It is stressful for website owners to see their websites underperforming on driving traffic. Digital marketers and SEO experts have always mentioned how creating relevant content for your website are essential for brand awareness and online visibility. But have you heard about guest posting opportunities?
Guest posting (or blogging) is similar to creating high-quality content for your website. However, the content is not published on your website, but another. It has a simple concept; write relevant articles according to website requirements and receive a backlink in return. Most backlinks are placed in the author box.
Guest blogs are a vital strategy in SEO; it helps build relationship, exposure, authority, and links.
You establish a relationship with website owners, increase online exposure with new (their) audiences, establish authority in the industry, and secure backlinks. Indeed, it helps increase brand awareness and send back traffic to your website.
However, website owners are only interested in publishing high-quality content on their blogs. Well, that’s obvious as only relevant content attracted new readers and current audiences.
However, you have to ensure your content piques the interest of their current audience and invites new ones to their website. Guest posting opportunities has to be a win-win situation for both web owners.
So, how should you find guest posting opportunities?
Determine Objectives for Guest Posting Opportunities
Before we begin finding guest post opportunities, let’s first talk about your objectives for the guest posting. Knowing your goal ahead of time is the key to determining the kind of blogs to submit for guest posting. Usually, there are 3 main objectives for guest posting:
- Reputable and high authority position in the industry.
- Increase website traffic.
- Build backlinks to your website.
You can hit all these three if you write the right type of content.
If you want to focus on the first or second objective, look for guest post opportunities with a wide and engaging audience.
Meanwhile, if the third objective is your priority, go for websites with high domain authority. You can use Ubersuggest, a free tool for checking website DA.
Determine your objectives for guest posting before we proceed to look for blogs that best suits your guest post submission.
How to Find Guest Posting Opportunities?
Finding a guest post opportunity starts with knowing where to look for them. When looking for a place, it has to be relevant to your niche or industry. You should look for websites or blogs that fit the following criteria:
- Focus the content on the industry or niche.
- Target audience of the website or blog will be interested in your industry.
- Website or blog has an engagement with its readers.
- Blog or website owner is active on social media.
The last two criteria show the activity of the blog, whether your content gains promotion and interaction or not.
Here are the following tools or steps that can help you find the right place for guest post opportunities:
Google Search
The easiest and excellent place to look for guest posting opportunities is Google. You can find blogs or websites that accept guest posts by searching the following:
- keyword guest post
- keyword submit a guest post
- keyword guest post guidelines
- keyword accepting guest posts
- keyword guest post by
Replace the keyword with the relevant keywords from your niche or industry. The searches lead you to guest post submission pages, guest post guideline pages, and other blogs or websites that give a posting opportunity.
Known Guest Bloggers
You probably have read through many blogs in your niche or industry. But have you noticed that several guest bloggers repeatedly pop in guest blogs?
You can name a few influential marketing guest bloggers, right? You can use Google search, search for their name and the phrase “guest post by.” Results will suggest all the websites these guest bloggers have posted on, and these are good sites to consider.
Competitor Backlinks
It’s time to take advantage of your competitor analysis. If you have done a competitor’s backlink analysis while working on your SEO strategies, one or more of your competitors have built backlinks from their guest posts.
There are 2 ways to check the backlinks of your competitors:
- Open Site Explorer
- Google Search
If you do not have access to the Open Site Explorer tool, you can search on Google. Follow the example in the photo below.
link: should be followed with the domain the competitor has written for, while the second “domain.com” should be replaced with your domain. It reveals sites that your competitor has written for.
Social Search
Several website owners or bloggers are active on social media. Most of the bloggers share their latest guest post content on social networks, the most common are on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
You only have to search for the keyword to find the latest posts in your industry. Just follow the provided links to see which blogs are accepting guest posts.
Let’s Prepare on How to Pitch Your Guest Blogging Post
There is not always a golden opportunity to pitch a guest post, but when it comes, there are certain things you have to take advantage of, including when:
- Blog specifically advertises they are looking for guest post contributions.
- The blog mentions you, your business, or your product in one of their posts.
- A blog mentions you on their social media.
- The blog publishes another guest post.
To have these advantages, it is an absolute must to do the best practices in pitching a guest blog post. Follow these steps:
- Always read their guest posting guidelines. Some blog owners suggest a topic to write on, asks you to pitch one, or asks you to submit a full post. Do not forget the required format.
- Personalise your email.
- Introduce yourself.
- Tell them why you should be a guest blogger, add a few links to posts you have published elsewhere.
However, even with all these preparations, there is an inconvenient truth: some websites do not solicit guest posts. It’s because this tactic has been used as spam by SEOs in the past. They send poorly written articles and care only about the links without interest in the readers.
Moreover, expect slow response rates from websites with high DA, as they receive constant email pitching guest posts.
Create a Guest Posting Opportunity Too
You have to remember that guest posting can be a two-way street. It is tough to constantly create content for your website while writing for a lot of other blogs.
So, while looking for opportunities, why not also make one? You can open an invitation for other guest bloggers to write for you. It helps you have fresh content, gain perspective and reach more audience.
It becomes a win-win situation.
Final Takeaway
Guest blogging is quite helpful in digital marketing and SEO. You have to take in the opportunities to gain relationships, exposure, authority, and secured backlinks. But, do this strategy in moderation. Like any strategy, guest posting is however abused.
Despite the expected downfall of guest blogging for SEO, it remains a powerful digital marketing strategy. If you utilise well the opportunities, it becomes one of your best methods in building powerful backlinks.