Guest posting or guest blogging is a marketing strategy that consists of writing as a guest author on an external blog that addresses topics similar to yours.
Writing a guest post is a win-to-win collaboration.
The blog owner receives quality content, and the guest blogger has the opportunity to make himself known in other media, gain authority and reinforce his link-building strategy, among other advantages that we will see below.
Benefits of guest posting or guest blogging
Guest posting is very healthy for your brand in many ways.
You expand your reach
By writing externally, you broaden your reach and reach a new audience that is likely to be your target audience.
Create strategic relationships
You create professional and strategic links with other colleagues in your sector, which gives you authority and new opportunities for collaboration.
Gain authority
By writing in blogs related to your topic, you show your Know-How which feeds and benefits your authority and brand recognition.
You reinforce your positioning
Guest blogging has been considered one of the juiciest SEO Off-Page strategies: link building.
Gaining quality backlinks will boost your SEO positioning.
And now, let’s see step by step how to develop a good guest posting strategy.
Step 1: Understand your goals
To start you have to ask yourself a key question:
Why do you want to guest blog?
If you are one of those who believe that guest posting is an easy way to quickly build backlinks to your website, we have bad news: guest posting just to get links will not do you any good.
John Mueller has stated several times that it goes against Google’s guidelines.
Google is constantly working to devalue these links, so while it can sometimes work, nowadays it is not an effective long-term SEO strategy.
On the other hand, if you do guest blogging thinking of offering quality content to your users, it will be wonderful … and (as an additional benefit) it will give a good boost to your positioning.
If you want to succeed with your guest blogging strategy, each article you write must have the intention of adding something of value to your audience.
If you create quality content and offer users solutions to their problems, your posts will be of great value regardless of the link.
Working well on guest posting allows you to check all three boxes: brand recognition, traffic, and backlinks.
This means that the ideal in guest blogging is to target websites with a lot of authority in your niche and that have dedicated readers with high confidence in the domain.
This sounds great, but as you can imagine, getting their attention and having the doors of their house opened for you will not be an easy task (but not impossible).
Step 2: look for guest posting opportunities
There are many proven techniques you can use to find websites to write a guest post on. Let’s briefly review the most popular methods.
Ask Google
- Go to Google search and type in a keyword that describes your niche well, followed by a phrase that blogs often use to indicate that they are accepting guest posts.
For example: “guest author”, “write for us”, “guest post”, “become an author” or “submit an article”.
- Another option is to find websites that have once accepted a guest post from bloggers active in your niche. Use the search string “guest post by [bloggers name]” for this purpose.
- Lastly, if you’re just starting, you can also Google something like “best guest marketing blogs” to find lists of available websites that accept guest posts.
Join guest blogging communities
In addition to having a “Guest Author” page or similar on their websites, many platforms that accept guest posts are members of various Facebook communities.
These communities can be public or private; in the latter case, you may need an invitation from a member to join.
Here, websites that accept guest posts run ads that invite bloggers to cooperate.
Bloggers can also participate in these groups by describing their blogging experience or by specifying the type of websites they would love to write for.
Follow the example of your competitors
Another traditional way to discover new guest posting opportunities is by analyzing your competitors’ backlinks. If they have achieved it, you can too.
Unlike the previous two methods, here you need a tool that collects all your rival’s backlinks for you.
SE Ranking has one, and it’s called a Backlinks Checker.
Now let us quickly show you how you can use the tool to find websites that accept guest articles.
Once you get the report on your competitor’s link profile, go to the Backlinks tab.
To quickly find relevant websites within your opponent link profile, set the tool to show only one backlink per domain and use filters to see only backlinks that contain the word “blog” in their URLs.
That way, you will filter the backlinks coming from forums, social networks, etc.
In addition, you can use multiple filters to leave only authoritative domains with a high trust score and, for example, sort them from newest to oldest.
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF LOOKING AT YOUR COMPETITORS
You will find websites that accept guest posts although they do not openly declare it on their website.
Right from the start, you can see the key metrics of some websites, such as the Domain Trust score, Page Trust score, as well as the types of backlinks you could get ( do-follow or no-follow ).
You cannot be 100% sure that the websites you have found accept guest posts since you do not know the conditions that your competitors had to meet to write as guests, but it is a matter of finding out.
Find collaborators on BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a platform that shows you trending content, but it can also be used to find guest blogging opportunities.
The tool shows you where other marketers are writing within your niche.
Simply searching for the names of fellow professionals on BuzzSumo will reveal the blogs they have participated in, which translates to these sites accepting guest posts.
BuzzSumo has the downside that it is quite an expensive tool, but it does have free daily consultations that you can take advantage of.
Bet on the leaders of your sector
Take a look at the most relevant publications in your sector. Some of them probably accept guest posts.
If so, come up with ideas. Make sure to present your blog post in such a way that the value you are providing is clear. What will your audience get from your article? What credibility do you bring to your post?
This method will only work for experienced bloggers with some authority. If this is the case for you, think of key sites in your niche or related fields that are not your direct competitors and try to partner with them.
In this sense, face-to-face and digital networking can greatly facilitate your task, to present proposals. If you work your professional relationships, you will not have to make calls or emails “cold door”.
When you build relationships of trust with professionals in your sector and work on your authority, synergies naturally arise that facilitate collaborations, including guest posting.
Contact your existing partners and customers
You may not be ready to rub shoulders with the leaders in your industry yet, but if you have collaborators, clients, or followers who have websites related to your niche, these will be your best bet for guest posting.
The chances of your guest post being accepted will be higher if you bring it up with someone you already know or work with.
Why?
Because you already have a connection with these people, and they are probably willing to help you.
After all, as long as you offer quality content, guest posting is a win-win deal.
