Guest Posting

A newly built site has nobody reading it. Climbing in search requires links from other sites to accumulate, and there is no reason for anyone to link to a site nobody has heard of. No links means no visitors, and no visitors means no links — a closed loop.

Ravi ran into it publishing a collaboration-tool comparison on Pagedeck's own blog. Internal reaction was good and the month brought 40 visits. A trimmed version of the same piece, contributed to a publication where developers gather, was read 4,000 times in its first week. The writing hadn't changed; where it sat had.

So the piece gets carried to where the readers already are. Borrowing someone else's publication in return for giving that publication something its readers want.

Choosing the publication comes before writing anything. If it isn't somewhere your readers already go, a link there brings nobody.

1. Collect candidates. Note the sites ranking for your field's search terms, the ones competitors have contributed to, and the ones your customers mention.
2. Check the contribution rules. Whether outside pieces are accepted at all, whether links can sit in the body text, and how much product talk is tolerated all vary.
3. Pitch a topic. Send a title and outline on one page rather than a finished piece, because whether it overlaps something already published there has to be settled first.
4. Write for that publication's readers. Cover a problem those readers have rather than introducing your product, and let the product appear only as an example.
5. Verify after publication. Check that the body link is live, that it didn't get marked as uncounted, and where the arriving visitors went.

Step 3 is where most attempts stall. One or two replies per ten emails is normal, so pitches go out to several places at once instead of waiting on any one of them. Including original data or research findings lifts the reply rate noticeably.

"This publication won't put a link in the body. Bio section only."

The link carries little weight there, so expectations should come down.

"More than a third product talk and editing cuts it. Let's rewrite toward the problem."

Rework it around what the publication's readers care about.

"Two of ten contributions actually sent visitors. Start by looking at which two."

Results split by publication, so the candidate list needs rebuilding.

Pagedeck caps this at two or three pieces a quarter. Ravi spends two days on each, and one of those two days goes to deciding where to send it rather than to the writing. Unlike link building, the piece itself gets read, so visitors arrive along with the link. Digital PR, which earns mentions through press coverage, shares enough of the goal that both are tracked in the same table.