’ve built up the blog on our website writing (mostly) weekly posts about all aspects of web design and digital marketing. This blogging strategy has enabled us to add two to four new blog posts to our website each month. Our main goal has always been to provide our clients and prospects with helpful, actionable information that helps them do their jobs better or aids them in making a decision about digital marketing.
Potential clients get helpful tips and can do their jobs better.
We get great content that may help us rank better and attract more potential clients.
We hate rejection, too
While we love adding insightful information to our blog, we hate having to reject guest post submissions.
Below is an actual pitch we received (sender’s information not included to protect their privacy).
Any smart website owner should be excited to get a guest post pitch. Not only is it flattering (you really like us and want to write for us?), but you get free, hopefully useful content for your website. You can use someone else’s writing to drive traffic to your website.
It's not us; it's you
So, why the heck do we end up rejecting nine out of ten pitches we receive?
Simply stated, many of the guest post pitches we receive "aren’t a good fit," which can mean a variety of things.
Here are the top reasons we reject a guest blog (and why you should, too):
- The topic is irrelevant
- The company pitching the blog isn’t related to our industry
- The writing is terrible
- The blog is tailored to the wrong audience (B2C vs B2B or CTO vs CMO)
- The website they want us to link to is sketchy
- We’ve published a blog post from them recently
- The writing in the email is terrible and full of grammar issues
- The person hasn’t researched our business or even looked at our website
- The topic is too inflammatory
- The topic is relevant but not inline with our firm’s philosophy
- The topic is tired and overused
- There is no value for our audience
When I read a guest blog pitch, I evaluate it for all of these things.
Don't make me hate helping you
Recently, I made the mistake of tentatively accepting a guest post pitch even though the grammar in the email wasn’t up to our standards. We work with CEOs, founders, and marketing directors in a variety of industries, including biotech and finance, all who tend to have advanced educations and expect quality writing.
As such, we require all the content on our website to be grammatically correct, to flow well, and to be coherent.
I ignored my instinct because the proposed topic was really interesting and I felt it would be a great blog post for our current clients. I ended up paying for it. The draft that the guest writer sent over was subpar, to put it nicely. A blog post will undergo revisions, but this post was grammatically challenged and incoherent, jumping from point to point and back again.
I Tracked Changes during the revision process, then returned the post to the writer, who I didn’t hear back from.
The winning 10%
We’ve noticed that winning guest pitches — whether ours or others who pitch to our blog — have a few things in common, in that the pitchers seem to realize the following:
- It’s not easy and it does take time
- Always be professional and respectful
- Know your audience (both the person you're emailing and the folks who are reading their website/blog)
- Read their existing blog posts
- Pitch a relevant topic
- Follow-up is key to getting a response (rejection or approval)
- Don’t push it
- Don’t get discouraged
We don’t anticipate this 90/10 rule for the blog pitches we accept to change. It’s unfortunate, but we know that many digital marketers will never fully understand guest blog pitches and will continue the machine-gun pitching strategy.
7 tips for a successful guest blog pitch
Based on our experience pitching guest blogs and accepting guest blogs, we have several insights to share with writers, marketers, and website owners.
1. Steer clear of paying for guest post opportunities
This one always surprises me. It’s only a matter of time before sites that sell space on their blog are nixed from the SERPs. We always decline when a website we pitch tells us they will publish it for a fee.
2. Do your own research
We always perform our own research to vet a website, ensure it’s relevant, and make sure it actually has a blog we’d like to write for.
3. Don’t always go after 60+ DA websites
It’s great to land a guest blog on a high DA site, but these are often very tough. It's often better to start with the "low-hanging fruit," relevant sites that might have low domain authority.
4. Write a thoughtful article that adds value
Don’t write crap. Consider every guest blog you write to be a graded assignment. Your professional reputation still matters in a digital world. If you write crap, you will be judged for it.
5. Provide options.
People, including editors, like to have options. You might have a great topic, but it’s always best to present several great topics. You never know, the editor may have previously accepted a similar topic.
6. Be genuine.
Ditch your generic email pitch. You may start with a template, but spend 15 minutes or so tailoring it to your pitch.
If you can, find the person’s name and personalize the message. Keep in mind that many of the people you pitch receive lots of unsolicited pitches every day. Stand out from the rest by being genuine and unique.
7. Don’t spam or waste people’s time.
If the website you're pitching isn’t relevant to your industry, don’t pitch them. If they take the time to send you a rejection notice, be gracious and respectful. Take it as a learning experience and thank them for their time.
