What is guest posting in digital marketing?

Guest blogging, also known as guest publishing, is a process of writing content for another company's website.

In more simple words -

Guest posting is a great way to gain authority within your niche. It helps your brand in reaching out to a more targeted audience.

Watch this video to learn simple steps for guest posting -

What is guest posting important in SEO?

Guest bloggers offer to write content for other blogs in their niche, with the benefits of increased back links and traffic from links.

By creating guest posts for other companies, your site may see an increase in the referral traffic, which is mostly similar to the audience that you want for your own blog.

If the site or blog page that you are doing the guest posting on is an established page with a certain amount of authority in the specific industry, then you are guaranteed to get more eyes on your website through back links from the posts.

Are guest posts worth it?

Guest posts are definitely worth the effort. It is the process of having your articles published in a blog of your niche, usually with the expectation that it will boost your brand, improve your visibility, or generate back links.

How To Find Guest Blogging Opportunities

A good way to find guest blogging opportunities that have a lot of exposure is by searching for blogs on Google that have some of the biggest names in your industry doing guest blogs. 

You can see specific websites, along with a list of websites that might be offering a guest blog posting opportunity, all in a single search.

Advanced search operators

Advanced search operators in Google can help you to obtain lists of a variety of guest blogging opportunities for bloggers that you can investigate further in order to locate better sites. By entering a search term related to contributing to blogs, Google will pull up sites with similar titles.

More examples of advanced search operators -

Guest Bloggers

The goal of this method is to search for every blog that competing blogger has written for as you are basically looking for similar link building opportunities.

Another technique is to look for high-profile bloggers on competing blogs. After you have identified them you can do a search with "guest post by [insert name]". 

If no results come up with any of the queries, then it is very possible that this blog does not accept guest posts, and you can remove this blog from your list.

Write For Us Page

To save some search time, find a place that lists the best blogs and websites that accept guest posts, adding domain authority scores. Blog websites accepting content from guest bloggers will reference a separate section explaining guidelines to be followed by guests. 

Another piece of good news is that most websites offering organic guest blogging opportunities have a special guest posting guidelines page just for guest bloggers.

Pre-requisites for Outreach 

While reaching out make some sites may be open to hosting a guest post, but if viewers are just tuning in to see what is being pitched by the blog owner, you are not going to be doing as good of a job if your aim is to establish authority or drive traffic back to your site.

Personalize Your Email

There are no strict rules for approaching blog owners about a guest blog, but the pitch email you send for your guest post should adhere to the best email practices.

Getting your guest post accepted on other blogs may prove challenging if you are struggling to write an effective guest post pitch email that stands out from the crowded inbox.

Moreover, having a website and getting business emails makes you look so professional. Thus increasing the probably of getting a response back.

This way, you can use your email marketing campaigns to bring in more traffic to your blog and company's website. Sending personalized outreach emails is the one best way to increase your outreach campaigns success rates.

Your outreach emails should include personal details about yourself, as well as being personalized for the recipient.

Vetting the Blogs

Some sites may be open to hosting guest posts, but if viewers are just tuning in to see what is being written by the blog owner, you are not doing as good of a job if your aim is to gain authority or drive Traffic back to your website.

Outline your blogging goals

If you have got your blogging goals clearly outlined and you choose a site that is related to your niche, then you are going to become visible to an audience already interested in your field of work/business.

Coming up with Content Ideas

If a guest posting guideline requires you to pitch one idea for the topic, then (based on your research into previous popular posts) pitch several different ideas, so that the blog owner has some options from which to choose.

A good way to come up with content ideas for your guest post is to take particular note of comments on blogs that you are trying to get published on; if you notice a common theme amongst the questions asked, write a post addressing it.

Sometimes, telling bloggers you have come across them by accident during research may work, and you may even be able to add a list of several topics that you could write articles about.

Target the Market Trends

To get some good ideas on topics that would be effective for your audience, use the following sites to look at which posts were popular on social media. 

If you find a topic that is being shared a lot, that is related to a website but has not been published yet on the site that you are targeting, it is a good topic to start your guest blog strategy.  

For example, if you came across a great SEO case study and it is being spread on social media like wildfire. Definitely try your best to under the various nuances of the strategy so you can come up with a unique take on it.

Another example, you can use Google trends to find various guest posting opportunities.

A bonus tip for guest posting 

A bonus would be if you actually know the guest blogger within your industry who could give you an introduction to the owners of blogs that they are hosting your guest posts. 

