You’ve probably heard this before – guest posting is now an important part of any content marketing plan.

But are you actually doing it?

If not, the best time to start is… yesterday.

That’s how effective guest posting is to promote your SaaS website.

If you are a SaaS founder and your website traffic graph looks like the Tibetan Plateau, you might want to consider this method to see an upward trend in your data. After all, if you are marketing your SaaS product, one of the best things that can happen to your website besides getting conversions is getting traffic. Lots of it.

A blog outreach campaign can give you that pivotal push.

And we are not just telling you what we heard. We actually tested this and got positive results.

Last August, we offered our blog outreach service to eight SaaS companies. After only a month of the campaign, ALL of them experienced a significant rise in their traffic.

In this case study we will:

• Talk about how we used guest posting as a tactic to bring more site visitors;
• Share actionable tips; and, 
• Reveal our learnings and recommendations after the campaign

But first…

What is guest posting?

You are guest posting when you write an article and publish it on another website or blog.

It is also often referred to as guest blogging. 

As the name implies, in guest posting, you act as a guest author or content contributor to a publisher. Generally, the content must not be self-serving or promotional. Different publishing sites have their respective guidelines for posting. The article must adhere to these guidelines and provide meaningful and relevant information for the website’s readers to be accepted for publication.

Guest Posting As a Means to Boost Traffic – Our Case Study

Some say guest posting is effective. Some say it is dead.

At SaaSLaunchr, we let the data do the talking.

We read many articles that say guest posting is an effective way to find new networks, reach people at the top of the funnel, and build backlinks. But the articles that we read usually don’t answer crucial questions like:

• How many articles do you need to publish in a month before getting any significant upward trend on traffic?
• What kind of websites do you submit to?
• Is this tactic effective for SEO-optimized websites? Unoptimized websites? Or Both?
• Does it matter if your links are do-follow or no-follow?
• What’s the healthy percentage of do-follow and no-follow links during a campaign?

The way we saw it, it’s either we wait for someone to answer these questions for us or we answer these questions ourselves.

Of course, we went for the latter.

The Challenge 

Since we wanted to understand the process deeper, we needed to have a first-hand experience of how this tactic works.

The problem is, blog outreach costs money.

Some blog outreach service providers charge anywhere between $90 to $150 for one guest post to a DA 30 website. The higher the domain authority, the more expensive it gets. 

This is highly understandable since you have to think of the following expenses when doing a blog outreach campaign:  and the content generation fee and the editorial fees of publishing sites.

Yes, most publishing sites usually charge editorial fees. Some even require additional payment if you want a do-follow link in your article. There are sites where you can submit content without paying anything, but you usually only get no-follow links. And yes, some sites publish articles with do-follow links for free, but finding them is like looking for a needle in a haystack – they’re really hard to come by!

Another big challenge is, our clients are usually SaaS founders.

These are some of the most passionate people you can work with and most of them have promising products.

The catch is, most of them are also bootstrapped. When it comes to budgeting for a marketing campaign, they’ll make sure that every penny spent is money well-spent. You have to at least assure them that your marketing process works before they invest in it.

And we understand since SaaSLaunchr is pretty much a bootstrapped service provider too. 

So how do you do a blog outreach campaign without charging your clients too much?

This is where our collaborative blog outreach comes in.

The Solution

Collaborative blog outreach is a guest posting campaign that involves multiple sponsors who will co-share the incidental expenses. The purpose of this campaign is to collaborate with top branding and marketing tools that are willing to sponsor in exchange for being featured/reviewed on guest blogs to help boost their SEO and increase site traffic.

In our case, the campaign involved eight companies offering Software-as-a-Service products that can automate some aspects of a digital marketing workflow.

We committed to making 10 unique articles about the “Best Social Media Design Tools to Make Every Blogger and Marketer’s Life Easier” and then submitting them to high-authority DA sites.

We only have $1,500 (excluding PayPal fees) for this blog outreach as a working budget pooled from the collaborating SaaS companies. If you know how much other marketing agencies are charging for guest posts, you know that this is already a great steal.

We started the campaign on August 12 and ended on September 6. 

All of our content has been successfully published, and since this is our 1st ever collaborative blog outreach campaign, we ended up adding a bonus article too.

Here is the final report for our 1st blog outreach collaboration:

You can subscribe to our email list so you won’t miss out on our new exclusive blog outreach offers related to your niche. And get a chance to win 1 sponsorship spot for free on our next outreach.

The Results

To know if the campaign was effective, we should see an upward trend days after September 6, when all the articles were completely published.

