Guest Blogging 101 – The Complete Guide For 2020

Guest Blogging 101 – The Complete Guide For 2020

By Harsh Agrawal 

Writing a guest post is one of the best ways to bring in lots of traffic to your site. I write guest posts on several blogs, and these posts always bring in lots of interested readers to my site.

Guest posting is also a great way to get a high-quality backlink which will help in your SEO efforts.

What is guest blogging and its benefits?

Guest blogging a.k.a. guest posting is a well-known marketing technique for blogs and businesses alike. In this technique, one has to identify other websites where they can contribute an article as a guest author.

Here are the benefits of guest blogging:

Backlinks:

2020 update: Guest blogging is no more an effective way for backlinks. Recently, Google spokesperson announced that you should mark all links via guest post as “Nofollow” or “rel=sponsored”.

Guest posting used to be one of the most effective ways to generate inbound links to your website. These links could be earned in the author bio or within the article. Usually, it’s hard or almost impossible to build such links to product pages (if you are in e-commerce sphere), but it’s easy to build links via guest posting to your resource pages, case study or even a simple blog post.

Branding & authority:

By guest posting for your personal brand or even for your business, you are going to build authority and increase brand awareness. The key here is to get your guest post published on the authority blogs in your niche. Even if you are completely unknown in your industry, a few guest posts on high relevance websites could help you to be known by the right audience.

More business and quality traffic:

As your guest post will have a link to your own resources, you are more likely to get highly qualified traffic which converts. If you dive deep into your analytics, you would notice that referral traffic from relevant websites usually has high avg. time spent and they convert well. In the case of guest blogging, you are taking a proactive approach to gain similar referral traffic. You can always craft your guest blogging content strategy in a way, that introduces to your product/services which increases the awareness and hence the overall conversion.

The #1 thing before you start guest posting:

What’s your purpose of guest blogging?

It is very important at this stage that your goals are pre-defined.

Having it defined will make your life easier or anyone who is guest posting on your behalf. Here are some of the well-known reasons for guest posting:

1. To build links to your website
2. To build an authority
3. To drive traffic to a specific landing page on your website
4. To grow the email list

If your purpose is to build links, it’s a good idea to have an excel sheet ready with a link to your website pages + anchor text. This steps will help you speed up the process as you grow in the game of guest blogging.

Criteria for picking a website for guest posting:

So now you’ve decided you want to start guest posting.

Should you just pick some random blog in your niche?

NO!

This is a mistake most of the newbie makes and that waste their time, money and effort. In this guide, you will learn all the effective and actionable steps you should be following.

To make your guest posting effective, you should carefully handpick high-quality relevant guest blog sites.  The best way to get started is by creating an excel sheet and make a list of blogs/websites you considering. Now, analyze these target websites based on metrics listed below:

Similar niche/Topical relevance:

Your guest post should be published on similar niche websites else it would not be effective from SEO or even traffic perspective.

Domain authority:

This is a domain ranking mechanism by Moz where it ranks a web-page based on 1-100 scale. You should aim for 40+ Domain authority.

Traffic:

Growing traffic is another key metric that shows if the target website is healthy and growing. Ensure, the target website is updating or publishing new content, else it would not make much sense to guest post.

Author bio:

If your purpose of guest posting is to create authority and a name for yourself, ensure the brand offers author bio. Without this, you will only earn backlinks but not the branding you looking for. However, there is an exception at times when you are getting featured on a highly authoritative website which doesn’t offer author bio but do use your name.

No link farm:

A quick glance at the recent 5-10 articles on your target website could let you see if the blogs are made for guest posting or it deliver high-quality content. There are many blogs which accept guest posts for a price and they do not weed out bad links. Putting your effort on such websites is not useful in a long run and you should avoid it.

The above checklist will help you stay focused on high-quality sites.

How to find guest blogging opportunities?

Alright, now it’s time to find the list of websites where you can guest post. Here are a few ways by which you can find such blogs:

Using Google search operator:

To find guest posting opportunities, you can use these search operators.

Keyword “submit a guest post”

Keyword “guest post”

Keyword “guest post by”

Keyword “accepting guest posts”

Keyword “contributing writer”

Keyword “want to write for”

Keyword “This post was written by”

Keyword “contributor guidelines”

Here is a list of quality blogs that accepts guest post.

