Guest posting is a digital marketing practice where businesses or individuals create and publish content on other websites or blogs within their industry or niche. The main purpose of guest posting is to build backlinks, provide valuable content to the target audience, and drive engagement to the website.
Read below as we describe a comprehensive guide to guest posting, including how to do it, its benefits, and the right strategies.
30-Second Summary:
A guide to guest posting generally involves the best practices to guest post your blogs, the best outreach practices, and which things to keep in mind when making a guest posting strategy. To follow the best practices in all these cases, you will need to thoroughly understand the guest posting process, how to perform outreach, how to create quality content, and the benefits of guest posting for your business.
Understanding the Guest Posting Process
The guest posting process is a detailed one that involves the right research and selection of target websites and then writing a compelling pitch to publishers. In short, instead of marketing through billboards and advertisements, you are writing content on other websites that are of value.
It doesn’t matter if you are doing it on your own or using some blogger outreach services to reach these websites. In short, you are creating a presence about your brand by answering a user problem that is the simplest answer to what guest posting is.
Let’s learn about the whole process of guest posting and how it works:
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Research and Selection of Target Websites
Before you start writing guest posts, you will need to understand how to do guest posting. First of all, you will need to research and select the target websites on which you need to publish your guest posts. These websites should fall within your business niche and the industry you are working in.
To ensure that a website is falling within your niche, you will need to see the relevance of content, audience demographics, and the website’s overall authority. These things will ensure that your content reaches the right audience.
In this context, you can also use SEO tools to check the website’s authority, engagement, and traffic rates.
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Creating a Compelling Pitch
You cannot just go to a website and ask them to publish your content. Publishing websites and bloggers have certain rules and regulations to accept your content. To follow the procedure, you will need to create a compelling pitch outlining what makes your content stand out and qualifying enough to get published on their website.
To do this, you will need to personalize your pitch and make it as relevant to the blogger as possible. This will increase your chances of getting published on the website you are aiming for.
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Writing Guest Posts
After you have pitched the blogger and they have accepted your offer, you will need to write guest post/s to publish on their site. Your guest posts should be high-quality and relevant to the blogger’s website. Make sure to focus on providing quality content instead of focusing on backlinks.
Most guest posting strategies are focused on getting backlinks which is not a good approach at all. According to Google’s Helpful Content Update, Google has started prioritizing content that is user-focused and not search-engine-focused.
Therefore, you will need to write content that is helpful and has contextual link placement to not make it sound like promotional or sponsored content.
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Following Submission Guidelines of Guest Posting Sites
As mentioned above, each blogger and website has its own requirements and guidelines for the content they publish on their sites. If you want your guest posts to be published on these sites, you will have to follow their specific guidelines. To ensure this, you will need to make sure you thoroughly read and understand the target website’s guidelines for guest contributors.
These guidelines are usually pretty straightforward like content outline specifications, word count, content tone, and formatting style. When you are writing guest posts, make sure to follow these instructions to make the publishing process easy and increase your chances of getting published.
How to Create High-Quality Content for Guest Posts
Focusing on content rather than backlinks can actually increase your chances of getting published and appearing in search engine results. Due to the increasing demand for high-quality and user-centric content, most guest posting tips are now centered on creating and publishing quality content.
Follow the tips mentioned below to create quality guest posts that have a high chance of getting accepted by publishers.
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Choosing Relevant Topics for Content
Each blogger has specific target audience content preferences. Before you compile guest posts, it is advised to do proper research on your end about the target audience of bloggers and what type of content they are publishing.
After you have understood that, you will need to come up with guest post topics that are relevant to the content already published on the blogger’s site. This will not only increase your chances of getting published but will also improve your guest posting benefits.
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Structuring the Guest Post
We are saying it again…
Guest posts are not merely about getting backlinks
You want your audience to get solutions to their queries from your content. Also, you are telling the search engines that you are providing information on a specific topic, so your content should qualify to get ranked on search engine result pages.
To ensure this, you will need to provide information along with the user interface. Structure your guest posts in a way that seems easy to read.
