Guest blogging is the practice of writing content for another website. It constitutes a free source of content which, depending on its quality, can generate traffic and useful backlinks for the site’s SEO.
Guest blogging can be an opportunity to benefit from visibility and positioning as an expert and you can also benefit from gaining traffic or visits on your website from the guest blog you’ve submitted. The principle of guest blogging is known to many bloggers and website owners who want to boost their SEO results.
Why Start Guest Blogging Now?
Guest blogs offer significant benefits. As noted, the pot of gold for winning guest blogging opportunities is not compensating the publisher. However, there are several ways you can be rewarded for your efforts:
- You can expand your audience and fan base. Newbie bloggers inevitably find that very few people read their content. The most convenient shortcut to broadening your reach is to post on blogs that already have the relevant audience you are looking for.
- You can build your authority in your niche. Getting published on credible websites can help you position yourself as an expert on the topic.
- You can drive quality, targeted traffic to your website – I have posted on over 50 websites because this is a great strategy for sending traffic to me.
- You will gain more visibility through search – Websites where your guest blog is likely to have higher domain authority than yours. As such, your content will have the great ranking potential for the keyword phrases you covet.
- You can take advantage of valuable networking opportunities – An underrated but extremely valuable benefit of guest blogging is building relationships with industry leaders and their readers, which can open all kinds of doors.
Editors also want to publish your ideas. Today’s media landscape is ripe for guest blogging. You see, publishers want quality content that they don’t have to pay for.
How To Target The Right Blogs?
Too often, budding guest bloggers turn to automation tools and lame email templates, fill in the required blanks, and launch hundreds of desperate emails. However, successful guest bloggers set up a planning process and do their research. Here’s what I recommend you focus on when taking your first steps in identifying smart targets:
- Audience First – The editorial direction of the blog should be at the forefront of your mind before selecting which blogs you will tackle.
- Quality – This is subjective, of course, but spend time reading the recent articles, the best articles, and the most relevant articles. Are you satisfied with the quality of the content? Would you be in good company?
- Performance – How does the blog work? Examine its traffic ranking with Alexa. Consider social sharing counters. Are readers sharing the content?
- Promotion – Look at the blog’s social media accounts. Does the publisher consistently promote articles from its guest bloggers?
- Interaction – Not all blogs have a comment feed and many fail to get comments. If interaction with readers is important to you, take a look.
- Author Biography – Some blogs give contributors many opportunities to present themselves with author biographies, while others do not. For recognition purposes, you probably prefer to have author bios that feature your photo, links to your website, content, and social profile, and a link to your other posts on the site.
10 Guest Blogging Tips & Best Practices
1. Know Your Competitors
Before offering yourself as a partner to collaborate on another blog or accept external collaborations, you should analyze whether or not the other party competes professionally with your profile or business model.
Ideally, you should look for blogs that are complementary to your business. For example, if you have a travel blog focused on selling tourist guides, don’t try to make a guest post in a medium for the same purpose, but on pages that offer complementary services such as accommodation or attraction tickets. In other words, join professionals who can deal with complementary topics and have no competing positioning interests with yours.
2. Search
Start by looking for blogs that promote the fact that they want new contributors. Look for keywords that represent your niche and phrases that publishers use to recruit bloggers, such as:
- write for us
- guest posting guidelines
- guest bloggers wanted
- guidelines for contributors
If you had to “sniff” out opportunities to post guest posts as an expert in dog training, you could start with typing something like “write for us+dog training”, which can work like a charm. Another search tactic that you may find helpful is to simply search for “guest blogging sites list”. Again, adding “+ [niche]” is helpful.
3. Networking
You are sure to meet writers who make frequent guest blog appearances in your industry. Connect with them. You can ask established guest bloggers for recommendations and/or referrals. They probably have relationships with the editors on your shortlist.
A variety of guest blogging networks exist and can be found through search. You can also join groups or other dedicated guest blogging communities. You can find tips and potential selling points recommended by other bloggers on the popular Quora question-and-answer site.
Do you attend conferences? Meeting and building relationships with industry leaders at industry conferences have helped me gain writing opportunities for many of the top blogs in the online marketing world. Research ahead of time for authors and speakers with reputable blogs and search for them at conferences.
4. Define Your Objectives
Before convincing a site to post a guest post to improve SEO, it’s important to define your guest blogging goal(s). This preliminary work is essential for the future because it will define the blogs to which you will turn and how you formulate your request.
Most often, the objectives of this web marketing strategy revolve around the advantages presented above:
- Improve the image of your company, your brand, your products (goods or services)
- Improve your positioning in organic results by increasing your inbound links
- Increase traffic to your site and by extension the number of your subscribers
- Increase your audience on social networks
- Position yourself as an expert in your field
5. Select The Most Appropriate Blogs
Here, it all depends on the goal (s) you set for yourself in the first step. For example, if you want to increase your traffic, you should look for blogs that are related to your topic and have high targeted traffic.
