The Ultimate Guide to Effective Guest Blogging in 2023

If you’ve only recently added guest blogging as a content marketing strategy for your website, you’re entering the most competitive search engine market ever. Guest blogging can make a huge difference to a website’s search engine rankings. 

Your business won’t get on page 1 of Google if you just put 500 words on your site or sign up for a dubious backlink directory. It’s time to pull up that socks!

What ranks on blogs now is content that has backlinks, is long, is well-researched, has rich-media, and that is relevant. 

So, how do you make sure to get

high-quality backlinks from websites with superior domain authority?

The SECRET is a well-planned guest blogging strategy. 

What is Guest Blogging?

The concept of guest blogging involves writing and posting articles for other websites as part of a content marketing strategy. 

Your byline appears in these publications, and the editor of that website frequently identifies you as “contributors” or “guest authors.”

Depending on the website, you can be compensated for your guest blogging work. But that’s not always the case.

Some websites will give you non-cash rewards in exchange for your content, like a backlink to your website or social account.

Why Do You Want To Guest Blog?

We must first establish our purpose before attempting to market ourselves for guest posts. In order for guest writing to be effective, it should be aligned with the goals of the entire business.

1. Guest posting is a great technique to drive fresh visitors to your website if that is one of your top business goals!

2. It may be that you want to improve the SEO ranking of your website. That’s just another excellent justification for thinking about guest posting.

3. Or perhaps you want to use guest posting to spread the news about a new product that will soon be available. That’s a fantastic reason to contribute.

Before making ridiculous pitches to other bloggers, you should be quite clear on why you are writing a guest post. Knowing why you’re doing something makes it easier to track your progress and efforts, so you can figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Importance of Guest Blogging 

Now that you are clear with the purpose of your guest blogging, let’s get straight on to the importance that guest blogging would bring to our website. 

Writing and hosting guest posts on your blog is a fantastic marketing strategy since it benefits both parties. Rather than asking or paying for visibility, you provide something valuable in return.

Here are the key importance of guest postings:

1. Improves website’s authority

Guest blogging boosts your company’s authority, as publishing high-quality, reliable content builds trust in your brand. Demonstrating expertise through articles establishes you as an authority in your field, which is crucial in a marketing landscape wary of “fake news.” Studies show that millennials distrust traditional marketing, favoring content that inspires trust over ads or influencer endorsements.

2. Builts high quality backlinks

One of the reasons why many individuals go into guest blogging on the authority websites is to build high backlinks. Because search engine algorithms, such as Google’s, still favor high quality backlinks, this is a boon to SEO.

However, you must keep in mind how backlinks have evolved over time. You can’t just publish a guest post and hope that your website will rank higher.

This is so because “relevant” backlinks are now important to websites like Google.

A relevant backlink indicates that the information is similar on both ends. For instance, if you ran a real estate company, you wouldn’t want to connect to your website from a fishing website.

It’s important to consider the context and make sure that guest blogging benefits both you and the website’s owner.

The more of these backlinks you obtain, the more search engines will view your content marketing efforts as reliable, beneficial, and worthwhile.

3. Rise in organic traffic

Many people enjoy the advantages of guest writing for SEO. Your websites perform better the more backlinks there are to your website. Each appropriate backlink pointing to certain content helps increase organic traffic.

Consider organic traffic to be users who discovered your material via search engines. A website’s links are examined and given a priority rating when it is crawled.

Thus, building backlinks from a guest post demonstrates to search engines like Google that the content is authoritative.

The outcome is that important content appears higher in search results. As time goes on, you’ll see those websites to which you have included external links report a higher average position for their keyword searches.

Moreover, writing guest posts can also help your SEO and give you quality backlinks, but they will also drive referral traffic. After reading your guest post, a reader may choose to visit your blog by clicking links there.

4. Strengthens the network 

Networking is essential in brand development, emphasizing the old adage, “It’s not just what you know, but who you know.” Engaging with individuals in specific roles can help spread awareness of your brand within their networks. Platforms like LinkedIn are built on this concept, promoting connections that can lead to impactful partnerships. Additionally, guest blogging expands your network, often leading to collaborations that enhance business relationships.