The best practice to do this is to start with a compelling and engaging introduction that discusses the pain points of your audience. Then you can move towards writing the main body of your post by dividing it into headings and subheadings.
After you are done providing the information, you can conclude the guest by summarizing the key points in your content. You can also include a CTA in the conclusion if you want.
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Add Multimedia Elements to Your Posts
Accept the fact that website visitors are only going to read your content if it looks clear and engaging to the eyes. While information and technical details are important in the content, you will also need to work towards making it more attractive and engaging.
This can be done by adding multimedia elements to your guest posts. This can be anything ranging from infographics to GIFs explaining a certain thing in your guest post. If you think that a piece of information is worth mentioning, you should try to search for relevant infographics to present that information.
Along with improving readability, these infographics will also work towards improving the authority of your content in the eyes of search engines.
While doing this, you will also need to follow the SEO best practices and use proper alt tags to tell search engines what your multimedia is about.
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Place Contextual Links
While writing guest posts, it is very important to place contextual links in order to avoid black-hat SEO strategies. Make sure the anchor text you choose is contextual and in relevance with the overall topic you have chosen for the guest post.
Another best practice is to place anchor text and links in the first part of guest posts for SEO purposes. Choose text around anchor texts in a way that sounds natural and contextual based on the text around them.
Moreover, your guest posts should have high-authority outbound links. These links are a relevancy signal that helps Google understand what your page is about.
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Proofread and Edit Your Guest Posts
No matter how good a writer you are, it is always advised to proofread and edit your guest posts after you are done writing them. Proofreading is part of a successful guest posting strategy, and it allows you to spot any grammatical and sentence structure errors and fix them timely.
There are two types of editing you will need to do with guest posts. The first one is development editing, where you spot any formatting and structural errors in your content. This helps you give a proper format to your guest posts.
The second one is copyediting. Copyediting allows you to edit your work for any grammatical and tense-related errors and then polish it accordingly.
Remember that it’s pretty normal to make mistakes. Even the best writers make mistakes in first drafts.
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Work on Your Author Bio
While you are putting every possible effort into making your guest posts the best they can be, you will also need to work on your author and show your authority in the industry you are writing in. The author bio should be engaging and show your authority in the targeted niche.
For starters, it is a good practice to add the link to your homepage in the author box section. But for each website, you should create a custom author box message that matches the content that you are posting.
See how Yehuda has shown he is an expert in his field?
Here is another one:
See what Hughes is missing? He could have used the space to market his company in a better way. Don’t miss this out.
Consider the author box an essential marketing banner for your website.
Not many people may read it, but those who will be interested in your website will surely read it. This is your place to shine.
Guest Post Outreach and Relationship Building
An important part of the guest posting campaign is to communicate effectively and strategically with the site owners or bloggers. This will not only provide you with guest posting opportunities but also promote your good relationships within the guest posting community.
So, our guest posting campaign guide is incomplete without mentioning how to do guest post outreach and relationship building. Let’s have a look at which practices you can follow to perform effective guest post outreach.
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Communicate Effectively with Bloggers
We have learned how to write an effective pitch to bloggers. But now that you have sent your pitch, you will need to follow up with the bloggers. In this regard, be polite while following up in case you don’t receive a response within a considerable time period.
Again, be sure to use polite words and be professional in your follow-ups. You can sound salesy but not pushy or aggressive at all. These gentle follow-ups will keep you in front of the bloggers and your chances of getting a response increase.
This doesn’t mean that you should cut ties once your guest post is published. Even after your guest post is accepted, you will need to maintain a good relationship with the bloggers in case you might need their collaboration in the future.
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Follow the Best Practices in Guest Posting Communities
Once your guest post has been published, it is important to stay active and come back to the page to see if anyone has commented or reacted to your post. In case of any comments or feedback, it is advised to respond to comments and feedback actively.
You can also engage in meaningful conversations with people commenting on your post. This will show your authority and present you as an industry leader.
Also, you can stay active on the blog or publishing website to share relevant posts, engage in discussions, and share your thoughts on any post you like. This will let bloggers know that you are actively engaged on their platform, which will, in turn, improve your relationships.