For that make sure that when you are reaching out, you are trying to make genuine connections with people.

Seeking Potential Prospects

Before writing a guest blog post, you need to find a site that does accept guest authors and is actively looking for content. Another good way to find sites that accept guest blogs is by keeping an eye out for content shared by other bloggers on their social media.   

Moreover, you would also have to look for websites that recently allowed various guest posts on the website.

Focus On Content Gaps

The content gap is creating content on easy-to-rank keywords that your competitors are not ranking for. To find a content gap simply analyze your competitor's website with a keyword research tool like Ahref's and Uber suggest.

Look out for content gaps within their website to make sure that your guest post is accepted, you will want to pitch the blog owner on topics that would perform well with their audience.

Do guest posts get paid?

Generally, most guest bloggers are not paid, they write for other sites in order to establish relationships and gain back links to their own blogs.

Most quality blogs and editors are not going to want to link to sites full of poor-quality content, regardless of how awesome a guest post is.

Most websites use guest posts to keep their websites up to date. This keeps the content on your own blog fresh, can help get some insight into your audience, and will hopefully gain you some new readers from the guest blogging community.   

Guest Posting is a Collaborative Industry

Guest blogging is a highly collaborative blogging strategy, but just like all things the deal should have upside for both sides.

Don't see Guest Posting with a "Take, Take, Take" mindset but instead see it as an equal exchange of value. The blog owners get a highly researched blog post and in return you get a backlinks.

In general, most guest bloggers are unpaid, writing for other sites in order to establish relationships and gain backlinks to their own blogs. Guest bloggers offer to write for other blogs in their niche, which has the benefits of increasing backlinks and traffic from links.   

Build Genuine Connections

It is highly likely that you will remain in touch with site owners long after the posting of your post. With the risks of spammy BLOGGERS WHO TRY TO BRIBE BLOG OWNERS to allow them to publish poor-quality CONTENT FOR THEIR OWN LINK-BUILDING AND SEO BENEFITS, MANY MARKETERS decided to avoid it altogether.

Becoming an Authority

Guest posts also help you to establish yourself as an authority within your niche, as guest writing for high-profile sites is similar to having a site owner give their seal of approval to your content. It is similar to having the sites owner or editors vote of confidence on an article that you wrote.   

Sharing your expertise through blog posts at high-authority sites does not just establish your own personal brand, it also brings awareness to your business. 

By writing quality guest posts on other websites in your niche, you get valuable inbound links, boost your domain authority, get more exposure for readers who are interested in your content, and develop new relationships with bloggers.

Upside of writing guest posts

For example, whereas your site is currently receiving just ten visitors per month, you may get an opportunity to write a guest post on a blog reading 100,000 people per month, giving you an instant opportunity to create meaningful brand awareness or boost your Domain Authority.  

High quality Back-links

Writing a guest post on another website does not just help with SEO, getting you backlinks, it brings more visitors to your site, and allows you to focus on doing what you enjoy most -- writing awesome content.

Exposure

The key benefit to guest blogging is the fact that you get to benefit from the exposure and reach of blogs that are far bigger and more authoritative than yours, increasing your own reach and authority on the web. 

Arguably one of the easiest and most successful ways to boost SEO rankings is to do high quality guest blogging.

Social Media

Another good way TO FIND SITES THAT ACCEPT GUEST BLOGS IS BY KEEPING an eye out on content shared by other bloggers on their social media. 

Guest blogs are such a popular SEO tactic because sites that accept guest posts typically let authors link BACK TO THEIR OWN CONTENT OR RESOURCES, provided that it makes sense to readers. 

However, guest blogging is a 2-way link, where you may even request that a website owner to write a guest post on your website.  

When a blog tags you, or mentions your business/brand/social media handles, on one of their posts, that is the perfect time to let them know that you want to work with them or write a guest post on their site.

Maximizing the efficiency

A quick Google search can probably spit out numerous lists of blogs accepting guest posts; all you have to do is Google lists of blogs accepting guest posts, and also lists of blogs accepting -your keyword-guest posts.

Make sure that you know your target blogs contain content on the keywords that you are searching for when looking for guest post opportunities. If you read enough blogs in your industry, you know a few of the same names popping up over again on guest blogs.   

Take a look at popular guest posts to see which types of content tend to perform best on the blogs of your target. To get a few good ideas for topics that would perform well with their audience, use the following sites to find out which posts were popular on social media. 