The last thing I’ve learned about rejecting and submitting guest blog posts is a success comes from creating a partnership between the person doing the pitching and the person being pitched. Our approach is always to offer something of value, be respectful, and, hopefully, create a connection beneficial for everyone.
Have you been successful in pitching guest posts? What’s worked for you?
Thanks to BopDesign for publishing this important post. I hope it will start a discussion that the marketing community needs to hear.
I hope people will not mind a long comment, but this is important to me. I'm a former journalist and newspaper editor who now runs the marcom of a high-tech startup. I started contributing to YouMoz a few years ago, and now I contribute to the main Moz blog once in a while. I also contribute to TechCrunch.
If people will indulge me, here's how I recommend that marketers approach the issue of "guest blogging" to get past the gatekeepers such as BopDesign and myself.
1. Ask yourself why you want to contribute an article to a publication. If it is first and foremost to get backlinks, you are a spammer. I get dozens of pitches over e-mail and LinkedIn messages every week from people who want to submit a "guest post" to my company's blog or my personal blog. And every time that people use the phrase "guest post," it ends up being 500 words of crap with a few exact-match anchor text backlinks. That person is marked as spam and ignored forever.
Contributing articles to publications has always been a PR and publicity strategy since long before the Internet even existed. (I discuss this in more detail in my lengthy publicity tutorial here on Moz.) And the same is true today. The real goal of publishing articles in publications, blogs, and news outlets is to 1.) raise awareness of yourself, your company, and your product or service and/or 2.) communicate and publicize an idea.
2. Understand the real ROI of contributing articles to publications. Publishing on other websites will rarely get you a lot of website traffic, leads, or sales directly. "Direct marketing" and "Publicity" are two of the traditional strategies within the traditional Promotion Mix. Direct marketing campaigns aim to result in direct, immediate sales and leads as a result of sending sales collateral to a list of specific people over e-mail or online ads or direct mail. Publicity campaigns aim for something different. The KPIs include increased awareness and "share of voice" and "overall sentiment" (compared to competitors) and more.
I really hate to cite a personal example of mine, but it is relevant. I recently published a TechCrunch column that criticized the use (as I see it) of buzzwords in the online marketing world and went viral. According to BuzzSumo, it got 20,000 shares. It got 350 comments. You know much traffic my personal website got from the link in my author bio in the column? A few hundred visits.
And that didn't matter. I got e-mails with many job offers (thank you, I'm all set) and speaking offers (sure, I'm interested) and more social followers. And those are PR and publicity KPIs, not direct marketing KPIs. There was a study on Inbound.com that purported to show that the ROI of "guest blogging" is bad. But that study was based on bad assumptions because it applied direct marketing KPIs to publicity campaigns -- and the two do not mesh.
So, you want to be in the 10% of contributed articles that get accepted to places like BopDesign or Moz or elsewhere? Here's what I recommend.
3. Stop thinking about "guest post marketing" and start thinking like a publicist. Forget about links and start thinking about the ideas that you want to communicate to the audience that you want to reach.
- Research what publications are read by your target audience
- See which of those publications accept contributed articles
- Read the guidelines and understand what they want to publish -- every publication is different
4. Once you have a set of publications in mind, think about these issues:
- What can you say that is interesting and original? Case studies and industry analyses are always a good way to brand yourself as a thought leader
- Why is your article relevant now? Large news publications focus on the news -- so, have a tie-in your submission to something real-world event or issue that is current in your industry at that exact moment
- Quality beats quantity. One "10x" article that is submitted to a major publication such as Moz or TechCrunch or whatever will always beat ten spun copies of a random post that will appear on random, small blogs
Moz: For what it's worth, this community member votes for this post to be moved to the Moz Blog. In my opinion, this discussion of "guest posts" really needs to be heard.
Great comment on great post. Would prefer that some authors (unfortunately also on the Moz Blog) would focus on point 4 more often ("what can you say that's interesting and original" & "quality beats quantity").
Tx for both of you.
Great point - quality beats quantity every time in our opinion.
Dirk, thank you for your comment. I also wish that we'd see more interesting and original posts on marketing blogs in general.
The problem is that we have been partially forced by Google and social networks into imitating the publish-or-perish world of academia. If we publish much less often -- even if the individual posts themselves are much higher-quality -- then we risk perhaps losing rankings and social media shares and whatnot. So we all-too-often publish just to publish.