Once you have identified the blogs, now it’s time to get started.

Step 1. Write the guest post.

So after you’ve identified the blog you want to write for, you need to write the post.

But before you do, have a look at the topics that have already been covered, and make sure you aren’t writing about something that has been written about before. Make your content new and unique.

Also, try to emulate the blog owner’s writing style as best as possible. This will increase your chances of getting that post accepted.

Don’t be afraid of being rejected by the owner. If your guest post gets rejected, you can submit it to another blog or publish it on your own blog.

If it gets rejected, don’t hesitate to ask for feedback. Most bloggers are in the business of helping people, so they’ll be happy to share with you why your article was not the right fit for their blog.

• How My First Guest Post Ever Was Published in 3 Days
• Be highly unique.
• Write about what you know.
• Provide high-quality outbound links (not necessarily to your own blog!).
• Provide the most value you can.
• Make sure the post is relatable to the blog’s audience.

Make sure that you also optimize your guest submission for a specific keyword. As you are guest posting on a highly authoritative website, chances of your article ranking is higher.

Step 2. Contact the blog owner.

If you know the blog owner personally, simply ask and I’m sure they will be happy to let you post. If you don’t know the contact detail of the blog admin, follow this below tutorial:

• How To Find Email Address of Any Domain With Email Hunter in 1 Minute

If you don’t know the blog owner, then you should write an introductory email along with your guest post attached in a Microsoft Word format.

Don’t forget to write your email ID and your social networking information in the signature.

Your email should look like this:

Here is one more copy-paste template for guest post outreach:

Hey $Name

Shout Me Loud has been on my radar for years, and finally, I thought I would ask.  I would love to write a guest post for you, something that would really motivate your readers.

The topic I had in mind was “$Topic”

We both run great blogs and make a living from it and it’s always good to remind people why it is so great. I am sure your readers will enjoy it.

Not sure if you have read any of my posts, but apart from running $Yourblogname,  I have been on SEMRush, Pro Blogger, Coschedule and many more blogs.

Let me know if you are up for it, and I will get started on a draft asap.

have a great week

Your Name

Put the following in your signature:

• Your name
• Email address
• Blog address
• Twitter ID
• Facebook ID

The owner will want to see that your blog and your brand can offer something of value to the readers of their blog.

Editor’s note: A clever strategy would be to contact the owner and ask them if they’re accepting guest posts. Include in your inquiry letter a link to some of your best articles, and mention the title and a brief two sentence summary of your proposed guest post.

Step 3. Capture traffic after your guest post.

This is the party time!

Now you get to enjoy the immediate blog exposure from this guest post.

Your blog’s traffic will increase and you may get lots of blog subscribers (depending on the content and quality of your blog).

Try to capture this new audience by making your best post the first post visitors see. Write a great roundup post which is heavy on interlinking and contains lots of great value.

This will keep your new visitors around for a while.

Step 4. Promote your guest post.

You should promote your articles on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Don’t wait for the blog owner to tell you; just do it yourself as soon as the post is published.

Also, something you might want to do is place an outbound link to another blog in your guest post. You can then tell that blog owner that you linked to their work, and they will consider promoting your guest post to their readers. This is really a good strategy to build authority and get others to like you.

But don’t include links just for the sake of building backlinks. A blog owner will reject your post if you’re just trying to build backlinks.

Step 5. Reply to comments.

You need to reply to comments on your guest post.

There’s nothing more irritating to a blog owner than giving someone free promotion and then having them walk away when their readers want to connect with them.

Be a good customer service agent and respond to all comments and questions. Be engaged with the commenters.

This will help build your authority, and it will ultimately bring you more traffic and more guest posting opportunities.

How Many Time you should Guest Post?

There is no limit to the number of guest posts you can submit.

You may do one or two, or you may do several. It totally depends on the exposure you are getting and how much time you want to spend writing guest posts.

Some blogs help you get great traffic, and some don’t help at all. Identify the ones that work well for you, and figure out a consistent guest posting strategy to help grow your traffic, your number of subscribers, and your authority.

One thing that I often suggest to marketers is, it’s better to guest post on different blogs than guest posting on the same blog, especially if your purpose is to build links.

What’s your strategy for getting guest post spots on high-quality blogs? Let me know in the comments below.

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