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Avail Networking Opportunities
Any digital marketing expert with a proper guide to guest posting will tell you how important it is to build your network and collaborate with bloggers in your industry. This is because these things can lead to collaborative opportunities, which will eventually lead to increasing your visibility within your niche.
The story doesn’t end at publishing the guest post. If you want to stay in touch with the publishers and get more and more guest posting opportunities, you will need to explore all the potential opportunities for networking.
This includes regularly contributing to the bloggers’ sites and being involved in joint efforts with them to create content for different mediums. These relationships will be helpful for you in the long run.
Tips and Techniques to Do Guest Posting
Almost every digital marketer claims that they know all the ins and outs of guest posting, but that’s not true. There are so many little details and aspects you will need to keep in mind to master guest posting. Here are those key details:
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Google for Keywords
One way to look for guest posting opportunities is to simply search for guest posting opportunities on Google. To do this, you will need to enter Google ‘Country’ and then open it. This is important because you don’t want to find US-based websites while searching on Google.com.in.
Here is a list you can try to search for guest posting opportunities in your domain.
You will find multiple blogs for guest posting this way. Make sure you only pitch those that have a high domain authority. The reputed agencies put their effort into targeting high domain authority sites while providing guest posting services to their clients because they know that this is the only thing you need to get ranked rapidly.
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Finding high-quality domains
There are many tools that can help you find high-quality websites and domains in your niche. One way to find high-quality domains is to check on SimilarWeb for website ranking before you submit a guest post. If the website has less than 500,000 ranks, it is a pretty good website.
Now, search for its local rank. For example, if you are looking for US-based websites only, then make sure they have a rank in the U.S., like the one in the image. You can look at the screenshot shared below as an example of our website.
You can see that Globex Outreach has a rank of 8,608, which is considered a good one. You can find websites and domains like these to submit your guest posts.
Furthermore, you can find search traffic from Similar Web. This website only tells you an estimate of the traffic a website receives per month, which can give you an idea of the website’s authority.
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Perform Reverse Image Search
Another great way to find guest posts relevant to your niche is by reverse image search. Let’s say your competitor has written a guest post on a website. So, how can you find where he is building backlinks for his brand? It is pretty simple. You just need to do a reverse image search.
Here is how you can do that.
Search the image of your competitor in Google.
Here is one from The HOTH. I did a reverse image search for the image of this author on Google and found the results I wanted. You can also do the same and see where your competitors have published the content. You can then reach out to those websites to publish your guest posts.
You may get rejected from some websites but don’t lose hope. Just remember the criteria that we have provided above and keep pitching various websites for guest posting.
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X (Formerly Twitter) Guest Post Search
Twitter also offers various opportunities for guest posting. For example, you may want to write a guest post on a health related topic but can’t find any good resources. So, what should you do? Simply search ‘health guest post’ on X. The results will have something of significance for you.
So, we have found these resources. In some of these resources, you can find blogs that are asking for guest posts and reach out to them to get guest posting opportunities.
You can find guest posts like these on any topic of your choice.
Simply…
- Post a topic with the word ‘guest post’ and see the results
- Once you have the results prepare a personal pitch for each blog after checking out the topics they write on
- The approval rate of guest post pitches after careful research is almost 50 percent
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Find Competitor Backlinks
One way to find guest posting opportunities is by finding competitor backlinks. You can find competitor backlinks either through any paid tool like Moz and Ahref or through Backlinkwatch – a free utility.
The links will look something like this. You can download the full sheet and search the DA of each website.
Small SEO Tools’ domain authority checker lets users find the DA of 50 websites in a single go. This is a pretty slick application for anyone finding high DA websites and doesn’t have time to repeat things.
So, once you have the list of websites, what’s next?
- Check out the criteria that we provided above and see if you find any websites that fit in that criteria.
- Now start pitching these websites with quality guest post ideas
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Find Guest Post Opportunities Through Facebook Groups
There are many Facebook groups available on guest posting. If you don’t know how to find them, simply search for them by typing ‘guest posts’ in Facebook search. Join them.