Some of the articles might have marketing efforts of their own. But if we see a significant rise in ALL of the SaaS companies’ traffic charts, then it would be safe to say that the increase was because of our blog outreach campaign, the one marketing tactic that they all had in common.

But then again, let’s let the data do the talking. Here are the results of the campaign for each SaaS company:

Sponsor #1

Sponsor 1 is an online photo editor tool that is a standalone solution for all your graphic editing needs. It was started in 2009 with headquarters at Walnut, California, USA. This promising SaaS tool had rave reviews during their Product Hunt launch and is commended for its user-friendly and fast interface. 

After the campaign, their organic traffic rose from 29.5k to 46k per month. 56.00%

Sponsor #2

Sponsor 2 is now a front runner when searching for a SaaS tool to remove background in your graphics. In December 2020, we collaborated with their Digital Marketing Head for a content marketing strategy to grow the website’s organic traffic.

You can see our other case study on how we successfully increased the site’s traffic to 400k in just four months.

After the campaign, their organic traffic rose from 862k to 1 million organic visitors per month – another significant milestone for the background removal company. 17.00%

Sponsor #3

Sponsor 3 is an innovative image automation tool and graphic banner editor. It was founded in April 2019. Developers will love their white label editor integration and image automation API.  If you need to create visuals in bulk, their image generation from spreadsheet feature will provide a quick solution.

From 4k, their organic traffic increased to 5.9k per month after the campaign. 43.00%

Sponsor #4

Sponsor 4 is a digital asset management tool that allows you to store and manage digital files and collaborate with others in a secured space. It was founded in 2010 with a headquarters in Switzerland. It currently has more than 70,000 users across 60 countries.

From 1.4k, their organic traffic was boosted to 2.1k per month after the campaign. 43.00%

Sponsor #5

Sponsor 5 is an online vector design tool that allows you to create and edit SVG graphics, vector logos, infographics, animations, and other digital marketing visuals. It was founded in 2018 and has a headquarters in the USA. 

After the campaign, their traffic grew from 5.8k to 7.2k per month. 23.00%

Sponsor #6

Sponsor 6  is a comprehensive library of icons, vector illustrations, photos, photos, and background music, but it also offers various graphic design tools. It was founded around 2012 and has a headquarters in the USA.  Its mega creator allows you to create, edit, and customize graphics using ready-made templates or your own uploads. 

The site already enjoyed a monthly 1.5M organic traffic count per month, and it increased to 1.8M after the short campaign. 21.00%

Sponsor #7

Sponsor 7 lets you speed up typing and allows you to save programmable texts or snippets and insert them anywhere around the internet. It was founded in February 2019. Right now, it has around 52,000 users with 1 billion characters typed per month.

The site’s monthly traffic improved from 767 to 1.9k unique visits. 150.00%

Sponsor #8

Sponsor 8 gives you automatic on-brand content in just one click. Use premium templates, create branded designs, remove backgrounds, or create content for your marketing needs. It was founded in 2019 with its headquarters in Iceland. It recently launched in Product Hunt with very positive reviews.

Its organic traffic increased from 29 to 647 per month. 213.00%

Bonus Data: https://www.saaslaunchr.com/

SaaSLaunchr is a startup SaaS marketing agency focusing on SaaS SEO, marketing, and blog outreach. We just launched our new website this September.

As a startup, we did this campaign not to profit but to collaborate and create connections with Startup Founders. Since we did not earn much doing this campaign, we only expected exposure and backlinks.

True enough, after the blog outreach, we are now ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) for some important keywords.

Learnings and Actionable Tips

So, after one month of blog outreach campaign using guest posting as a tactic, here are the crucial things we learned and some actionable tips that we want to share:

1. If you want fast results, invest in guest posting.

The first thing that we confirmed in this case study is that it works.

Guest posting is indeed an effective way to increase organic traffic fast without the danger of getting penalized by Google. It’s a safe and powerful whitehat tactic that we can recommend to any SaaS company.

2. You need to publish at least 10 to 15  guest posts a month to see real results. 

During the campaign, we only submitted a total of 11 articles (10 + 1 bonus) in one month. With this, you can already expect some push in your site traffic. But if you want to get consistent results, you have to submit the same number of guest posts monthly and then increase them as your web traffic grows. 

3. The recommended number of 10 to 15 guest posts per month is most effective for websites with organic traffic below 1k/month.

