5 Tips to Guest Post: An Ultimate Guide for Beginners

Are you new to a guest post and eager to write a guest article? Well, most beginners have many questions in their minds related to this topic. If you are interested in writing your own guest article and hope to attract online readers, some things need to be considered well. Here is everything you need to know about guest posting and the best ways you can do to create an interesting guest article.

Guest Post: What Is It?

Before diving deeper into everything about a guest post, let’s break down what it is first. Generally speaking, guest posting refers to publishing or writing an article on someone else’s website. Doing guest posting will make it possible for you to get more traffic back to your website easier. As a result, there will be more people aware of your brand and business.

To successfully guest blog on someone else’s website, you need to determine your goal in advance for doing it. Deciding on the goals of your blogging before starting to write will make it easier for you to find out the right kind of blogs you will send your article to. There are three common goals that are used to encourage people to do guest blogging.

The first goal is to put yourself in a well-known name in the industry. Meanwhile, the second goal is to get more traffic or exposure to your business website and the third is to build backlinks to your site. You can achieve all these three goals if you have the right kind of content written for top blogs in the industry.

However, if what you intend is just to accomplish the first and second goals, you need to find blogs that come with an engaged and wide audience. You might need to pinpoint blogs that have domain authority with a strong root if you only want to accomplish goal number 3. In this way, make sure that you know your goals for guest posting ahead of time so that you can find out which blog will be the best place to submit your articles.

Finding the Best Opportunities for Guest Blogging

Finding opportunities for a guest post can be challenging, especially for beginners. Keep in mind that looking for blogs for guest posting needs you to find the relevant websites for your industry or niche. For instance, if you are selling coco peat soil, then you have to make sure that the blogs you choose to post your writing have gardeners as an engaged audience. You can use the following criteria to find the blog that fits your needs.

The content of the blog should focus on a similar industry or niche.
The blogs have an audience that will also be interested in your business or industry.
You need to make sure that the website comes with an engaged readership. It means that the posts put on the blogs have been commented on and shared socially by the readers.
The next criteria are that the owner of the blog should be active on social media as well. In this way, you can easily check if the blog owners promote your article on their website or not.

Tips to Guest Post

If you need tips to help you guest post easily, here are simple strategies to try.

1. Using Google Searches

If you are looking for opportunities to guest post effectively, Google can be an ideal place to start. The tool will enable you to use keyword searches to find blog or website owners that allow you to guest post. All you need to do is just replace keywords found in Google with the ones from your own industry. Some keywords such as “accepting guest posts” and “submit guest posts” will lead you to a guideline page of blogs for guest posting, actual guest posting written by other writers, and a submission page of guest posting.

2. Prolific Guest Bloggers

If you know some prolific guest bloggers with the same interest in your industry, you can use them to help you find guest posting opportunities. The names of these bloggers, especially the popular ones, will frequently pop up in many blogs.

If you need a reference, some names are considered the most influential guest bloggers in SEO marketing. They include Jeff Bullas, Neil Patel, Jenny Halasz, Kevin Indig, and Tony Right. You can also find some other individuals in this field including Mark Traphagen, Adam Reimer, Benji Acciola, Anna Crow, Kirk Williams, Robyn Johnson, and also Kevin Rowe.

You can also easily find prolific guest bloggers in the same industry as yours simply by using Google Search. Not only that but adding some phrases such as “guest post by” will also make things easier to complete. When typing the prolific guest bloggers and the relevant phrase on the search engine, there will be many websites pop up where these popular bloggers have posted their writing.

Additionally, these websites can also be a perfect place where you can also submit your guest posting. You can also get a better opportunity if you personally know well-known guest bloggers in the industry. These people can help to make an introduction for you to some website owners where they also guest post their work.

3. Using Competitor Backlinks

If you are working on your SEO campaign, you might have pulled up a backlink analysis of your competitors. Do you know that it can be one of the best ways to find opportunities for guest posting? This is possible to happen since your competitors might also have backlinks from the guest posting they conducted before.

But, what if you can’t find any? Well, you can always come back to Google search. There is a wide range of links that will make your job easier. Some links such as domain.com will show you websites for which other guest bloggers have written. All you need to do is just replace the domain.com with the domain of other guest bloggers or competitors.