But here's the result. My Feedly has a backlog of hundreds and hundreds of posts on many different marketing blogs that I have yet to read. And I may never will. Why? With each passing month and each passing year, I see fewer and fewer writings that have something new and original to say. I feel like I have read it all. Every blog is repeating itself.
Do I really need to read another post on how to get more Twitter followers? How to optimize a website for international SEO? How to do publicity strategy? How to structure AdWords campaigns? How to create a good presentation deck? How to use schema code?
I have bookmarked resources that are the definitive guides to all of those things in the event that I forget something. Why do I really need to read anything new?
I'm not really expecting an answer -- it's more of a rhetorical question.
sold points completely agree.
First of all, great comment. Second, I'm just getting started and I'm looking into building backlinks for a start-up business. Would you say it's bad to include anchor text backlinks in posts you're trying to get on other people's sites, or is it just bad when it's 500 words of crap?
Ryan - It's ok to include an anchor text backlink in the post IF the link is to a relevant piece of material. As long as the link adds value for the reader, then you can include it. In the end, it's up to the posting site to determine whether they will keep that link when the publish the post. Hope that helps!
Really enjoyed and agree with this post. I'd add explicitly in the getting to know the site you want to pitch that you want to look for any guidelines they've published,and be sure to follow those. I've found explicit guidelines help both the site and the guest author. The author knows what is expected, and if they don't read, the site can easily point to the guidelines and say we're declining because of the post doesn't meet what we're looking for, without needing to write a new explanation each time.
I accidentally did a 'no brown M&Ms' in the guidelines for YouMoz three years ago, when there was the switch from SEOmoz to Moz. We were told the blog width was going to be one width, and it turned out it was about five pixels off from that. We left the original specification for image width in the guidelines. It was an easy way to spot if people had actually read the guidelines. If they had, the images were at that exact width. If they hadn't, they were at the default width of the editor, and we knew that the post was likely going to need more review all around.
I may be one of the few that has the view of don't worry about starting up a relationship with me. I'm a marketer, I can tell when you're suddenly following me on Twitter, commenting on what I write, sending me a LinkedIn request, etc. Give me good content (and cupcakes), but don't try to be my BFF suddenly overnight. It's easy to spot, we've all read the same playbooks. :)
For content options, I tend to find that the titles are so broad with so little information it doesn't help much. At both YouMoz (where I used to be a reviewer) and at inbound.org, we covered a wide variety of marketing topics. I've gotten pitches where I was given five titles and asked which would be best for our audience. Many times, any of them could be both great and horrible, it depends on the execution. Though like Samuel Scott says, sometimes there's just not very much new to say about a certain topic, so I can tell people 'please, not another ten ways to get Twitter followers while you get 10 PR 7 dofollow backlinks from Web 3.1415 sites'.
Keri - Great point about the guidelines. Before we pitch a website, we always search for guidelines. In many cases, these will shape the content idea and how the idea is pitched.
Well I am new in writing but you know what from where I have taken my first step. Fortunately on Moz and unfortunately after a long period I get known that my post has been rejected.
What I learned from there is to try best again, again and again cos competition is so high and valuable things are so less. Else thanks for the post.
The competition is really high out there so we always suggest doing a lot of work upfront before ever pitching or writing a blog. By doing thorough research on a website, you can truly understand their audience and the topics that their audience finds valuable. Thanks for reading the post!
Fantastic post with some great ways of getting into the guest blogging arena. My biggest take away from this was the portion on the winning 10%, it showed that being logical, respectful, and mindful will get you in the door and help you get the opportunity.
Tim - Great observation. How you would interact with someone in person translates well to email pitches. Thanks for reading!
Thanks BopDesign,
Thumbs up to your post! I'm a huge fan of digital outreach and you've brought up a few interesting points.
First and foremost, outreach isn't easy and it takes a heck of a whole lot of time (couldn't agree with you more). I've spent hours trying to position our clients in front of relevant brands. Everything that's worked can be found in "The Winning 10%" section of your post, especially when it comes to being pleasantly persistent in your follow-up.
Really appreciate this post, outreach can take a toll an SEOs psyche - it's great to start of the week with a post that validates our own efforts. Thanks again.
Paul - Outreach does take a commitment of time and a solid strategy to be effective. Glad to hear you appreciated the post!
I would have rejected it on the grounds that it isn't a hoverboard - it doesn't hover!
