If you are into optimizing your Google rank through link building, none of the alternatives work as effectively as Guest Post Link Building does.
That is why Guest posting has become extremely popular among everyone who wants to optimize their Google rank.
Guest blogging helps you to promote your website to other readers of some popular and high authority websites, thus bringing a good amount of traffic to your site. No wonder it’s called the way to reinless success.
Most essentially, it secures the trust flow required to rank your site for the target keyword/s.
But, not everyone gets to taste the success even after surfing all the content and material on guest posting.
If you are wondering why everyone around you is experiencing a spike in their traffic through guest posting while you’re still struggling with guest posting, this post is for you.
Starting from finding a potential domain to getting your content published on the targeted website, there are a whole lot of things that might get lost in the middle.
While reading this article, you will learn about some common but grave mistakes made by people that make their guest posting effort a complete failure.
If you’re making any of these mistakes, it’s high time for you to fix them.
The Bitter Truth About Guest Posting
Do you know why most people fail while pitching guest posts even though they might have something amazing to share?
They think they will write an article, send it to the publishers, and boom! Their guest post is published and has started to send a ton of traffic.
Unfortunately, things don’t work like that. Guest posting is no magic lamp from Alladin, which you will rub and all your works will be done by a genie.
The miracle isn’t something that you would likely expect from your guest post pitching. Blogger outreach is a long-term process and requires a lot of hard work.
Starting from researching the publishers’ site to writing an article to pitch your first email, every task needs to be done with utmost care and professionalism.
A bit of carelessness in any of these parts will ruin your effort, as well as your reputation to that publisher.
Wondering how’s that even possible? Making your guest posting a complete failure is actually pretty easy. All you need is to do the following:
Not Doing Proper Research on The Site You Want to Write for
Before you even start pitching to the publisher, it’s important to find some relevant websites for which you will write the guest post.
This is where you might be making your first mistake.
You just randomly choose some domains and start pitching the publishers without having a single idea about the blogs and their owners.
Ask yourself: What this blog owner is interested in? What’s their passion? What kind of articles they’re publishing? Do they actually need your guest post? Can you add value to their site? And the list goes on.
Now, if you get stuck while answering these questions, you’re doing it wrong.

Do you know what that means? You’re pitching them with entirely irrelevant content, hence never getting a reply from them.
It’s not easy to become a part of a website or blog community without having proper knowledge of them.
No website owner will publish a content that harms its integrity. So, pitching with your guest post without knowing them before is a big no.
Not Personalizing Your Email
Guest post pitching is one of the most common sections where a guest blogger fails.
Nothing can be more annoying to a publisher than a poorly written and unformatted email that lacks pitching sense.
You can’t expect a person to accept your guest post offer or even read your entire email if you just send them a cold, boring, business-like pitch, which you may have copied from some templates.
The way you write your first email to the publishers can make or break your guest posting effort.
Most of them get hundreds of emails per day and your mail will go directly to the trash folder if you don’t personalize it.
Do not forget to address the owner by name, which you will find in their author bio or contact page, and briefly explain how your content can add value to their site.
Make sure, your pitch demonstrates that you have in-depth knowledge about their blog. If possible, attach some of your previous works.
You’re Pitching The Wrong Person
If you’re tired of sending hundreds of emails and still not getting any reply, it’s time you check if you’re sending them to the right person.
Surprised? Just like you can’t expect a dentist to treat your eye problem, pitching a marketing personnel for publishing purposes won’t come to your help.

