The Key to Successful Guest Blogging

I accept guest posting on this website. I encourage it. I love guest bloggers. I’ve guest blogged before and it’s been a great experience. It’s fun to do, it can be extremely worth the effort, and I enjoy the fact that I have the opportunity to extend my blogging reach. Guest blogging, in general (and theoretically), is a wonderful idea. There’s only one problem with it – it’s 99% pure spam.

Among my blogs, I receive multiple guest posting solicitations daily. In the past few years, I haven’t received one request that wasn’t a low quality, machine written, fill-in-the-blank, mass emailed junk message. Some solicitations are better than others. Some are decently written and give the impression that the author of the message actually visited my website of interest. Some are horrendous. They include awful grammar, misspellings, and are…let’s just say, blatant attempts at merely acquiring a link back to their website. When someone writes, “I will need a do-follow link” in the very first line of their email message, it leaves a less than stellar impression. I actually received a message yesterday that read, “I need guest post.” That was the extent of it – the entire thing. Not even a salutation. What am I supposed to do with that?

In today’s post, I’d like to discuss the hot topic of guest blogging (or guest posting – same thing). Not the spammy way to do it – the road to perpetual failure. No, I’d like to discuss the so-called “ethical” method for building real relationships, broadening your blog’s reach, and earning powerful backlinks. As I mentioned above, there’s so much spam floating around out there that it’s easy to find yourself being considered a shady character. After reading this post, you’ll be armed with enough knowledge to circumvent any spammy reputation you may have been saddled with in the past. And if you’re brand new to guest posting, all the better. Follow my tips below for a brighter blogging future.

More specifically, I’d like to offer you a strategy that includes:

• How to set realistic goals that even a brand new guest blogger can achieve.
• Finding topics that will relate to your own business or personal goals.
• Tracking down websites that invite or allow guest posting.
• How to appropriately reach out to such sites.
• Writing posts that will impress both your target site as well as your readers.
• How to measure your traffic results once your guest post goes live.

What’s more is that everything I’ll share below is totally doable. You don’t need any special knowledge to get ahead in this game. You will, however, need to know how to write. And you’ll need to know how to think. And articulate. If you can do those things, you’ll be in good shape.

The Benefits of Guest Posting

If you asked 10 writers out there what the benefit of guest blogging is today, nine of them would reply, “To get more links to my website.” While I can’t argue with that type of response, I’d also add that having a guest post published on a popular website can offer much more than a mere backlink. It can build a reputation that’s worth its (figurative) weight in gold. A well written post that’s broadcast far and wide can drive traffic to your website, can brand you or your product, can open doors to big names that would have otherwise remained shut, can grow your social media channels, and yes, can earn you very high quality backlinks.

While guest posting can take a lot of time and effort, I believe it’s one of the most worthwhile activities a person can engage in if they plan on remaining in the blogging or online world for years to come. I’m not sure you can put a price tag on a successful blog post. It’s something that has the potential to pay dividends for for quite a while.

What Exactly is Guest Blogging?

I offer a wonderful and quite thorough description of guest posting on my Write for Us page, but if you’d prefer not to visit that, I can give you just as good of a description here.

There really are a few scenarios when it comes to describing exactly what guest blogging is. In the most simple sense, it’s when one person writes a post for another person’s blog. For example, I used to own and write regularly for a tech blog I owned. Somewhere along the way, I made friends with a woman with whom I frequently conversed. She was, and still is, a photographer who offered excellent insight into much of what I shared, so one day, I asked if she’d like to write a post. She agreed and I posted what she wrote. That was it.

What I just described above was about as good natured as it’ll ever get. Most of the time, when someone writes a guest post for a blog, they’re compensated in some fashion, whether it be monetary compensation or compensation via some other method. If a person is paid to write for a personal or business blog, I think they’d be considered an author, rather than a guest poster, especially if it’s a regular gig. If it’s a post that’s written as a one-off occurrence, the author of the post would more likely be considered a guest poster. And in cases like these, the person would be rewarded with what’s referred to as a byline. Something like, “This post was written by Jay Gaulard, who owns, operates, and regularly contributes to Gaulard.com.” If you’ll notice, my example byline contains both my name as well as a link to my website, which is typical of guest post bylines today.

If someone were to ask me to define guest posting in this day and age, I’d reply with a definition like this: Guest posting is a marketing tactic that involves writing content for websites other than the one(s) the author owns.