We strongly suggest starting from blogs you are already following and reading for some time now (make sure that they are related to a topic that you are covering in your blog or site). Look for high-traffic, high-quality blogs that have DA and high-quality content within your niche.   

For Website Owners

If you already own a high Domain authority (DA) and website traffic you might be receiving a lot of emails asking for sponsored posts or guest posts.

Guest blogging strategy helps your website in getting more traffic. The content posted by guest blogging is high quality and covers new trendy topics.

In guest blogging website owners must have strict guest post guidelines. And only accept high quality posts that truly provide value to your readers.

If you want to truly attract quality guest posts, look at building up a site with high DA with huge readership, you are sure to get unstuck pitches from many bloggers and writers around the world.

By writing quality guest posts on other websites of your niche, you get valuable inbound links, boost your domain authority, get more visibility with readers who are interested in your content, and you also create a new relationship with other bloggers of your niche.

Guest blogs are such an important tool for businesses and individuals to establish themselves as leaders in the industry, establish relationships with other influencers, and get their brands in front of MORE SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS. 

BY WRITING HIGH-QUALITY GUEST POSTS ON OTHER WEBSITES within your niche, you get valuable inbound links, boost your domain authority, get increased exposure for readers who are interested in your content, and form new relationships with bloggers. 

A quality guest blog post exposes your website to a huge new audience; a few will check out your content, and maybe subscribe. FEATURING GUEST POSTS ON YOUR OWN BLOG helps you provide your audience with fresh perspectives and new content.  

Comments

It can also be helpful to stick around the blogs comments section, or engage with them through social media, for several weeks to build up rapport with them, so that your request for a guest post will appear less opportunistic.

If you are looking to be a frequent blog contributor, or just want the blog owner to boast how awesome of a guest blogger you are, make sure to push the post as far as possible with their audience.

Blogger's Bio

Guest posters naturally use this space to include links to their target websites, as well as to link back to their social media profiles in order to get more followers and fans.

This is particularly the case if most established blogs are now hosting guest posts, as bloggers like to tag guest posters on their tweets in order to get exposure for their followers as well as their own.

Check the authors bio at the end of guest posts, making sure that you can receive proper credit and get readers back to your website.

Write for us

Again, imagine that you have to find guest bloggers for the upcoming event on your bike blogging blog. A search will help you to find relevant blogs who obviously do host guest posts.

The best part is, some may not even have a "Write For Us" page, but since you found the guest post on THEIR BLOG, IT IS WORTH REACHING OUT and asking just in case.

If a guest post guidelines requires you to pitch an idea for the subject, then (based on your research into previous popular posts) pitch several different ideas, so that the blog owner has some options from which to choose.

If you have found a topic that is highly shared, and is on-brand for the site, but has not been published yet by the targeted website, it is a great subject for starting a guest blog strategy.

Reverse Image Searches

Use reverse image search by Google - this is when you grab a popular guest bloggers headshot then use this to find places they have posted till now.

Reverse images searches are a godsend for anyone wondering how to find blogs accepting guest blogging posts, and worth trying. If you have access to tools such as Open Site Explorer, you research about the competition's back-links by finding all of the guest posts that they wrote.  

Forums

While you are not necessarily going to find the biggest, best blogs in your niche in these networks, they may be a good place to get your feet wet with guest posts.

Whether in A FORUM TAILORED FOR YOUR NICHE, WHERE YOU ARE LIKELY to run into fellow bloggers and webmasters, or on a forum such as DigitalPoint, where everyone is seeking out experienced guest posters.

ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR GUEST POSTERS, FORUMS CAN BE an excellent way to find opportunities.  

You will begin to notice it as you are FOLLOWING POPULAR BLOGS IN YOUR NICHE AND specific names begin popping up over and over.  

You can also do some searching to see who is doing guest blogging at some of the popular sites in your niche, then research on them to see if that is really the tactic they are using on a regular basis.

Promote your Guest Post

After you have published your blog post make sure to promote your posts as much as possible with your own audience, if you are looking to be a frequent blog contributor.

Guest Blogging Pro Tips

Before you can write your guest blog post, you need to find a website that takes GUEST AUTHORS AND IS ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR CONTENT.

WHEN YOU WRITE A GUEST POST on a highly trafficked blog in your niche, a lot of other blogs will ask YOU TO WRITE FOR THEM, ESPECIALLY IF YOUR POST GETS LOTS OF SOCIAL SHARES AND COMMENTS.