Most blog sites have the name and email address of the person in charge of receiving and verifying guest posts in their contact page.
Also, it’s easy to find an email address from a particular website, thanks to tools like hunter.io and Ninja Outreach.
With so many options to find an email address, it’s an utmost stupidity to pitch a person for a guest post who’s not assigned for it.
Like the publisher, they also have lots of other things to deal with, and they will never respond to an email that’s not meant for them.
So, if you’ve already lost some of your valuable time pitching the wrong person, spend some time to find the right person you need to approach, use some tools if needed, and start over.
Your Mail is Full of Grammatical Errors
What impression will you have in your mind about a person if you receive an email from them full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors?
The answer is simple – that person can’t write.
The same goes for your guest post pitch as well.
A publisher will never accept your guest post, or won’t even read any further if they find such errors at the beginning of the email.
Remember, writing a nice and error-free guest post pitch is crucial since it will create a permanent impression on the publishers’ minds about you and your writing quality.
Sending an email without checking for any error means you’re not serious about your job.
That’s why it’s crucial to know the grammar tips and tricks before creating an email for the publishers.
So, if you’re sending your pitch in this manner, don’t expect them to read your content, let alone giving you a response.
Unless you’re craving some failures, write a nice pitch and check it twice for any glitches and errors before you hit the send button.
Otherwise, you may not receive anything more than just a read receipt.
You Fail to Demonstrate Confidence
The pitch you’re sending to the publisher is basically your first opportunity to fail. Want to know how? Let’s get an idea.
Imagine someone is trying to sell their products to you. The person is timid as much as humanly possible, has little or no idea about what he’s selling, and there’s no sign of confidence in his appearance.
Would you like to buy anything from him? Definitely not.
Then how can you expect someone to reply to your pitch, let alone publish the content if you’re as timid as this sales guy?
These publishers get hundreds of guest posts every day, and it’s not a difficult job for them to find out who’s bluffing and who’s not.
If you fail to show confidence in your first email, they will understand that you have zero knowledge about their guideline, the article was definitely written by someone else, and you’re here to waste their time.
So, if you think you can actually sell your pitch without having a single idea about the topic and the content, good luck with that.
You’re Being Arrogant
Since you’re trying not to be timid in your pitch, you can still get rejected.
Why?
Because, as you’re willing to show some confidence, chances are you will end up being arrogant.
Nobody likes arrogance, and the publishers will never allow such things while they are the ones who are about to publish your content on their blog, thus promoting your business to their loyal readers.

Bragging about you and your content in the email and thinking that the bloggers will be impressed is the biggest mistake you can ever do.
It will do nothing but turn the publishers against you.
Instead of taking up a superior stance, try to be respectful while showing confidence.
Also, don’t start an argument when they ask you for some changes in the content.
You’re Not Following Up
So, you did extensive research, wrote a value-driven content, and sent it to publishers with a nicely written email. Now what? They will read your mail and publish the article on their site?
Well, it’s not going to happen.
As I mentioned already, there are piles of emails stored in their inbox, your’s one isn’t getting their attention so easily unless you’re extremely lucky.
Even if they read your pitch, they might just forget it to publish due to some other responsibilities?
So, what can I expect from you? Just sit and do nothing about it?
In case you’re planning to do something like that, it means you’ve never heard of what is called a follow up.
If you already read so far, you might want to know how I make a successful guest blogging outreach, or at least get some attention from the publishers.
My tricks were quite simple. I followed up.
How many times? Three! More if needed.
Since webmasters are busy, chances that they will miss your email if you try to catch them at the wrong time.
So, prepare some followup emails while you’re sending your first pitch.
Wait for at least a week before you follow up on them.
You can easily ruin your guest post outreach in two simple ways, either by not following up at all, or following up too frequently.
Your Content isn’t Up To The Mark
I know a lot of people who can pitch a nicely written, convincing email and still get rejected. And they are just confused as you, thinking that why it’s happening.
If you take some time to give it a thought, you will understand the most important thing in your pitch is lacking the quality, and it’s nothing but your content.
Remember, webmasters will do anything to protect the integrity of their sites, and will never publish your article if it can’t add any value.
So, what are the factors that make your content a rejected one? Let’s have a look at them.
Your Content is No Match With Them
No matter how nicely written your content is, it’s of no use if it can’t fulfill the search intent of the website you’re willing to publish.
While writing your article for them, you might forget to do a proper research on that site, as well as its readers.
As a result, you end up creating a content that will fail to reach its right audiences.
When a publisher will open your mail and see a content that is no match with their niches, they will immediately understand that you didn’t do any research on them before pitching with your post.
Are you still expecting them to publish your post?
The Content Lacks Quality
Nothing can be more annoying than a poorly written content with a lot of errors in it.
Webmasters will never publish such articles, and even if they do, they will have to edit it and make it ready for publishing.
Creating quality content is one of the most crucial parts of guest posting.
A badly written article indicates that you’re not an expert writer, or you didn’t hire an expert for this job.
Since content is the key part of this entire guest post outreach, make sure you put an extra effort into it.