Now here is how to find the websites for guest posting.
- Clearly write the type of guest posting websites that you want
- For example, ‘Looking for US-based guest posting sites related to health niche’
- You will get many websites from users. If you have a budget, you can also get paid guest posting opportunities from users. Paid guest posts are usually for high-DA websites that also get traffic relevant to your niche.
You can search for similar guest posting opportunities on other social media websites as well.
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Writing on Trending Topics
One way to get sure approval when you submit a guest post is by writing on trending topics. Let’s say your niche is digital marketing. Search about what is the top trend in your industry. It can be anything like Instagram marketing, video marketing, or anything that you can think of.
Now, pitch the websites about topics related to these trends for guest blogging opportunities. They will instantly approve them because they are getting content on topics that aren’t available anywhere else.
This is called exclusivity.
One keyword that is trending during the holiday season is “Black Friday”. You can write any interesting and engaging post on this topic and get it published on new sites, influencer sites, and industry-specific sites.
Benefits of Guest Posting
Now that we have read a thorough guide to guest posting, let’s know why it is done and what guest posting benefits are to businesses. Refer below to find out some exclusive benefits of guest posting for businesses.
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Boost in rankings
The first benefit of guest posting is obvious. You get organic traffic to your website because of the backlink you post in your guest post. This is one way of building quality backlinks as well.
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Build subscriber base
Many people are confused about how to do guest blogging. Guest posting is a great way to build a subscriber base through lead generation hooks. We will discuss this in more detail below, but for now, just know that guest posts can help you increase your email subscribers for free.
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Get Referral traffic
While guest posts help improve your domain authority and rankings in SERPs, they also provide a steady stream of referral traffic back to your blog.
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Become an Industry Leader
If you want to be an influencer in your niche, you will have to start somewhere. And, guest posts help you do that. You don’t need to be a professor or have years of experience in the field. You just need to be aware of what is going on in your field and have an opinion about it.
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Improve Brand Awareness
One reason many people submit guest posts is to improve brand awareness. For example, we gave an example in which the owner of Empire Flippers wrote a guest post on the Ahref website. The reason he did that was not to increase rankings in search but to build awareness about his company. By reading about what he has written, more people will know what his brand is all about.
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Get Feedback from the Community
Guest bloggers cannot write all the time, and that’s why it is important to guest post on popular websites. Other bloggers will be able to comment and share their opinion about the post. In most cases, you, as a writer, will be able to engage with them and build solid connections. You may also get great ideas about your next guest post – one never knows.
Final Words
Summing it up, guest posting is not all about building backlinks, it’s very much about building relationships in your industry and providing valuable content to your audience that will also help in improving search engine rankings and visibility. All you have to do is follow the right practices and focus on building long-term relationships with bloggers. Do this and you will be on your way to avail all the benefits we have mentioned above.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question 1: How many Guest Posts do I need to rank higher?
There is no definitive answer to how many guest posts you need to rank higher on Google and other search engines.
However, you can focus on creating and publishing high-quality guest posts on relevant websites and blogs. Doing this will signal to Google that you are providing value to your audience, which makes it likely for you to rank higher on search engines.
Question 2: How can I write compelling pitches to bloggers?
To write compelling pitches, you will need to sound more personal and be professional and polite at the same time. You can sound salesy but not be too pushy.
Question 3: How to make your links more contextual?
To make your links more contextual, you will need to write all content around that specific keyword. When you are about to mention the anchor text, be sure to write at least a couple of relevant sentences around it, so it doesn’t sound promotional or salesy.
Question 4: How long should I wait before following up with the blogger?
The best practice in this case is to wait at least for 2-3 business days before following up with the blogger. If they still don’t respond, you will need to send a second follow-up email after waiting for 4-5 business days.
Question 5: What are the characteristics of a high-quality guest post?
A high quality guest post:
- Follows best SEO practices
- Has both internal and external links
- Has quality content following Google’s helpful content guidelines
- Involves multimedia elements in it
- Is properly formatted
- Is proofread and edited thoroughly