Researching about your guest post

TO make sure THAT YOUR GUEST POST GETS ACCEPTED, YOU WILL WANT TO PITCH the blog owner on topics that would perform well with their audience.

Some sites may be open to hosting a guest post, but if viewers are just tuning in to see what is being pitched by the blog owner, you are not going to be doing as good of a job if your aim is to establish authority or drive traffic back to your site.  

Leverage your Network

A bonus would be IF YOU ACTUALLY KNOW A GUEST BLOGGER IN YOUR niche who could pitch an introduction to you to the owner of blogs that have featured your guest posts.

Guest blogging proposal

Now that You have brainstormed some topics that both appeal to your target audience and appeal to the readers of the targeted blog. I could have gone into much more detail, but that is enough info to get you started on narrowing down the TARGET BLOGS, WRITING YOUR NEXT BLOG POST, AND CREATING your winning guest blogging proposal.   

When you are building upon a solid foundation, and combine it with an intelligent strategy that has your ultimate goals in mind, you are much more likely to have your guest blogging efforts working for you.

Long term returns

It is important to remember that the benefits of guest blogging do not immediately kick in -- IT TAKES TIME, DETERMINATION, HARD WORK, AND lots of patience.   

Cater to your target audience

I have seen a few bloggers get an amazing guest blog opportunity and hardly ever promote their posts. Most bloggers fool themselves into believing that they can begin to guest post at high-profile blogs without practicing writing hard.

When you are guest blogging for an established PUBLICATION, YOUR CONTENT GETS IN FRONT OF THOUSANDS OF READERS, INCLUDING top influence bloggers in your niche.

Domino Effect

This can create a ripple effect for your company, whereby you post high-quality guest posts to leading blogs in the field, and continue to receive offers to write guest posts on other leading blogs.

New audiences can come to visit your website or landing pages, meaning that guest blogging helps you to get new readers and increase your lead generation.

Depending on the topic of your guest post and the audience of the blog where you are hosting it, you might want to direct the traffic to a dedicated landing page or one that covers a particular product/service.  

Competition Analysis

As a guest author, you should carefully follow the guest blog guidelines that will help you evaluate those blogs or platforms based on the audience size, audience interest for YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES, THE RESPONSIVENESS OF its/her audience, and so on.

Yes, there are a few quality blogs out there that it is possible to land guest posts with a minimum of outreach, provided that your content is outstanding and you have a good idea.

The thing with guest blogs is that before, it was seen as a lazy technique, where the content creator would write a quick post, brand it with their name, and publish it in mass online.

When doing research for a guest post, many think about what they would like to write about, what will benefit them, then they attempt to find an outlet or a blog that will take on that subject. With this mindset you are not going to go far in the guest posting domain. For the best results you'll have to keep the blog owner's interests at the highest priority.

You will more likely receive countless interviews requests, featured posts, back-links, and clients directly from my guest posts, because people will start to view you as a credible content marketing expert, whose work is being featured on the best marketing blogs regularly.

Guest Post Using Info-graphics

The goal of creating an infographic is to convince your readers to share it on their social media accounts. Do not be disappointed if creating an infographic takes some extra time as it is sure to help generate more traffic for your blog posts.

When you are able to do that for an entire blog post, you have a succinct, actionable outline to create an infographic. If you have an infographic you want to share, your goal for the blog post is to get your data out there and arrange it, visually as well as with your words.

The first and most prominent example of your infographic should be published on your own blog, and surrounding it is a fantastic blog post filled with excellent value.

Once you have come up with your list of potential publishers, it is important to plan out your next steps, in which you write unique articles to go along with your infographics, for each of the blogs that you are publishing to. Once you have got your rough outline, it is time to choose a template and outline how your infographic is going to look.   

This is the easiest part, as you do not have to be a master of infographic design to create a strong infographic template. With a few clicks, this design tool helps you to produce attractive, professional-looking infographics for your guest posts.

By re purposing your blog post as an infographic, you are exponentially increasing the potential of this post to be shared and the click-through rate.

One of the ways you can make sure that your infographic is fun, engaging, and comprehensible is by telling a story along the way. Today, we are going to take a look at the following infographics, and we are going to highlight how telling a story is a successful way of implementing your creative design elements.

Since infographics have established themselves as such a hugely powerful means of communication, we wanted to cover a few infographic tips in todays blog post that can help spice up your content marketing efforts.