Your Anchor Text isn’t Natural
Placing the anchor text within your content is one of the crucial parts of creating a guest post, where most bloggers make a blunder. They don’t do proper research before writing an article and end up putting the anchor text that doesn’t blend with the content.
Using an anchor text that doesn’t look natural can ruin the rhythm of that content. It will also catch unnecessary attention from Google and will be removed for link spamming.
While you’re writing your content, make sure to use an anchor text that blends well within it, so the readers find it pleasant to read and you get your desired traffic.
You’re Not Following The Publishing Guideline
Imagine you just bought a cabinet from IKEA and spent hours to fit it but failed.
Do you know why?
Because you didn’t follow its manual and tried to build the entire thing all by your imagination.
Most blogging sites these days have a detailed guideline on their website about how you should approach with a guest post, how the article should be formatted, word limit, etc.
Some prefer to get it in the html or .txt form, while others want them to be pasted on the email body.
But, what did you do so?
Instead of reading their guideline properly and formatting your write up accordingly, you just created your own content and sent it.
What do you think the publisher will think about you when they first open the email?
Simply that you didn’t read their guideline.
Even if you read it, you didn’t take it seriously, meaning that you didn’t take them seriously. Still think you can get away with that?
Shameless Flattery
“Hi, I am X and I am your huge fan. I read your blogs everyday. It has been my dream since childhood to publish my content on your site!!!”
Just like the arrogance, this kind of flattery can ruin your guest post.

Webmasters will publish an article only if it passes through their assessment, not something from their biggest fan.
So, if you think you can impress the publishers by buttering them, you’re doing it wrong.
If you need to complement them, try to do it without losing your integrity.
You Targeted The Wrong Site
Not only your approach of pitching but also your choice of publishing sites can destroy your guest post campaign.
Since you’re too busy to do research before picking your target blogs, chances that you will end up getting one that has very low traffic or the audiences aren’t a good match for your own site.

The result? You can publish hundreds of content on those sites but still have no traffic to your site at all.
How to avoid such mistakes? Simply use tools like Ahrefs or Moz to check their traffic, get blog information on Alexa, and go through their social media profiles to find out who their target audiences are.
You’re looking for a Shortcut
We all know guest posting is a long process, but most of us tend to forget it when it comes to working on our own guest posts.
As I already mentioned what can happen if you don’t spend time on doing research on websites, this can also happen if you look for low-quality sites or PBNs.
There are some websites that were created for guest blogging. Since those sites can give you a quick spike in the ranking, it’s obvious that you will be tempted and going for them.
However, after some days, you see that your rank starts to fall. This is quite common since those sites can easily get removed by Google. And since they are gone, your traffic is gone as well.
Your Landing Page isn’t Good Enough
No matter how incredibly good backlink you get, your effort is practically worthless if the visitors come to your landing page and just leave.
All you want your target audiences to visit your page, spend some time on it, and subscribe for more updates.
However, you need to make sure they get enough reasons to do so.
The page you’re linking to must be useful and interesting enough to make people subscribe.
Using a page that can’t compel people to stay or subscribe will ultimately give you no result.
For example, if you link to your homepage, it will be too distracting for your visitors.
Your visitors won’t know why they are here, hence they will leave and never come back.
You’re Demonstrating a Complete lack of Commitment
So, you fixed your pitching issues, opted for a great website, and even got your article published on it.
Now what? You just forget about it and never look back.
Unfortunately, doing so could also make your guest posting a failed project.
You don’t reply to any of the comments and not share them on social media.

Do you know what that means? It means you have just blown your biggest chance of success.
While working so hard to publish your post on your desired site, make sure to share it on social media, and respond to comments to make sure to get active readers.
Final Thoughts
Guest posting can bring you enormous success if you can do it strategically and professionally.
While it won’t bring you success overnight, it can ruin your effort in a whiff if you fall for any of the wrong approaches.
Pitching for a guest post is more like building a relationship with the publishers.
It requires patience, determination, and trust to build such bonds, and once you can do it, no one can stop you from being successful.
So, sit back, know your goal, and do your research before you approach with your first pitch.
Create a well-researched killer content that will bring value to their sites, as well as your site.
And if you’ve already failed once, find out your mistakes and start from the scratch.

Sujan Sarkar is one of the co-founders of OneLittleWeb. He leads the agency with over a decade of experience.
In 2018, he founded OneLittleWeb, driven by a vision to fill a void in the industry, providing top-quality SEO and backlink services.
His impressive track record includes crafting over 25,000 backlinks for more than 1100 clients, generating over 1 billion in traffic. This has earned him a significant presence in the SEO realm.
He successfully leads a dedicated team of 65+ SEO professionals, focused on helping SaaS and Enterprises scale their organic traffic.
Sujan firmly believes that the best backlinks are not paid for but earned through high-quality content and strategic relationships.
Every day, he works tirelessly to position your business at the forefront of your customers’ minds, striving to elevate your brand’s visibility and authority.
His daily inspiration centers around securing client features on top-tier publications like Forbes, MSN, BBC, Yahoo, and many more. He leverages the right SEO strategies to achieve this mission.