Oh how excited I was when I thought a hoverboard had finally been made, to find out it had wheels.......
Good point! It's really just a skateboard.
This is a benefit to the reader. if this reading does not serve for anything, can you read once but never again read you.
Therefore it is important to be able to provide solutions to our readers
Complete Agree !
A good reflection. For me when composing articles for other blog to keep in mind especially the theme of this platform and how to convey the message (very similar to scientific journals process). And NEVER contradict the principles of that mark, platform or blog. Before delivering the item is advisable to pass it to a trusted contact to review the text, spelling...
Great points! You always want to be consistent and make sure that your writing reflects the theme and tone of the platform. It is an extra step to have another person review your work - but the benefits of that far outweigh any extra time spent on the submission.
Nice article and thanks for explaining what would make us write an article which has higher chances of being accepted. About reviewing the work by another person, we have taken an extra step, we get have combined forces with fellow bloggers/ writers, the links are posted on a whatsapp group and they give their feedback instantly. The results have been nothing less than amazing.
Dear Bop,
That's a very well explained article about how and why you make those decions. It's really helpful when sometimes you send an article and donnot know why it's been rejected.
Congrats!
Thanks for reading - glad you found value in the article.
Wow awesome post.
I thinks it’s most important points are mentioned in this post and I have read the article. Definitely I will apply point for guest post.
Glad you enjoyed it. Happy blogging!
Hey! Thanks for making it ABSOLUTELY clear about the kind of topics you DO NOT accept. But can you mention a list of topics you'd accept a blogpost for? (i.e. if you are accepting such posts currently). Not that we cannot get a hint from the blog but would make it more convenient to get it right in the very first shot . Thanks Again.
Hi Kyle - Our suggestion when pitching a website is to carefully look through their website to determine the services they offer, what topics already have been covered on their blog, and who their audience is. Once you have analyzed the website, you can get creative and pitch topics about current trends, new technologies, etc. that are related to that industry. Make sure that your topic is something that draws on your expertise but also fits well with your target website.
I love the phrase "Writing about anything else does not Provide value for our brand.".
In the end it all boils down we should give a profit to all that we show the client and not bore you with verbiage
Definitely! We always want to provide value for our clients and uphold our brand.
Great article!
Thanks Gwen!
Great Article. The main solution of this article is only quality matter.
Faiem - Absolutely, quality is always preferred over quantity for guest blogging.
Great topic! We have had many guest blog pitches but 90% were completely disconnected from our niche. But people keep trying, you cannot prevent them from doing so.
It is sad, but maybe these kinds of posts can be helpful.
Thanks!
We sure hope so! Thanks for reading.
Thanks for the tips. The points make sense, since in the end it's all about providing value to readers.
Thanks for reading! Yes - we try to keep the focus on our readers and always make sure we are providing value and not fluff content.
Creating a quality blog post is tricky. It takes a lot of time to research and put facts together. Your suggestions are useful, but at the end of the day, the post or guest post should be appealing to the reader.
Thats absolutely correct. Writing is not easy task, you must have enough knowledge about what you are writing and how do audience see through that post. For my site Electro Arena, I am too searching for some guest posters.
[Link removed by editor.]
Great articles complied with great pointers!
Well I have never tried writing for moz thou I have done for some website, just looking at these posts I feel inspired to write.
Regards
Pulkit
Pulkit - Thanks for reading! We are glad to hear you are inspired!
Excellent and interesting point. Thanks for write about it.
Thanks for checking out the article, Masum.
Excellent article. I'm just starting out with a new company and trying to improve their blog, so this will be extremely useful information for the future. Don't be surprised if you hear from me sometime on this matter. Thanks for the great info!
Thanks David!
Acceptance of rejections always takes you one step forward of improvement. Where success enhance your confidence, rejections gives you chance to be better. Situations of rejecting someone is unwilling but you have no other option.
Great point. Rejection is a chance to learn and grow.
Great summary. Thanks for sharing it
When I was at university (long time ago, uups) we heard a lot about marketing miopia. I see a clear example of miopia today in considering that something important for your goals must be interesting for a community on the web. Well, it turns it may not be the case as you clearly point out.
On grammar and spelling, I believe non native english speakers have a clear disadvantage here (I am one of those) You can get a text in your language and get it translated, but it is a cost... You can be very careful and correct mistakes, etc. but it is very time consuming.... and above all, the message may miss part of the freshness it would have in the "original version" ..
Not saying though that the standards expected should get lower for non English native speakers.