How to Guest Blog Successfully

The title of this section may be a bit misleading. In order to clarify things, I’ll need to define what I’m referring to when I use the word, successfully. Does successfully mean landing a spot on someone else’s blog for your writing or does successfully mean that you actually received some sort of tangible benefit from your effort? After all, if no one ever accepts your posts, that would be considered a failure. Similarly, if you post on someone’s site and your work and byline never earn you any sort of benefit, that would be considered a failure as well. It would be akin to writing for a magazine that no one reads. What’s the use?

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to define a successful guest post as one that’s accepted for publication on a worthwhile blog as well as a publication that has garnered some sort of benefit, whether that be a boost to your reputation, an increase in traffic to your website through your byline, or an SEO benefit via the link or links you included in your article and/or byline. So basically, if I wrote a guest post for Darren Rouse at ProBlogger.com and he accepted it, I’d definitely expect to get a bunch of clicks over to my own website as well as some link-love from Google. That’s what I’d call a success.

Below, I’ll walk through the steps that will allow you to successfully guest blog. As a reminder, this is a labor-intensive marketing tactic that has the potential of being highly rewarding. So if you’re afraid of work, you might want to look elsewhere for different website marketing strategies. They won’t be as lucrative as a successful guest post can be though – I can tell you that.

#1 – Set Your Goals

The greatest threat to focus and achievement is, yes, a lack of focus. If you don’t set focused goals, how will you ever use the necessary mental focus that will guide you towards your desired end result. Obviously there are different types of focus.

The trick is to set goals for guest posting from which you can actually see results. There’s no sense in setting unattainable goals and really, guest posting will only get you so far in the blogging world. So, what do these goals pertain to? Think website performance in the way of visits and referrals or business performance in the way of leads and new clients. Whatever the goal, you’ll need to write it out. Also, remember that your goals will need to align with your articles. So if you’d like to increase traffic to your website, you’ll need to explain in your article how a website like yours can make a visitor’s dreams come true.

Attainable Goals for Guest Posting

Below, I’ll list some very realistic goals that someone might expect as they guest post on a blog that’s not theirs. There’s nothing complicated here. It’s all very straightforward. Each goal should be quantifiable.

• To earn relevant backlinks from the website the article was posted on to the guest poster’s website.
• To increase traffic to the guest poster’s website via search engines due to the weight of the backlink (SEO traffic).
• To earn website visitors from those who click the links in your guest posts (referral traffic).
• To earn leads from that referral traffic to your website from those who click the links in your guest posts.
• To earn business clients because of your guest article, whether this be because of direct phone calls or branding.

I’ve seen a lot of guest posts in my day and I have to tell you that most very well written, high quality posts focus on long term results, such as branding and clients. The more spammy types of posts focus almost exclusively on backlinks. So when you decide to get into this type of marketing, you should also decide on what type of author you’d like to be.

#2 – Match Your Guest Post Topic With Your Target Website

I alluded to this above, but I’ll explain the concept more thoroughly here. I’ll explain it by using an example scenario.

Let’s say you’ve learned about guest posting and it seems like it’s something you’d be interested in doing. You write well and you’ve got a knack for reaching out to other bloggers with the hopes of posting on their website. The only thing you haven’t mastered is the actual content you’ll be producing and its relation to your website or business.

You own a carpentry blog and would like to begin guest posting. You search Google for “Write for Us” (because that’s what most guest posting pages are titled) and find a blog about gold jewelry. You contact the blog in question and the owner agrees to allow you to write a post…but one about gold watches. You do that, submit it, and it’s accepted. There’s even a link beneath the post back to your carpentry blog. Wow. Yay.

Do you think this article or link will help you? I can tell you that it won’t. It’s not related to anything but the other person’s blog. What you should have done was limited yourself to writing on blogs that relate to carpentry, home building supplies, or businesses in your local area – maybe real estate agents and things like that. By writing about a topic that’s completely and totally unrelated to what you do, you’ve wasted your time. The good news is, you’ve supplied the blog you’ve written for with some nice content.

Now let’s pretend that you find and write for a local home building supply blog. You write a post about a carpentry style that’s relevant to your area and then link back to your own blog. What have you gained by doing that? Probably a lot. Anyone who reads your article and appreciates it will likely click the link to your site. And they’ll likely call you for your services if you’re able to sell them well. And most likely, search engines like Google will credit your website with the backlink because it’s so relevant. Nice job.