How To Find Sites For Guest Blogging

1. Make use of lists of websites that allow guest posts.

Guest blogging is a popular strategy, and many bloggers have compiled lists of niche-specific blogs sorted by domain authority to simplify finding suitable opportunities. You can search for these lists on Google using terms like “list of blogs that accept guest posts” or “list of – your keyword – blogs that accept guest posts.”

However, these lists can be outdated, so it’s crucial to verify that the blogs are still accepting posts, maintain a high domain authority, and actively publish new content.

IMPORTANT: Make sure to not include your link on the following sites:

• Casino
• CBD
• Adult 
• Gambling
• Website whose spam score is high 
• Low value Blogging sites

2. Use Google to identify websites that accept guest posts.

Google your search terms for one of the simplest and most direct ways to find guest writing websites.

For example, if you were looking for marketing blogs that accept guest posts, you would try various combinations of keywords related to marketing, such as: marketing, “digital marketing,” “online marketing,” “internet marketing,” “social media marketing,” “content marketing,” and so on. Basically, you need to start the search with your keywords.

Next, look for these terms + one of the search terms listed below:

• Keyword + “guest post”
• Keyword + “submit an article”
• Keyword + “become a guest blogger”
• Keyword + “guest author”
• Write for us
• Submit guest post
• Keyword +”guest post opportunity”

It’s also important to note that you should look through many pages of google search results rather than just the first few; frequently, excellent chances can be found even on the fifth or tenth page.

3. Check out what your competitors are doing

Examining your rivals to see where they’ve written for high-quality websites and where they’ve guest blogged in the past is another technique to identify relevant websites for guest blogging.

There are a few approaches you can take.

One of the simplest approaches is to find bloggers in your niche who are currently doing a lot of guest blogging. You’ll start to notice this when you follow prominent blogs in your topic and specific names start appearing repeatedly, but you can also search to see who guest posted on some of the well-known websites in your area and then look them up to see if that is actually a tactic they employ frequently.

You can also search by doing this:

• Site:domain.com “guest post by”
• Site:domain.com “a guest contributor by”

Once you have a list of names prepared, you can use a backlink tool to see what other backlinks they have. Not all of them will be from guest blogging, but if you have identified someone who frequently guest blogs, you are quite likely to find a number of hidden gems in those lists.

Use a backlink checker like Monitor backlinks to locate their primary website (the one they are connecting to in their guest post and/or guest post author profile). Then, simply look through their list of links to identify the guest blogging sites.

4. Use tools to find guest blogging opportunities

Another way to uncover guest writing possibilities is to use various tools to aid in your research:

• SEMrush
• Ahrefs
• Buzzstream
• Buzzsumo 

Guest Post Email Pitch Email Template 

Now that you understand why guest blogging is important and how to identify sites for guest blogging, let’s get to the pitches we need to submit in order to receive a response.

You can reach them via email or the contact form on their website. The best location to send these pitches is via email, which you can find on the website’s “contact us” page. Additionally, there are some websites that do not offer their email address. Hence, use the “contact form” on their website to reach out to them and submit your proposal.

Sample 1 

Hi Team,

Nice to e-meet you 

We are looking forward to the link insertion/guest post opportunity on your site.

You can check out our blog. I think it’s a great complement to your articles. If you find our blog interesting, I would be happy to help you update your article with a relevant link. 

Google loves up-to-date articles, and I’m sure your audience would love them, too. 

Thanks a lot for considering my request. I’d be happy to help in sharing your post on social media as a personal thanks 

Looking forward to hearing from you soon! 

Sample 2 

Hi Team,

Greetings!

Hope this message finds you well and safe in these unprecedented times.

I am XYZ. I work as a Marketing Associate with abc.com – a platform for freelancers and small businesses to generate more leads and manage their finances.

I saw your website and really liked the content on it.

As someone who reads a lot about freelancers and small businesses, I am keen to write a guest post on your blog on the topic:

1. Topic 1
2. Topic 2
3. Topic 3 

Let me know your views on these specified topics, or I can share a few other unique topics that I have in mind. In case there is any topic in your mind, please let me know about that as well.

