Syed Irfan Ajmal outlines a successful guest blogging strategy that helped achieve $200k in monthly revenue for a British auto-care e-commerce company through effective SEO and targeted keyword research. The study emphasizes the importance of quality content creation and strategic outreach, leading to significant improvements in keyword rankings and traffic. Future enhancements include social outreach, diverse content types, and exploring Bing SEO for additional revenue generation.

1. The Guest Blogging
Process I used to
Achieve $200k in
Monthly Revenue
with Syed Irfan Ajamal

2. Syed Irfan
AjamalAward-Winning Serial Entrepreneur,
Huff Post Columnist, Speaker, SEO
Expert and Content Marketer.
Paul
KlebanovInbound Marketing Strategist &
Webinar Host at SEMrush.com
#SEMrushLive

3. Slideshare.net/SEMrush_webinars
@paulklebanov | @syedirfanajmal |
@SEMrush
youtube.com/SEMrushHQ
Webinar Recording
#SEMrushLive

4. #SEMrushLive
About Me
• Co-founder of Digital Marketing ROI
• Columnist at HuffPo, Business.com and several
other publications
• Specialized in inbound marketing, SEO, and
content marketing

5. #SEMrushLive
Why Guest Blogging?
• Effective
• Economical
• Enriching

6. #SEMrushLive
But…
• “Isn’t guest posting dead? I heard Matt Cutts say
so!”

7. #SEMrushLive
Guest posting is dead…
• …but ONLY IF you don’t do it SMARTLY
• So said Matt Cutts
• And that’s what we’ve proven with this case
study

8. #SEMrushLive
The Case Study
• SEO for a British auto-care e-commerce company

9. #SEMrushLive
• Revenue from organic traffic in October 2014:
$162,580.73
• Revenue from organic traffic in October 2015:
$200,928.19
The Case Study

10. #SEMrushLive
That’s a 23.85% increase by logging only 74 hours
of SEO each month for 6 months (May-Oct 2015)

11. #SEMrushLive

12. #SEMrushLive
The Only Strategy Used
• Guest posting

13. #SEMrushLive
Time Logged
• Logged Hours: 444.24 hours in 6 months (or 74
hours per month)

14. #SEMrushLive
The Team
• 1 senior SEO expert (strategy)
• 2 junior SEO experts (outreach)
• 4 writers
• 1 VA (linkreators research)

15. #SEMrushLive
The Process
• Keyword Research
• Linkreator Research

16. #SEMrushLive
Keyword Research
• The Biggest Metric: ROI
• ROI is directly correlated with the choice of your
keywords

17. #SEMrushLive
Keyword Research
• The most important step if one’s end goal isn’t
just keyword rankings but an increase in ROI
• Using SEMrush to find the ‘low hanging fruits’

18. #SEMrushLive
Keyword Research
• In our case the site was old
• So we downloaded all keywords ranked from
SEMrush and organized them in a way that
keywords which have better positions as well as
large search volume were at the top of the table

19. #SEMrushLive
Keyword Research
• So we found low hanging fruits (keywords with
good searches for which we were at position 7-
20)
• These keywords would be easier to rank than a
keyword which the site has no ranking for or
which has no searches

20. #SEMrushLive
Keyword Research
• More info in: Nick Eubank’s SEMrush article on
keyword research published on 6th Feb 2015

21. #SEMrushLive
This included keywords like

22. #SEMrushLive
Old Rankings: 7-20

23. #SEMrushLive
Content Creation
• Website Content (informational)
• Guest posts (linked to relevant blog posts of our
site)

24. #SEMrushLive
Linkreator Research
• Relevant to the niches of auto, car safety, travel
etc
• DA of 25 or above (we didn’t care much about
the PA at that time)

25. #SEMrushLive
Linkreator Research
• Good UI/UX; great content. No SEO/PBN sites
• Not a competitor but shares the same audience
that our client needs (i.e. car lovers, travelers,
car owners)

26. #SEMrushLive
Email Outreach Template
“Dear [First name of the site’s owner/editor],
While looking for articles on travel, I came across your beautifully
designed site. The recent article on 10 things to consider before
embarking on a long journey was pretty informative.
I am passionate about travel and writing, and hence I wonder if
you would be interested in me sending you a guest post on “10
steps to prepare your car for a long road trip”? I would also be
open to writing on a topic of your choice.
Would you like to see some of my previous articles published at
some good sites?
Regards,
Syed Irfan Ajmal”

27. #SEMrushLive
Key Features of An Ideal
Outreach Email
• Use the right person’s first name (rather than
Dear Sir/Madam)
• Share a specific compliment

28. #SEMrushLive
• Connect that compliment to your pitch
• End with a question
Key Features of An Ideal
Outreach Email

29. #SEMrushLive
Precautions
• No links
• No attachments
• Preferably short email (so no copy-paste of your
article samples in the article’s body) - [Brian
Dean’s 2-step approach]

30. #SEMrushLive
Precautions
• Suggest a couple of topics
• No emails to generic email IDs like
info@traveltips.com

31. #SEMrushLive
Precautions
• No vague compliments; nothing that gives the
wrong impression that you are mass-mailing

32. #SEMrushLive
Precautions
• Mention a recent content piece (which is relevant
to you); mention in your own words and explain
how you have a better and more awesome
content piece on the same or a related topic

33. #SEMrushLive
Precautions
• Never ask for a link!

34. #SEMrushLive
More Outreach Tips
• Make them feel like you KNOW them well
• Your compliment plus you ending with a question
serves a definite purpose (psychology at play)

35. #SEMrushLive
• Always do followups (without disrespecting their time)
• 70-80% anchor texts to branded terms
More Outreach Tips

36. #SEMrushLive
Results Obtained
• Rankings gained or improved for 5000+
keywords

37. #SEMrushLive
Results Obtained
• Rankings for keywords with 5-6 figure search
volume (in UK alone) improved with many
keywords on 1-3 positions and many more on the
first page

38. #SEMrushLive
Results Obtained
• $200K in Monthly Revenue

39. #SEMrushLive
How We Are Making This
Better
• Improved benchmarking
• Investing in social outreach rather than email
outreach only
• More EPIC content
(quality, more content types like infographics, videos
etc)

40. #SEMrushLive
How We Are Making This
Better
• Offering incentives to linkreators
(“I will share your content piece with our
community to 10,000 fans.”)
• Link diversity (investing in other backlinking
strategies)

41. #SEMrushLive
How We Are Making This
Better
• Investing in Bing SEO (as Bing is now used by
around 30% searchers) to diversify organic traffic
inflow.
• More about it at my blog
www.SyedIrfanAjmal.com

42. #SEMrushLive
Through these improvements we have
generate even more revenue for our clients!

43. #SEMrushLive
How You Can Do The Same
• DIY (cheaper but may take more time if you have
less experience)
• Outsource (more expensive, but can be good if
you hire the right company)

44. #SEMrushLive
My Free Offer
• Say Hi/Boo via mail/web
• The best email I get will get a free 30 minutes
SEO consultation
• Email: sia[at]SyedIrfanAjmal[dot]com
• Web: www.SyedIrfanAjmal.com

45. #SEMrushLive

46. #SEMrushLive

47. #SEMrushLive

48. GET A FREE TRIAL
OF SEMRUSH TODAY!
SIAWEBINAR-PWPI5GAI
#SEMrushLive

49. #SEMrushLive