#3 – Locate High-Worth Guest Blogging Websites

Low-worth websites aren’t going to help you much in either the way of direct traffic or linking power. Your goal is to find only high-worth websites to work with. But how does a person do that?

Search Using Relevant Keywords

I run a popular food blog. I’d like to list a few of the guest posting related search terms people use to search for websites like mine. These keywords are straight from my Google Search Console.

• write for us + food
• write for us food
• “write for us”+food
• food write for us
• food blogs
• food “write for us”
• write for us food blogs
• write for us kitchen
• kitchen write for us
• guest post food

You get the idea.

The reason I’m listing these search terms for you is because you might want to try something similar to find reputable websites for your own purposes. If someone searches for a guest posting website and that website returns on Google’s first or second page, it’s got good search visibility and is likely high quality.

Search Using Advanced Search Operators

This is huge and if you don’t know what advanced search operators are yet, this will make your life on the internet so much more exciting. Basically, what advanced search operators do is restrict your searches so the results display only what you want and how you want them. For a full list of Google’s search operators, click here.

What would I personally do with the list I just linked to? Well, I think I’d start off with a Google search like this:

intext:guest post submission
or
intext:”guest post submission”

And then I’d try:

intitle:write for us
or
intitle:”write for us”

Try it. Get creative.

Find Backlinks for Similar Websites

To find your competitors’ backlink profile, you’ll need to use an SEO service. Such services include names like:

• Semrush
• SE Ranking
• Similarweb
• MOZ
• Raven Tools
• Surfer
• BrightEdge
• Serpstat
• Ahrefs

When using tools like these, be sure to focus on high ranking potential guest posting websites. Low ranking ones can be a waste of time. Also, by looking through the backlinks of websites that are similar to yours, you might not only find guest posting opportunities, but other opportunities as well. Opportunities to build relationships.

Use Reverse Image Search

Oftentimes, when bloggers write guest posts for blogs, they’ll include their personal photo. To capitalize on this tactic, you’ll need to save that photo image and then perform a reverse image search on Google. Here are the instructions for this. Once you find all the other websites this person has written for, bam, you can contact these very same sites with the intent of writing for them as well. Basically, another author did all the leg work for you. They’ve hunted down the great guest blogging websites and you simply followed them.

Find Lists of Websites That Allow Guest Posts

I just searched for “guest posting website list” on Google and was presented with thousands upon thousands of results. I’ll let you do the work for this one.

#4 – Contact Guest Blogging Websites

Contacting potential guest blogging websites is a, if not the, most critical step in this entire process. As I mentioned above, I receive submission requests daily. Rarely do they survive my inbox for more than a few seconds. On very rare occasions, I’ll read through the entire request, only to find out that, yes again, it’s merely another automated spam submission.

The question is, what’s wrong with all these requests? To start, most of them look like they were written by illiterate, back room, spam farm employees, and to be honest, they probably were. The requests that have lasted slightly longer in my inbox were generally written well, but were discovered to have been sent by slightly more savvy spam farms.

What’s the key to a successful guest blogging submission request? Try your best to act like a human. Or better yet, actually be a human. Develop a relationship with the website owner or the site editors. Have a fully functioning, popular blog to show them. Visit their guidelines pages and follow the guidelines. I’ve got three blogs that offer guest posting opportunities. They are Gaulard.com, JayGaulard.com, and RecipeJay.com. Click the aforementioned links and read through the pages. On them, I explain exactly what I want from a guest blogger. If a real human from a real place who operates a real blog has a real interest in blogging for me, I’d certainly entertain the notion. But if a spam farm that’s full of shady characters and automated systems emails me asking for a “dofollow” link, the message immediately gets tossed.

Remember, popular blog editors receive dozens of these types of requests every single day and believe me when I tell you this; they chuck most of them. In order for yours to get through, you really will need to be a human being. And one who’s most likely already built an existing relationship with the website to boot.