I have written quite a few blogs for your reference, you can visit these three articles (links below) drafted by me:

1. Sample post URL 1
2. Sample post URL 2
3. Sample post URL 3

Looking forward to working with you!

— 

Thank you!

Check out the ways to make an interactive email.

Follow Up Email Template For Guest Posting

After sending an email and not receiving a response, it is time to send a follow-up email that won’t irritate the editor and will aid in receiving a response.

Sample 1 

“Hi, I hope you are having a good day. Last week, I pitched a guest post. Have you checked it? Thanks!”

Sample 2

Hi, [editor’s name] 

[Your name] here to follow up on the guest article pitch I emailed you a couple of weeks ago. I know you must be really busy right now with the ample amount of guest post requests, so I thought I’d follow up with you once. Cheers!”

Sample 3

Hello, have you read my guest post yet? You have no idea how fantastic it will be for your readers. I’m patiently awaiting your approval. Cheers!!

Once the editor approves your guest post pitch and topic, you may now send it to your content writer to start writing on it. Make sure to do a proper SEO researched article to make it rank on google and grab tons of traffic.

Before sending the article make sure to check whether you link back to 3-4 articles of the website you are sending to so that google recognizes you a researched article and by doing this the other blog articles also get crawled. Additionally add your one or two links in the article before sending. 

Check out the 7 steps to write a follow-up email.

Key Mistakes To Avoid While Guest Posting

Guest post sounds simple until now? Right?

Once you know what you’re doing, guest posting is rather simple, but there are still a few blunders that guest posters frequently make: 

1. DON’T write for websites that aren’t relevant to your industry: 

This is bad for business. Readers won’t visit your site (or, if they do, they’ll be disappointed), and it won’t help your SEO rankings.

2. DON’T overlook SEO: 

Even if it’s not your own website, SEO is still vital. The more readers your guest post receives on Google, the greater the chance that you’ll attract new clients.

Check out the most important SEO tools for freelancers.

3. DON’T excessively market your company: 

Readers can spot an advertisement a mile away, and you don’t want to offend them right away by talking about it too much. Yes, you can mention it, but avoid making the entire article about your brand.

Top SEO Advice for Guest Posting to Rank Higher

1. Begin by investigating your keywords

As long as you utilize the proper ones, keywords are crucial for page SEO. You want your material to stand out from the crowd while yet being current and relevant. It is more difficult for your guest post to rank highly on search engine results when your keywords are overused.

Therefore, do some research into what people are looking for before you start writing, or use tools to identify keywords that are pertinent to your field. Then, add your distinct perspective to the subject and write an engaging guest post.

Check out how to become a SEO professional in this blog post.

2. Utilize headings

When your article appears in search results, the headings are what initially entice readers to click on it. But headlines are excellent tools for SEO in addition to conveying the main concept of your piece.

Search engines will rank your post higher and may even utilize some of it for feature snippets if it contains keywords in the headings. Additionally, appropriately using H2 and H3 headings to divide your information improves readability.

Check out the best SEO tips for freelancers.

3. Make Use Of Both Internal And External Links

In order to increase ranks and establish the authority of your content, link building is a frequent blogging technique. However, guest blogging functions a little bit differently. The majority of websites forbid external links, especially ones that are promotional.

As a result, if you are permitted to provide an external link to your own platform, make sure it is educational, as it will ultimately improve your backlink profile and boost brand awareness. By referencing earlier guest articles you’ve written, you can also leverage internal links to promote them and demonstrate your authority.

Famous guest bloggers

To learn their names, it’s worth reading a few quality blogs that are relevant to your industry. There is another option. If you know one of the guest bloggers, you can ask them to introduce you to the owners of the topic blogs on which they have already published guest posts. In the absence of such acquaintances, guest bloggers can be found through Google.

You only need to enter the phrase “guest post from”. In addition, you can turn to famous bloggers: Kirk Williams, Mark Traphagen, Anna Crowe, Tony Wright, or Neil Patel.

Complements the list of search methods through social networks. Guest authors and bloggers often share fresh guest posts on social media accounts. The easiest way to find them is through Twitter. 

Bottom line

The ideal approach for your company and context is always the one you create via trial and error. Therefore, don’t be scared to get started and learn as you go.