While many marketers focus on social media campaigns or paid advertising, there’s an often-overlooked strategy that can yield impressive results: link exchanges to grow your mailing list through guest posting. This approach not only helps build your brand’s authority but also creates a symbiotic relationship with other businesses in your niche.
In this article, we’ll explore how you can leverage guest posts and link exchanges to expand your reach, drive traffic to your site, and ultimately grow your mailing list.
Prospecting Link Exchanges to Grow Your Mailing List
The first step of any campaign is to find opportunities – and guest posting is no different. Let’s take a look at some possibilities on how to effectively prospect for potential partners.
1. Advanced Search Operators
Utilize Google’s advanced search operators to uncover guest posting opportunities. For example:
- inurl:blog intitle:”write for us” + [your niche]
- [your niche] + “guest post guidelines”
- [your niche] + “submit a guest post”
These queries can help you find websites actively seeking guest contributors in your industry.
Next, you’re going to need to find some link partners to send your guest post drafts and set up your indirect (ABC) link exchanges – more on that later.
The first place to look is your existing network. Beyond that, some potential places to find link partners who might be interested in mutual promotion are:
- Non-competitive websites in your niche
- Complementary businesses
- Niche bloggers
Use Google to find these potential partners and evaluate their site metrics using SEO tools. This can help you quickly assess the value of a potential link exchange.
2. Find Contact Information
Once you’ve picked the sites you want to write for, you’ll need to find their contact information.
While manually searching for contact information can be time-consuming, there are tools available that can automate this process. They can help you find email addresses and streamline your outreach efforts, making it easier to connect with potential partners at scale.
Whether you’re on a budget or looking for more robust solutions, there are tools available to help you find email addresses.
Free Email Finders:
- Hunter.io: Allows you to find email addresses using domain search or individual search. The free plan offers up to 25 searches per month.
- VoilaNorbert: The free tier includes 50 free leads. Useful for individual email searches.
- Clearbit Connect: This is a Gmail extension that provides you with up to 100 searches per month.
Paid Email Finders:
- Respona: A premium tool that offers advanced search capabilities but comes with a cost.
- Snov.io: It provides a range of plans tailored to your needs and budget and also offers email verification services.
- ContactOut: Known for its accuracy, this tool helps you find email addresses and phone numbers and is especially useful for LinkedIn contact extraction.
Before turning to specialized tools, always check the website itself for contact information. Many websites include a direct email address, phone number, or a contact form link in the footer. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage or key pages to locate these details. Sometimes, you’ll find a “Contact Us” page – then your work is practically done for you.
Last but not least, a LinkedIn connection request sent to your prospect in addition to an email will drastically increase your chances of getting a reply.
3. Keyword Gap Pitch
To stand out from other potential guest writers, use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to perform a keyword gap analysis:
- Identify your prospect’s top competitors
- Compare their keyword rankings
- Find keywords the prospect isn’t targeting, but their competitors are
- Pitch a guest post idea that fills this content gap
This approach demonstrates your expertise and shows you’ve done your homework, increasing your chances of acceptance.
4. Leverage Social Media
Platforms like LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and niche-specific Facebook groups are also valuable resources for finding guest posting opportunities. Engage with communities, build connections, and keep an eye out for guest post invitations from businesses and bloggers within your industry.
Establishing credibility in these groups through thoughtful contributions builds trust. Over time, these relationships can open doors to guest posting, content partnerships, and mutual promotions, helping to grow your network and mailing list.
What to Consider When Writing Guest Posts
Let’s talk about crafting guest posts that not only get published but also drive real results for your mailing list. First things first, you’ve got to do your homework.
1. Know Your Audience
Before you write a word, dive deep into understanding the host site’s audience and content style. What makes their readers tick? What kind of content do they crave? What are their pain points, preferences, and behaviors? Armed with this knowledge, you can create something worthwhile that will benefit the reader and yourself simultaneously.
2. Use the Help of AI
Here’s a little trick to speed things up: leverage AI writing tools. They can help you draft faster or generate ideas when you’re stuck. Just remember to put your own spin on the content – we want your unique voice to shine through. We’ve just recently written a blog post about using ChatGPT for email marketing also, which you can check out for inspiration.
3. Show You’re a Trustworthy Voice of Your Industry
Make sure your guest post provides valuable insights or actionable advice that the readers can immediately apply. This positions you as an authority in your field, making the readers more inclined to want further content from you. Share a unique viewpoint or new data that hasn’t been covered extensively. This adds novelty and showcases your expertise.
4. Encourage Action and Craft Effective CTA-s
To get people to join your mailing list, you’ll need to include a CTA (call-to-action).
The best place for your CTA is usually at the end of the post, but you can also strategically include it within the content where it feels natural.