We classified the participating SaaS companies according to the following tiers:

• Tier A (Companies with below 1k organic traffic per month)
• Tier B (Companies with 4-figure organic traffic per month)
• Tier C (Companies with 5-figure organic traffic per month)
• Tier D (Companies with 6-figure organic traffic per month)
• Tier E (Companies with more than 1 million organic traffic per month)

According to our case study, here are the traffic growth percentages per company as classified by tier:

The highest growth percentage was seen in the Tier A companies. That means if your monthly organic traffic is anywhere below 1k, if you consistently publish 10-15 guest posts per month, you are more likely to get the best results from the campaign.

4. The more you grow, the more published guest posts you need.

Companies in Tiers C, D, and E are expected to have other marketing strategies besides guest posting, especially if they are planning to scale the business. The more you scale your business, the more guest posts you need to get published to increase your site traffic. Here are the number of guest posts that we recommend:

• If your company is in Tier A: You can start with the initial campaign of 5 guest posts a month. But for quick results, at least 10 guest posts a month can give you 50 to 95% growth in monthly organic traffic.
• If your company is in Tier B or C: You need to publish at 15 guest posts a month plus other marketing tactics. If you want to scale even faster, try publishing 30 guest posts per month.
• If your company is in Tier D or E: You need to publish 30 guest posts a month plus other marketing efforts to maintain traffic growth. You may need to increase to more than 30 guest posts a month if your traffic chart is experiencing a plateau or downward trend.

5. Choose high domain authority websites.

Don’t just submit guest posts to some spammy site. Choose the ones which have a domain rating of 40 or more. As a general rule, you can submit to publishing sites with higher domain authority than your site.  But in SaaSLaunchr, we usually make the practice of submitting to those with DA40+. The results in this campaign are only possible because we submitted to high DA websites which give quality permanent backlinks and great traffic.

Related Post: 40+ Best Link Building Tools [In 2022]

6. Your editor’s pitch matters. A lot.

This is an important aspect of the campaign. Your e-mail pitch to the editor will decide if your guest post can be considered for publication.

What should your editor’s pitch contain? You can use the following outline to make one:

• Greetings/Salutation. A simple “Hi, + Editor’s Name!” will do. You can also use the more traditional  “Dear + Editor’s Name”. As much as possible, research the name of the editor. This adds a personal touch to your email. If you really can’t find the editor’s name, use the generic term “editor” just to be safe. 
• Introduction. Here, you introduce your name, drop your website, and say a bit about yourself. Then, tell the editor of your intention to submit a guest post.
• Guest post benefit. “Sell” your guest post. Explain why this guest post will beneficial to the website and its readers. 
• Guest post outline. As much as possible provide the working title and outline of the article that you are submitting.
• Closing. Mention that you are looking forward to joining the community of authors on the site. 

Additionally, when sending the email pitch, just be straightforward with your subject line. A simple “Guest Post Contribution For [Website]” will do. 

7. Read the editor’s guidelines.

Never skip the editor’s guidelines.

If you think that all publishing sites have the same requirements, you are making a big mistake. Some websites may require at least three images with specific dimensions to go along with your submission. Others may require a minimum of 2000 words per article. While some sites would want you to put your Twitter handle in your author’s bio. ALWAYS, always check the editor’s guidelines. It will help you get approved.

8. Guest posting can help both optimized and unoptimized websites.

Guest posting is so effective that it can still increase traffic to websites that are not optimized for search engines. Full maximum results though, you need SEO. Remember, you are spending hard-earned money on this campaign. If you want to get site visitors and boost your search engine rankings, you need to optimize your website before starting the submissions.

9. Have a healthy ratio of do-follow and no-follow links.

Do-follow links are important for SEO. But if you are only gunning for organic site traffic growth, no-follow links can also do the job. A ratio of 50% Do-follow and 50$ no-follow links can already give you that nudge in your traffic data. If you have SEO in mind though, we recommend that all articles must have do-follow links.

10. You need to invest money in this. 

We managed to pull off the guest posting drive because we pooled funds from multiple SaaS companies as a collaborative strategy.

During the campaign, joining companies had to share the cost with direct competitors. If you just need the traffic boost, a collaborative blog outreach campaign is an effective strategy even if you are doing it with your competitors.

But if you want to rank in addition to getting organic traffic growth, you have to invest money in guest posting. As mentioned before, you must cover the cost of making multiple articles per month and paying editorial fees, if there’s any.

Takeaway

Overall, the one-month campaign is a great success and we received positive feedback from the participants.

It’s confirmed – guest posting CAN increase your website traffic fast.

We hope that you have learned a lot from this case study too. 

If your hands are full and you need a partner in doing your company’s guest posting campaign, you can connect with a blog outreach service provider like SaaSLaunchr. We have dynamic guest posting services that may best fit your company’s needs.

Let’s grow your SaaS website together!