Your ideal content deployment would be to post an article with an infographic on topic X on your blog one day, then get guest posts published over the next couple days.

Send out an announcement press release to blogs that will be writing their own coverage about your infographic, with the date to be published being the day you plan on getting the guest posts published.

If you are looking to do more infographics, you should target different topics, so that you can find different blogs that you can request to host your guest posts.

If in the case that your infographics are related to one of the services that you provide, use infographics to help readers find their way to those pages.

Share infographics in related social media channels Other related blogs are being linked for potential backlinks, collaborate with bloggers that may be supporting you with the spread.

How To Submit A Great Guest Post

The next step before you are ready to submit your guest post is getting to know the blog that you plan on pitching on in-depth. Get to know your target blogs content, owners, and editors before applying to write for or pitch your target blog, following their content for several weeks.

The owner and editor of the blog will appreciate you taking time to learn about them, their content, the target blogs audience, and the niche before approaching them with your guest post idea.

To make sure that your guest post is accepted, you will want to pitch the blog owner on topics that would perform well with their audience.

Preferably, opt for posts with good amounts of social shares, so that the blog owner will see the potential value that you offer to them.

Competitor Back-links

A competitor's backlink analysis is the link-building process of finding websites that have links with a competitor's website. Copying backlinks from competitors can be an excellent way of establishing a linked profile for your site. 

To make the most out of the best backlinks from competitors, you can run a simple analysis and see exactly which links are doing the most work.   

Creating Backlinks Profile

Once you have done the analysis on the competitor's backlinks and identified which domains, you can start doing the work to duplicate the competitor's backlinks and create your own backlink profile.

To discover who is linking to your competitors, you can look for the competitor's domains and use a backlink analyzer to look at the competitor's backlink profile. By searching for competitors backlinks at a domain-level, you will see any links that are directed to various pages of your competitors site.

By simply focusing on replicating those links, you are siphoning off the links that are performing best for your competitors. You stand a better chance of getting more backlinks than your competitors if you are using a variety of different types of link-building tactics.

Then, grab the other websites listing of the best competitors in the industry, and search through them to find any backlinks within your niche you could target. 

All you need to do is create a list of three of your industry top competitors three best competitors, then look for each and every backlink pointing at their site. Enter in the keywords that you are trying to rank for, and it will give you a list of every contender that you would like to look at backlinks.

Once identified, you will find all of the various websites that are linking back to your site, or the competitors. Doing an identify will allow you to begin reaching out to websites which are obviously linking to more than one of your competitors, increasing the chances of these websites being willing to build new backlinks to your site too, as they are related to the same industry.

Once your content gets greenlit to include from the same websites your competitors are already linking to, you will see a common Backlink tag appear on the competitors full backlinks list.

Mix that backlinks list in with your competitor's best keywords list, and you have got a pretty good idea of where, to begin with your own link-building efforts.

In this post, I am going to guide you through the 5-step process to finding backlink opportunities by monitoring sites that are linking to your competitors.

A Link-Intersect Tool works by analyzing backlink profiles from several competitors in order to discover websites currently linking to your competitors, but not your own site.

A link-intersect analysis on competitors helps you to determine the backlinks that are helping your competitors to rank on the search engines within your industry.

Now that you have used SEO Spyglass to build a backlink report for your site, and specified your top SEO competitors, you can look for the domains most likely to be linking to your website, by identifying those that link to at least 2 of your competitors. One of the easiest ways to get backlinks for your site is to find websites that are already linking to your competitors.

Become A Familiar Face In The Blog Community

You need to engage with other bloggers, comment on blog posts, and engage in online discussions. If you are guest blogging, and your guest post goes live, be sure to be active in the discussions, leave comments, share the post on social media, and engage with their readers.

 To make sure that your guest post is accepted, you will want to pitch the blog owner with topics that would perform well with their audience. 

If you are looking to be a frequent blog contributor, or just want the blog owner to boast how awesome of a guest blogger you are, make sure to promote your post as much as possible with your own audience.    

Conclusion

Armed with knowledge on how to find guest opportunities, how to pitch bloggers from your niche, what to include in your guest blog posts, and how to produce high-quality, engaging content, not only will you be providing value for these guest bloggers, you will be building and growing your blog too.

When you create well-written, well-researched, authoritative guest posts on established brands' websites, you have a chance to provide unique insights with a fresh voice that resonates with their readers.