Make your CTA and its surrounding text specific and actionable. The text that leads to the CTA button is important, as it briefly explains what the person will get, can create excitement, and, if done well, will motivate the person to click without further thinking. For example, add the text “Sign up for our newsletter to receive exclusive strategies that can double your email open rates!” followed by a clear and simple CTA “Subscribe now”, or an encouraging “Get My Free eBook”.
5. Offer Something in Return to the Reader
As hinted in our last CTA example, you may use a lead magnet or a sign-up form. A lead magnet is an irresistible bribe that offers a specific chunk of value to a reader in exchange for their email address.
Here are a few types you can consider:
- Ebooks
- Access to a webinar
- Free templates
- Exclusive reports and tips
- A free checklist
- Mini-courses
- A free trial of your services
6. Be Subtle, Don’t do Cheap Advertising
While we’ve talked about CTAs and lead magnets, sprinkling text links or buttons throughout the post that lead to your landing page is not possible when it comes to guest posting. Think about it: would you add someone’s article to your page if its focus shifted from the main topic (that interests your followers) to the writer’s services and brand? It’s hardly believable. And readers will quickly tune out if your post feels like an ad.
Therefore, you should still focus on the article’s topic and link to your relevant pages that are interesting for the regular followers of the blog you are writing for.
Here’s another slight warning for you: don’t overload your text with various links. When you do this, your links will lose their highlighted impression, and the article will look spammy – like none of the links are necessary for the reader. Remember that the reader is interested in helpful content, not forced advertising that loses credibility.
If you have guided the reader to your page, you can add a popup to join the mailing list on your page. If you are writing worthwhile content on your own page, you are on the right track. This is one example of how hard work pays off in unexpected ways later.
7. Use the Author’s Bio for Advertising
Most web pages allow you to include an author bio in your guest post if it is your work, so make sure to use this space effectively.
While it’s not appropriate to advertise your company in the text, as mentioned before, you can do so in this short Author Bio section after the summary of the article. Write briefly about yourself and add links to your LinkedIn or X profile if you wish. Then, you should also write about your company and add a link to join your mailing list “if the reader wants to receive similar in-depth analyses in the future.”
At the same time, remember to keep the Bio segment short and not write a long story about your company’s history. No one will have the time to read it, and the host will probably cut it down as well.
8. Be Patient
Another thing to keep in mind is that guest posting isn’t for the impatient.
It can take weeks, sometimes even months, for your post to go from submission to publication. Popular sites often have a backlog of content to review, and there might be some back-and-forth with editors before your piece is ready for prime time.
Don’t let this discourage you – quality sites with large audiences are worth the wait.
Bonus Tip: Use Guest Posts as Link Opportunities for Partners
Let’s dive into a clever strategy that can multiply the benefits of your guest posting efforts: using them as link opportunities for your partners. This approach not only strengthens your network but also sets the stage for more diverse and natural link-building.
First, let’s talk about ABC link exchanges. Imagine you’re site A, and you’re partnering with sites B and C. Instead of directly swapping links with each other, which can look suspicious to search engines, you create a triangle. You link to B, B links to C, and C links back to you. This circular approach makes the link structure appear more organic and less like a deliberate exchange.
Now, here’s where guest posts come into play as the perfect tool for setting up these ABC exchanges. When you write a guest post for a third-party site, you’re not just creating an opportunity for your own backlink. You’ve got a golden chance to include links to your partners as well. This allows you to avoid direct link exchanges, which can raise red flags with search engines.
The beauty of this strategy is its scalability. Depending on the guidelines of the publishing site, you might be able to include anywhere from two to ten links for your partners in a single guest post. Some sites are pretty strict and might only allow one or two external links, while others are more lenient. Always check the guest post guidelines and respect them – you don’t want to burn bridges by overdoing it.
Here’s the kicker: your partners can return the favor. They might link back to you from their own website or, better yet, include your link in their own guest posts on other sites. This creates a web of diverse, high-quality backlinks that can significantly boost your SEO. The key to making this work is building strong relationships with your partners. You’re not just exchanging links; you’re creating a network of mutual support.
Choose partners whose content complements yours without directly competing. This way, the links you include will be relevant and valuable to the readers, which is exactly what search engines (and website owners) love to see.
Use Link Exchanges to Grow Your Mailing List and Traffic at Once!
As we wrap up, it’s clear that guest posting and link exchanges offer a powerful two-for-one deal in the world of digital marketing.
By implementing the strategies we’ve discussed, you’re not just throwing a wider net to capture more email subscribers – you’re also boosting your site’s SEO performance and authority in your niche.
Think about it: every guest post you craft is an opportunity to showcase your expertise to a new audience, drive traffic back to your site, and grow your mailing list.
At the same time, the backlinks you gain through these posts and strategic exchanges with partners are working behind the scenes to improve your search engine rankings.
It’s like hitting two birds with one stone, but in this case, both birds work for you.