Luis - that a great point about non-native English speakers. Thanks for bringing it up.
Thanks for logical information. If i was the blow owner i would prefer same chriterias as well. Even in my blog some people just come and write for their own advertising or benefit. They dont think about the readers and visitors al all. You have mentioned somany logial tips i will put them exact into my blog's terms and conditions. Thansk again :)
Yusuf - I'm pleased to hear that you found it useful. Happy blogging!
Focus on quality and "don’t always go after 60+ DA websites" are the best advice here. If you stick to big websites you will just miss a lot of opportunities.
Pierre - We absolutely agree. There are so many industry-specific websites that are great forums for sharing helpful, educational information. They are also a great opportunity to make connections in that industry and form longer-term partnerships.
Great Tips. Perhaps in a future i will try to post anything relevant to this community, but just if i´m sure my grammar is ok. I would pay to see the errors in red in those images lol but too small and no hoverzoom. By the way, thats a perfect example of a nice article.
Thanks for reading the article!
"Don’t write crap." - best tip.
Really interesting article, especially as I have sent out a few pitches for guest blogging recently. If that 'pitcher' with the hoverboards really just wanted the backlink, had they not checked out what your company does (AT ALL?) before sending it? I mean, there's wanting backlinks, and then there's DESPERATELY wanting backlinks...to the point where you take the 'spray and pray' approach. I can't imagine that's going to get them very far!
Isabel - Glad you found it interesting. Yes, it does seem like many guest pitches are just solicitations for a link - which we always turn down. We require that all articles provide value for our audience, otherwise, we won't have an audience for very long.
I think the hoverboard guy deserves a link for spurring this great article ;)
Thanks for reading, Trine.
That's such a good article! Trying to get backlinks is a need, but above it all you've to check whether your message is clear and really tries to offer something to the reader. Better be short and clear, than long and boring or confusing.
We absolutely agree! Thanks for checking out the article.
How do I guest post for MOZ? I think it would be a dream come true for anyone in the seo business. I would like to write an alternative post to this on how to properly pitch a guest post.
Moz is fantastic about posting their guidelines. You can find them here: https://moz.com/posts/ugc_guidelines. They also have a super helpful blog about tips for contributing: https://moz.com/blog/inside-youmoz-how-to-guest-blog-for-moz
Well...Very interesting points are mentioned in this post...and I have learned lot of things from this. I will apply all points for pitching a guest post...Thanks @BopDesign
Thanks for reading and sharing your feedback!
Great topic, I think it's also important to get to know who you are trying to get in touch with its a bit like trying to talk to some one first before you offer them a service.
Harvey - We absolutely agree! These website managers get so many pitches and sales emails, you really need to distinguish yourself by offering something of value that is relevant to them.
Samuel - We absolutely agree! It's a waste of everyone's time to pitch posts that are only for backlinks. Blog posts are meant to educate and engage. That definitely gets to the main point of why we reject a lot of posts - they don't have any value. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and tips - those are all fantastic.
We get a lot of these crap requests for guest blogging and have developed some shortcuts to filter them.
If the email sounds like it's from a template - delete it (Example: "Actually, I found your blog while I was surfing on the web and had a chance to go through your blogs. I must say that you have some cool blog posts.")
If it makes the typical mistakes common to certain non-native speakers - delete it ("I have been following your blog from long time". FROM a long time?)
If it offers "600 words" or similar - delete it. This is a cheapo SEO providing minimum content they can get away with in order to get a link.
etc.
do you have a larger image to have a clear view of that revision you have made?
Hello - Unfortunately, we won't share a larger image since we are protecting the anonymity of the writer. The edits were related to grammar, flow, and overall information being shared in the article.
ok I understand because I find it disturbing not to be available to see clearly the image that leaves a constant curios question what exactly the image look in clear picture.
These are the tips which is important for guest blogging, but not all blogger follow these rules while some do it for money making or pbns, So i agree with you if you want to make a great blog they you should definitely follow above steps.
I do not think an article on fishing fits with the philosophy of Moz, however good the lure not get many catches Lol.
Apart from jokes, it is very reasonable that Moz study and Choose well content to post to your blog because for me it is a benchmark of online marketing.
At <a href="https://www.vidhya360.in">Vidhya360!</a> our team thinks this article is very helpful to budding writers who want to make it big through authority websites like this website or huffpost etc. Thank you for the wonderful post.
Absolutely! Thanks for reading.