On the other hand, if you simply want to improve your ranking and backlinking practices, you will have to look for blogs related to your theme and which have a good Domain Authority (DA).
To find these blogs, you have several tools at your disposal like Google. This search engine allows you to find sites that accept guest articles on topics that interest you. To do this, all you have to do is type a query like:
- keyword + “become a contributor”
- keyword + “submit a guest article”
- keyword + “guest article”
- keyword + “become a writer”
You can also type the same queries on Twitter to see the latest guest posts that have been written in your field;
- SEO tools: Among the most widely used of these you have Ahrefs, Majestic SEO and SEMrush. They allow you to obtain, for each keyword that interests you, a list of sites that you can contact for content exchange. Moreover, with these tools, you can have a full report on the sites that hook you;
- Relationship: If you post content regularly and are present on social media, you are bound to find other site owners who will offer you to post content on theirs.
6. Get noticed by the blogger in a positive way and earn their confidence
You have just found a site that matches your goals. Now, before you ask to publish an article with your link inside, you need to get noticed positively and earn the owner’s trust.
To achieve this, subscribe to the newsletter to be informed of each new article. Read all the content that is posted on the blog for one to two weeks, and comment on it regularly. But beware!
Be careful, this is not about making comments like, “Well done, great article! “. Rather, it is about adding value to the article in a positive tone. Show your expertise, but without making the site owner uncomfortable. This is how you will be pleasing the blog owner while also getting you and his readers to notice you positively.
An additional tip that works very well when you want to build your relationship with a site owner is to become their customer and offer to give them a testimonial if their product is working for you. You will have done them a great service, and they will feel psychologically indebted; which will be very useful to you when you ask to publish a guest article (with your link) on his site to improve your SEO.
7. Choose the keywords to work on
You have to choose keywords to position yourself once you have defined your objective. Editors like the fact that the post of the guest has a good search engine and drives first of all traffic to their location. So conduct some SEO-relevant keyword research as you would your own material. Concentrate on those of you and your visitors who will have a good influence. The phrases used should, of course, reflect your area of expertise and serve your specific goals.
If you want to sell a product, for example, you should pick words beginning with “purchase” or “order;” if you encourage training, choose phrases such as “learn,” or “learn more.”
8. Think about the added value of your article
79% of publishers find guest articles too promotional and 56% think that this content does not correspond to their readership. To benefit from guest blogging, your text must offer added value to the audience.
No need to repeat a popular topic on your blog: offer exclusive content. Remember that you will also be promoting this article to your community. Your regular readers will get a feeling of déjà vu if you cover an old topic.
Think SEO, finally! Your letter must take reference requirements into consideration. Sparingly and intelligently use your keyword like:
- In the article’s heading
- In the introduction and conclusion
- In one or two subtitles
- As a tag on links pointing to your website
In fact, regarding the number of links to integrate, discuss it with your host. Usually, it’s 2 links maximum (one to the home page, one to a deeper page).
9. Create high-quality backlinks.
If the blogger publishes their content on another blog, they will receive backlinks in the author’s bio. To get the backlinks, the article must be linked to the author’s page. Adding site keywords that are correctly and correctly matched with the content improves search engine visibility.
In the end, the blogger deserves better search engine rankings. You don’t need to spam, just a specific link to your author’s contribution that will help you get a high-quality backlink that will take you further and help build ranking.
10. Let active readers take a look at you.
Serious readers always tend to share their opinions through blog posts. That way, the blogger can understand what people think about the post and what readers expect from his article. It offers different classifications for the same posts.
All these positive and even negative reviews, but real, help to improve the quality of the blog post. In addition, it encourages positive and negative comments and encourages more work to publish better quality posts.
What better way to appear attractive to readers than using images? Using the right images for your blog will really help you appear more interesting.
Start Guest Blogging Now!
Guest posting is a strategy that has been working for a long time and that today continues to interest many bloggers. It is a very complete experience that, well managed, can be a great source of opportunities.
As a final reminder, to tell you that to start a guest blogging strategy like this, you have to be willing to extend it over time and not do it as something specific. The real benefits will begin to appear if you are willing to expand your circle of contacts and open your mind to other collaborations. Remember that this is not a link exchange, but a complete experience where all parties are expected to do their best.
Do you usually make guest posts on other blogs in your sector or do you accept guest authors on your editorial calendar? Let us know and start guest blogging soon!
[Recommended reading: 6 Tips For Reaching More People With A Blog Post]
Note from Editor: Yen’s article is a fine example of a great guest post! If you would like to become one of our awesome guest bloggers, visit our Guest Posts -page.
[Images – Main Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash; other images, graphics or videos are from their respective websites and/or social platforms]
Yen Pedrajas is the Lead Editor at Removal.AI. She is an experienced social media and digital marketer who writes about eCommerce, technology, and startup businesses. She loves sharing about new insights, ideas and strategies about digital marketing.