#5 – Write Your Stellar Guest Post

If you’ve already written high quality blog posts for your own website, you’ll know what to do here. If you’re not a blogger or if you’re trying to promote something other than a blog of your own, you’ll need to learn how to write a proper post. Or, you can hire a writer if the task seems insurmountable (I’m for hire – contact me). But if you do decide to write for yourself, I offer you a few resources to get going:

1. Become a Master at Writing For the Web
2. The Basics of Blogging
3. How to Find Sources for Writing

In short, you’ll want to take these tips into account while writing your post:

1. Take length into account. In my guidelines, I ask for at least 1,000 words. Feel free to write even more than that. This suggestion is a minimum.
2. Don’t go on and on in the same paragraph. Break your writing down into shorter paragraphs so your readers will have an easier time understanding your content.
3. Research and use the keywords that are relevant to your content. Basically, do your keyword research and include those keywords in your post. Also use proper headings where appropriate.
4. Would related photos enhance your post? If so, use them.
5. Do you have existing posts of your own that are associated with the one you’re currently writing? If so, consider linking to them.
6. If you decide to use snippets, quotes, and data from others, be sure to give them credit in your post. You needn’t include footnotes, just a “Joe from SomeBlog.com says…” is fine.
7. If you’re a frequent writer for the guest blog in question, be sure to link to your author page so readers can easily find your articles.
8. Are there articles that are similar to your own on the guest blog? If you can find them, it may be helpful to link to them. This type of conduct leaves a very good impression.
9. At the bottom of your post, be sure to leave your byline that includes your name, a link to your website (or the name of your website), social media links, a quick bio, and a photo of yourself if appropriate/allowed.

When your post is complete, send it off to the editor of the website. Depending on how picky he or she is, the article may get posted immediately or you may have to make changes. Sometimes, the editor will even make the changes for you.

#6 – Track Your Results

By this point, you’ll have made a complete loop. If you laid out your goals in a measurable way, you should be able to track them to see if they were met. Go back and read what your goals were and then locate the tool(s) you’ll need to see if your endeavor was a successful one. If your goal was more traffic to your website, you can use a free tool such as Google Analytics. If your goal was more links to your website, you can use either Google Search Console or one of the SEO tools I listed above. If your goal was to earn phone calls and new clients, you’ll need to measure those result in your own way.

How Does Guest Blogging Affect SEO?

In theory, your blog, website, or business should be so well managed and popular that it should be able to maintain itself. For instance, every post your write on your blog should include such fascinating and interesting information and graphics, that it should attract links like it’s nobody’s business. In reality, this oftentimes simply isn’t the case. And also in reality, search engines rely heavily on outside linking to rank a website well. All of our websites need links. It’s just a fact of working on the internet today.

As I mentioned above, most guest bloggers are looking for links. Yes, you can gain a reputation by writing a wonderful article, but that reputation won’t help nearly as much, long term, as a fat juicy link will. So with this in mind, let’s admit that it’s the links we’re after.

Every person who markets a website should have a laser focus on his or her backlink profile. And by focusing on this, they should also be focusing on guest blogging. After all, guest blogging is the most effective method for building that profile. SEMRush says that 53% of marketers claim that guest posting is the most effective method they use for such tasks. Aira says that 51% of survey respondents claim they use guest posting as a method for building backlinks.

Yes, you should definitely focus on writing great content that people want to read on your own website. You should also focus on writing great content for other website’s as well. Great content overall, along with the links attached to those pieces can really launch your traffic to amazing places.

Guest Posting & Link Spam

At this point, I think I should offer you a stern warning. As much as we all talk about backlink profiles and how to earn backlinks, we also need to steer clear of shady schemes that, at best, do nothing for us, and at worst, get us into big trouble with the search engines.

Google and friend have gotten quite savvy through the years at picking up on websites that have been involved in link schemes, such a link networks, link directories, and guest blogging networks, to name a few. So my first piece of advice to you is to avoid any type of network. Don’t go there and don’t do it. Enough said.

I’d also like to discuss relevancy. I’ll begin with some quick history.

A few decades ago, the world realized that links pointing to websites was a good thing. Those links resulted in traffic increases to said websites. Like nearly all things wonderful, once people learned of the relationship between links and traffic increases, those people went nuts and abused the entire ecosystem. Website marketers began contacting other website owners and asked if they could write some guest posts that included a few links to their shady websites. Because some bloggers were exhausted with their own writing, they accepted the offer of free content. And if the blog owner wasn’t tired enough and gave some pushback against the free guest article, the other party offered payment. That usually greased the wheels to get the article accepted. And really, at the time, this type of guest blogging relationship benefitted everyone involved.

