Making Contact

Now it's time to put all our hard work into place. By this point you should have at least 5 pieces of extremely high quality content with killer titles. You should also have at least 25 leads for where that content will go. If you're missing either of those - go back and get them before moving on. Having the content ready and knowing where it's going to go is critical to ensure you leverage your time.

Now what we're going to be doing is contacting these blog owners about potentially sending them some killer content. Before we get to that read this blog post:

How Not to Ask About Guest Blogging

It's a great insight from an owner of a site, who gets solicited for guest post constantly. We're going to do everything we can to ensure we don't end up like that guy and are on these website owners' radar.

There are 2 steps to this phase.

Step 1: Finding the Contact Info

Step 2: Sending the Email

Let's go over finding the contact information.

Seems simple enough right? Well finding the contact info certainly is. It's time to head back over to your spreadsheet and start with the first site. Open it up and then you're going to be looking for contact info, ideally specifically related to guest posting. Some sites will have a "write for us" or "guest posting" tab/section on their website, some will merely mention it on the contact page. Some won't mention it at all. I'm not going to go over too many specifics of how to find this information on a webpage, most of you will be educated enough to figure out how to search a web page, I usually start with a CTRL + F and look for the keywords "contact" - that usually gets me in right direction. If you're struggling, look in the footer or look for "advertise" type of pages - those usually have contacts on them as well.

Once I find this contact information, I make note of the email or the submission form in my spreadsheet as well as their name. In the post above from Jeremy Morgan - he specifically says how important it is to mention names. I've also found this to be true. Once I've found this information I move onto the next blog in my spreadsheet, doing this until I've made it through the entirety of my list. If you cannot find information regarding contacting them (rare but happens) delete the site from your spreadsheet and move onto the next one.

Sending the Email

Ughhhh emailing! What a nightmare! Yes this is the most tedious/boring part of setting up the siphon. No it doesn't take long though. I recommend, as Jeremy mentioned previously, that you have a name of your contact and that you write something simple about the site, maybe just 1 line.

I prefer writing all my solicitations in an informal tone versus the normal

"Dear Webmaster blah blah blah"

I'm not going to give you a template for this for 1 specific reason. Everyone would just copy it. I don't even have a template, I do have a few lines I'll recycle, but I change things up frequently. Once you have the contact information for all your prospects it will only take about 15-20 minutes to send out emails to all of them.

Another Note: INCLUDE YOUR CONTENT TITLES

This is of paramount importance. By giving them those killer titles you had created, they'll be on the hook. They may want to read the content themselves, either way you'll stand out from the crowd.

Here's an example if I was to solicit a guest post on Jeremy's website:

Jeremy,

What's up man? I've been following you over on your blog and wanted to reach out because I'm also a huge SEO advocate and writer myself. I run a site over at MYSEOSITE.com and would love the opportunity to get some exposure for my blog by sending you a few pieces of content to put up in exchange for a link back to my blog. It's only top quality stuff here - things your crowd would enjoy.

Here are a few pieces of content I've written and have ready to go:

• How to Use Game Mechanics to Improve Your SEO
• Do You Make Any of These 10 Simple SEO Mistakes?
• 5 Steps to Make WordPress an SEO Beast
• 3 SEO Success Factors for 2014

Which one(s) would you like to look at? I can send it over immediately. Keep up the stellar work with the blog,

Safe Travels!

Mike from MYSEOSITE.com

Informal, to the point, complimentary and I directly ask him which piece of content he wants. I'm also clear with my intentions; I want a link back to my site in exchange for this content. This is important to do. Try writing up a few different scenarios like this, you can jump over to their site and do a quick 15 second overview before writing it. The message above took me less than 1 minute to write. You can write a slightly customized one for each site (try and find something cool that stands out on their site - compliments really DO work!) and go!

Try writing a few examples - you'll find it's much easier than you think. Go through each of your website potentials and send out emails, send out the exact same list of content each time. You may worry "what if two websites want the same piece of content?" Well that's a good problem to have! You're wanted! If that happens (and it does sometimes) I give the content to the person who requested it first and tell the other that I've already committed that content and have quite a few other great examples if they'd be willing to check those out.

They always are. If you get them to the point of responding that they want content, 90% of the time they'll settle for something else just as high quality.

What's next? Next you wait! Yes many will not respond. If you don't get a response within 24 hours, assume you won't. Sometimes you will get a response down the road, yes, it happens randomly. Most of the time though these people will either open your email and delete it or open your email and respond immediately.

After you've got enough responses, make sure you have the content ready, send it over and ask them if there's anything else they need from you. I usually also like to request a date for when the content will go list (most big blogs will know - they have content calendars and content queued for days/weeks ahead of time) and you can take this date and pop it in your own calendar. I always like to double check on the content to make sure my URL is working and that it actually is live.

What About My Author Bio Though? Isn't that important?

IT IS! You need to include an author bio where your actual link will be embedded.

I would recommend writing a quick blurb under 50 words that describes your site. This will be included in your correspondence once you send over the actual article to the website owner. If you want to split test these bios (i.e. try lots of different bios for different sites) then go for it. You can also pay a copywriter (find only a high end copywriter) to write you 10 or so different summaries (obviously after they review your site) and you choose the best.

Remember though, just like the siphons you're setting up, have a gripping profile so people WANT to read your site. They just finished reader a killer piece of content, make sure you don't end flat. Here's a great example:

If you thought you liked SEO before - wait until you see James' blog -SEOMadness - James' gives away tons of clever, witty and extremely useful SEO insights the pro's charge thousands for!

This bio will vary widely depending on the kind of site you have. You may have a more humorous witty site, or you may have a news blogs or a product review site. You need to think about your target audience and consider the content on your site and find a way to bring the two together and write an engaging bio. Include your name OR a pen name, doesn't matter - but it's more personal and will help draw people into your site - the man/woman behind the content.

Once you've crafted you bio, it should be sent off when you send over the content. You can either include this in the doc file (always send attachments, don't copy and paste the content in the email) or include it in a separate doc file.

At this point you should have 1 live siphon setup (or queued to be setup.) But you're not done. No way. You want real large volumes of traffic, you need to get a few more siphons going. It's time to SCALE UP.

Rinse and Repeat. Do this until you have all of your content outsourced. If you run out of places to submit to, go back and find more. Spend time on these websites, look in their sidebars for links to other related websites. I always have the problem of having not enough content, I can always find a viable siphon that my $12 piece of content will return me enough visitors to warrant the effort of putting it out there.

BUT before you do this there is 1 more thing to consider...