What Is Guest Blogging in SEO? A Guide for Beginners

What is Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging is a content marketing strategy to write and publish articles and blog posts for other websites. These articles include your byline.

Byline informs the reader about the author or writer of the article. 

Some publications also pay compensation for guest blogging, while others offer non-monetary rewards. The rewards include linking back to your website or social media accounts. Sometimes the website editor personally highlights your name as a “guest author” or “contributor.”

Benefits of Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is beneficial in the following ways −

• Build personal brand

• Build a strong profile as an expert in a niche topic

• Improve the SEO performance of your website

• Gets authoritative backlinks to your site

• Invites referral traffic

• Build relationships or business partnerships with other brands and bloggers

• Get leads and improve conversions

• Improve brand awareness 

Goals of Guest Blogging

As a guest blogger, your three main goals should be to −

• Position your brand or blog as an authority and a well-known name in the industry or niche

• Getting more exposure and traffic back to your site

• Building high-quality backlinks to your site 

Although almost everyone does guest blogging for backlinks, but don’t do it solely for it. Google prefers articles and blogs that offer genuine information. However, if you write random, low-quality content, Google will not like it. Besides, no renowned editor or site owner is going to accept your articles if it doesn’t fit their quality criteria.

How to Find Guest Blogging Prospects?

Find sites that are relevant to your niche or industry. The goal is to get quality backlinks and drive traffic to your site. That’s why you should write content for audiences that would also be interested in the contents of your site.

Apart from that, you should find a blog owner who has substantial traffic. Also, make sure they have a solid social media presence. So that you can ensure they will promote your work on their page.

Start with Google Searches

Google is the best place to start searching for your guest blogging prospects. You can use keywords like −

• Submit guest post

• Submit guest blogs

• Guest post by

• Accepting guest blog/post

• Guest post guidelines

Search for famous guest bloggers in your niche

If you read blogs in your industry, you may already remember some names popping up. 

For instance, some popular food blogs and blogs include −

• David Lebovitz

• Inspired Taste

• Pinch of Yum

• Cookie and Kate

Similarly, some top influential guest bloggers in marketing include −

• Neil Patel

• Jeff Bullas

• Kevin Rowe

• Mark Traphagen

• Adam Riemer

Use google to search for names of prolific guest bloggers within your niche and industry. Add the phrase “guest blog by” next to it.

For example −

Guest blog by Neil Patel

Guest blog by Adam Riemer

Do a Backlink Analysis of Your Competitors?

Another way to find guest blogging sites is through competitor analysis. If your competitors do guest postings, they might have backlinks from these sites. 

You can use a backlinks checker tool from Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, neilpatel, SEMrush, and smallSEO tools. 

Alternatively, you can do a google search using this formula −

link:domain.com -domain.com “guest post”

Replace “domain.com with your competitor’s domain

This will reveal all the sites your competitor use for guest blogging.

Look at Social Media

Most bloggers and guest bloggers share their posts on social media networks. Start with Twitter and LinkedIn by using keywords like “guest post.” This will show the latest posts. Follow the links to see the sites accepting their blogs.

MyBlogGuest

This is a popular community of guest bloggers. You can sign up for free and search blog posts within your niche. You can post your own information stating your desire to write guest posts. Some guest blog sites will definitely approach you. 

Choosing the right guest blogging partners and sites

Don’t just jump into any opportunity you got unless you don’t have any. You simply don’t want to share your quality content with sites with little value. 

Know Your Content

Find a site that is related to your niche or industry. 

• Check for the level of audiences these blog posts are targeting. Are they experts, intermediate, or beginners? This helps you to modify your writing skills accordingly. Use simple vocabulary and lucid sentences for beginners.

• Know the type of audience these guest blogs are for. Are the existing bloggers writing for general audiences or B2B?

• What are the concepts behind their contents? Do they write tutorials or listicles or general ideas or specifics?

Check the Status of the Blogs

Check how the existing blogs are doing. If those blogs have better views and engagement, then go for it. Some blogs state the number of views they got. Another way to check is in the comment section if they have any. 

Some blogs accept guest posts. However, their audiences only come from the owner. In such cases, you may not build authority or drive traffic.

Check the Status of the Guest Bloggers

Some blog owners only accept a specific type of guest blogger. Check the bios of the guest bloggers to see if they are freelancers, independent bloggers, business owners, industry professionals, and so on.

This will help you how to introduce yourself to the blog owner.

Check the best-performed Posts

Some blogs do well than others. For instance, some audiences might prefer listicles, while others look for specifics, information, or tutorials.

This gives you a good idea about topics that you should focus on. 

Use can use tools like Digg, Buzzer, and Oktopus. For instance, Digg helps you see posts that received the most votes. Oktopus tracks and reports your social media performance.

Get Yourself out there in the Blogging Community

Build some credibility, and engage with some bloggers. Take a couple of weeks to post comments on their posts. You can also get their attention by sharing their posts on Twitter. Adding the author’s and site owner’s username on Twitter is even better.

Approach the Blog Owner 

Things to mention when pitching for guest blogging −

• Read the guest post guidelines carefully.

• Who are you? Are you an independent blogger, an industry professional, or a freelancer?

• Mention why you want to be a guest blogger.

• If the guest post guidelines ask for a topic idea, give them a few to select from.

Track Your Results

If your goal is to drive traffic, you should definitely measure the results of your guest posts. 

You can do that by setting an Advanced Segment in Google Analytics.

You can use up to 20 advanced segments. Start with one at first. This helps you see all the analytics coming from the referrals of your guest posts. As a result, you can determine the success rate of your guest blogging strategy. You can find whether your guest posts are getting you traffic and improving your conversions.

Conclusion

Guest blogging in SEO is a powerful and reliable marketing technique for getting more visitors for your website. It helps you increase your domain authority, build relationships with industry leaders, and improve your organic search visibility. Overall, investing time in guest blog posts can be beneficial for any business’s SEO strategy. It’s an important tool to help promote niche interest topics, revive a blog from an SEO standpoint, create backlinks from other websites, and grow a business brand. More importantly, it’s easy to start guest blog posting if you understand the basics of how it works and strategic outreach methods needed to get started. Finally, if you take the time to research potential sites that accept guest blogs as well as outlining topics and quality content that resonates with their audience - you will be able to use guest blogging as part of your overall SEO success strategy moving forward.