So what happened? Well, for starters, Google and friends began to take notice of guest posting that had nothing, or very little, to do with the website the article was posted on. For instance, someone from a towel company would contact someone from a boat company and ask to guest post. The boat company would accept and display a post about towels on their boating site. And the article would link back to the towel site. One had nothing to do with the other and eventually, these types of activities were deemed link spam related activities. Remember Google Penguin back in 2012? These types of activities were part of the impetus for that update.

So what’s the moral of this story? Do your research, find high quality websites that are related to yours, make contact, write your post, and get it posted. Be real and don’t link spam or fall into a spammy link and posting scheme.

Guest Blogging Outreach Tools

As much as I believe that every relationship anyone has formed via the internet should be cultivated in a manner that’s completely natural, I’m also a realist. I understand that not everyone has the time to introduce themselves, develop a wonderful and meaningful relationship with another website owner, and allow that relationship to flourish with the best of intentions. And honestly, when you send an email to one blogger, you sort of send the same message to all of them. Perhaps not an identical message, but one in the same vein  of thought.

Below, I’ll list some popular guest blogging tools people have been using for years. Look them up to see what they offer. Most of them can accomplish a few different tasks, such as:

• Locate and list influential blogs and influencers (contact information, website URL, social media profiles).
• Send customizable messages to the above.
• Track and follow up on those messages.
• Integrate your own email addresses with those in their system.
• Keep a history of all correspondence.
• Track and report outreach and guest blogging performance.

There are quite a few tools guest bloggers use to handle most aspects of their work and obviously all of the tools don’t handle the same things, so be sure to click through to learn which one suites your needs the best.

• BuzzSumo
• Traackr
• Tomoson
• Pitchbox
• BuzzStream
• ContentMarketer.io
• Inkybee
• Klear
• Respona
• JustReachOut
• Clearscope
• RocketReach
• Ahrefs
• SEMRush
• SimilarWeb
• HubSpot CRM

Guest Blogging Tips

To wrap this post up, I’d like to offer a few overall tips for guest blogging. If you’ve read this post in its entirety, you’ll have noticed that guest posting isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of effort and its results sometimes aren’t seen for an extended period of time. Most often, a guest poster doesn’t get paid right away – “payment” trickles in weeks and months later. It’s no secret why so many folks who have attempted to market their websites and services via guest posting have either quit the effort or have attempted to cut corners. The entire endeavor takes a significant commitment. It’s not something you’d simply pay for and be on your merry way. It’s takes work. As I’ve explained, it does have its benefits though.

Because this type of activity is so labor intensive, you can rest assured that the more difficult the website upon which to guest post, the more high quality it may be. Most high quality websites don’t let just anyone post their work to it. With this in mind, the fact that Google and others will likely grant your link some value is comforting. Your article will be posted on a high value website, it’ll garner attention, it’ll be promoted on that blog, and shared on social media, hopefully attracting all sorts of readers.

To make your efforts as successful as possible, please read through these final tips:

1. Always keep your quality exceptionally high. To locate the highest quality websites upon which to post, use one or more of the many SEO tools available. There are other ranking factors besides those like Google’s PageRank.
2. Use only reputable vendors. If you decide to pay for a service like this, remember that you get what you pay for. Don’t use low-quality shady off-shore services for something like this. Use only the best.
3. Don’t rush. This is definitely one of the slower methods for building your website’s value. As mentioned above, you’ll need to develop real relationships and that’s not something you can execute quickly. You’ll likely need to immerse yourself into the community for an extended time.
4. If you’ve screwed up in the past, fix your mistakes. If you have a bunch of low-quality links pointing to your website because you tried to take the easy route in the past, contact those webmasters to have the links removed. This can help in the long run.
5. Develop an ego. Remember, you are the best. You don’t share your work with anyone who is lesser than you. And you don’t accept the work from anyone who is lesser than you. Remember that. Don’t associate yourself with others online who have shady or limited reputations.

If you’re guest posting because you love to write and you’d like to market your website, good. Keep going. Pretend that you’re writing for the New Yorker or the New York Times. With that type of outlook, you’ll go far in this business.

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Do you have ideas for how to effectively guest blog? Did I miss anything? Do you have anything to add? Any queries or comments? If you answered yes to any of these questions, please leave your thoughts below. Thanks for reading!