4. Social Searches

Another easy trick you can use to find opportunities for blog posting is taking benefits from social searches. You need to know that there are many bloggers and guest posters you can find out there who are willing to share their posts, both current and old, on social networks. Twitter can be a great place to start since this social media platform is considered the easiest.

So, don’t hesitate to use a Twitter search for certain keywords like “guest post” to find the latest info about guest posting in the industry. The key is, to follow the links provided to figure out which blogs that accept guest posting submissions.

5. Join a Guest Blogger Community

Seeking guest posting opportunities also requires you to join communities for guest bloggers like MyBlogGuest. To join the community, you only need to sign up. Interestingly, many guest bloggers’ communities offer membership for free. Once you are included in the community, you can search for which blogs accept posts from guest bloggers. You can get a better chance by posting your own information. In your post, you can also state that you are looking for opportunities to write a guest posting on certain topics. In this way, blog owners who join in the same community can find you fast.

How to Pitch a Guest Blogging Post

To be a professional guest blogger, make sure that you prepare everything thoroughly just before you jump up to contacting the blog owners right after you find guest blogging opportunities. This is because some things you need to complete before you ask for a chance to be a guest blogger on a certain website.

1. Knowing the Content of the Blog

The very first thing you need to do is just get to know the content of your target blog. In this way, you need to make sure that you know the relevant keywords of their content. Another thing you have to know about the target blog is its level of audience targeted by these bloggers. Find out whether the level is beginners, intermediate, or advanced. Not only that but you also need to know the type of audience of the targeted blogs as well as the type of content these bloggers write for.

2. Look at How Other Guest Bloggers Do

When looking at a guest blog on some websites, you need to ask yourself whether the guest bloggers do well or not. Find out if the blog posting gets a lot of comments. This is also important to figure out if the posts are shared a lot on social media by the blog owner. Many websites allow guest posting, but not all of them have a solid engaged audience. The reason is that many online readers only visit the blog for the blog owner, not the content. If this is your case, you might not be able to achieve your blog posting goal. This type of audience can’t help you get traffic back to your website nor build authority.

3. Find Out Who the Guest Bloggers Are

Before proposing to send a guest post to a particular website owner, you need to know exactly who the guest bloggers are. You need to keep in mind that some blog owners only allow guest posting from particular types of people. Make sure that you lurk into the bios of some bloggers. This enables you to find out if these people are fellow bloggers, consultants, freelancers, business owners, or others.

The result you get will be important for your future career as a guest blogger. You can use the information you gained from these people’s bios when you introduce yourself to the website owners for blog posting opportunities.

4. Know the Best Posts

It needs a strategy to make sure that your guest blog will be accepted. You need to pitch the owner of the website topics that fit perfectly with their audience. You can go to some popular websites to help you find interesting ideas to provide your audience with the best topics. Some of the popular sites to get you inspired include Oktopus, Digg, and Buzzer.

Oktopus is quite popular among guest bloggers since the website not only tracks but also reports the performance of your social media. Meanwhile, Digg will show you which blog posts get the highest amount of votes on the website. As for Buzzer, the website will make it possible for you to schedule posts on your social media. Not only that but this site can also provide you with both data and analytics.

5. Make People in the Blog Community Familiar with You

The more people know about you, the bigger chance to get accepted as a guest blogger. To be a familiar face in the blogging community, you will need some recognition from as many blog owners as possible. To achieve this purpose, some tips can be done by commenting on the latest posts of the blog owners.

You will also get bonus points later if you take time to share these posts on your social media as well. However, make sure that you include the username of the blog owner when you share their posts. This trick will make you quite familiar to these blog owners when you try to pitch your guest blog.

When to Pitch a Guest Blogging Post

To bag a guest post opportunity, you also need to know the best time you should pitch a guest blogging post. A golden opportunity to do this job is when a certain blog mentions you on their social media or in their latest posts. Chances are also better if you pitch the guest blog when the website owner lists things about you including your products and business in their posts or social media.

As an alternative, you can also choose the pitching time when bloggers announce that they are looking for a guest post for their websites. Last but not least, you can do the pitching when a blog decides to publish another guest blog to enlarge your chance to be accepted.