Guest Posting: Importance & Tips to Strategize it

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What is Guest Posting?

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Guest Posting is the act of posting a blog on another platform as a guest member. This platform could either belong to the same niche or a different one.
Of course, there are several factors to consider about where to post, when to post and what topics.
Whether you want to reach a new set of audiences, acquire quality backlinks, grow your network, or bring more referrals to your website, guest posting is the way to go.
Yes, it is time-consuming and needs consistent efforts, but the results are worth it (pretty much like SEO, we would say).

Importance of Guest Posting

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1. Brings Targeted Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is essential if you want your brand to become famous. The need for SEO rose because people began to understand the value of attracting visitors with similar interests.
While guest posting is a tiny part of SEO, it is often seen as a promotional and networking strategy.
Your website has a set of followers, but as time passes, the followers' list should also grow, and for that, you need to find different ways to reach new audiences.
Guest posting on well-known platforms will give you the visibility you are searching for.
People who follow that platform but aren't aware of you will know who you are when they read your guest post, and if it is appealing, they will use the backlink to visit your website. The more you guest post, the wider your reach will be.

2. Helps Expand Your Network

Networking is vital for every business owner and blogger. Influencers become famous by networking with other bloggers and brands to create a network of contacts.
When you start guest posting on other platforms, you are not simply sending them your work or getting a backlink. Instead, you are adding a contact to your list by building a rapport with them.
You work on maintaining a professional yet friendly relationship with the platforms you write for so that it helps you expand your network online and offline.
Co-authoring guest posts is also a trend where two or more influencers brainstorm ideas and create a set of themed posts for their platforms or another website.
Following and promoting each other on social media is a great way to strengthen your network.

3. Builds Your Backlinks Profile

Backlinks are necessary for your website’s growth. We have also seen how backlinks can indirectly boost your SEO efforts and increase the website rank.
You need to be careful about the source of your backlinks, though, and the same goes for guest posting. Your post will get the expected reach only when the platform is well-known and has a good list of followers.
Since most platforms don’t pay any monetary compensation for guest posting, they allow you to add a backlink to your website with a domain-specific keyword.
Naturally, getting a backlink from a high authority site itself is good for SEO.
Offering to write guest posts is an excellent way to reach out to famous platforms in exchange for a backlink.

4. Increases Brand Awareness

You are your brand, and when people recognize you, they also recognize your brand. Guest posting helps you achieve this.
Your guest posts should be valuable and beneficial to the readers, and there should be something new in each of your posts. Another point to work on is the brand voice. By reading a post, the readers should recognize that the post is yours.
Even though you might have to change the tone a little based on the platforms you gust blog for, the overall voice of the post should define you.
Once readers get used to your style, they will recognize you anywhere, which means your brand is becoming popular in the market.
You can establish yourself as a reliable and authoritative voice in your niche. However, remember that you will need to come up with new and valuable posts routinely.

5. Gets Constructive Feedback from Valuable Readers

Regular community members are valuable readers and can share insights that help improve your content and marketing strategies.
Some platforms invite guest bloggers to discuss ideas for the next set of posts. It will help you understand what works and what doesn't.
When the community members share their personal experiences, it brings more value to their ideas and opinions.
Also, encourage the readers to comment on the guest posts. The more you engage with them, the more you will learn from others.

• One way to get more comments is by being an active reader yourself and reading others’ guest posts.
• Another way is to ask a leading question at the end of your guest blog. People like to respond to a question as they are more likely to know what to say.

6. Increases Social Media Shares and Followers

When you network with other bloggers, you are naturally going to follow each other on social media sooner or later, and when your guest post is live, the platform will share it on social media and tag you on the posts. It boosts your social handles and brings more followers.
People who like your guest posts will also want to follow you on social media so that they won't miss any critical updates and can get to know you better.
Once you become a regular guest contributor for a platform, they create a user account for you which you can use to build your brand. Add the necessary details and include social media links to your handles.
Just don’t forget to keep your social media accounts active and share what your followers would like to read.

Tips to Do Guest Posting

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1. Know What You Want

Before you start your journey as a guest blogger, there are some things you need to know. The first and the most important one is what you want from guest blogging.

• Why are you becoming a guest blogger?
• What do you aim to achieve from this?

Simply because many other influencers and brands are doing it doesn't mean you have to follow them, right?
Unless your goals are clear, you will not know whether your attempt is bringing any results or not, and in the end, it would mean a waste of your time.
Guest posting for the sake of backlinks isn’t going to work. You need a better reason and a proper plan, and you also need to consider your resources.

2. Create a Market Overlap That Lasts Forever

Though focusing on your niche is essential, the risk of stagnation is also real. What happens when you run out of quality sites to write for?
Why would you want to write for a dubious and spammy website and doesn't get any hits even if it’s in your niche?
You need to start expanding your horizons and entering other niches. But what will you write from them?
So, what you do here is that you start searching for overlapping markets.
For example, If you are a food blogger. you can write for other food blogs, as well as nutrition, diet, and fitness blogs, family blogs, and blogs that deal with growing your food and farming, outdoor cooking, etc.
The idea is to find platforms that can be linked with your niche so that you can continue to build your reader base.

3. Use Advanced Search of Guest Posting Blogs

Searching for guest blogging opportunities is an art indeed, and you cannot succeed without knowing the tips and tricks to find the right kind of platforms to pitch for.
Advanced search options will give better results than regular ones.
Tip 1: Some sites rely heavily on guest posts and thus get too many pitches every day. It’s easy for your email to get lost in those.
You need to be smarter here.
Tip 2: Search for sites that don’t openly advertise for guest posts. Targeting these platforms will give you better results.
Instead of using keywords like 'write for us,' you use-

• Guest post by
• Guest author today
• My guest post
• Follow the guest author

And so on. You need to prefix these with the keyword from your niche. There is hardly any reason to dig through millions of hits when you have an easy filtering method.

4. Reach out to Existing Members in Your Network

Sometimes it's easier to write for someone you already know. Maybe that someone needs a guest post on their site?
Perhaps you could offer them a chance to write for your blog in return. It is not the only way to a guest post by any means, and you shouldn't extensively rely on this method either.
However, if you have just entered the vast world of guest blogging, it is always better to start with something familiar to feel overwhelming.
You can mention these guest posts when you pitch to other platforms. People usually prefer bloggers who have written guest posts before, and reaching out to the ones in your network will help you gain the initial experience.
Another way is to check where your peers are guest blogging and contact the same platforms with your ideas.

5. Use Social Media to Find More Opportunities

Social media can be termed as a mini search engine. You can use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to search for guest posts and are likely to find authoritative websites on these platforms. However, it is better to perform a thorough website check before contacting the website owners.
Guest posts on Instagram are usually posted directly on the platform as you cannot use hyperlinks in the post description or the comments.
Unless you want to become an Instagram influencer, this platform will not work much, but Facebook and Twitter are a good choice.
The guest blogs will be shared and retweeted on these platforms to get more views. Your search will yield better results.
Nevertheless, it is a time-consuming job to collect and compile the data on an Excel sheet manually.

6. Create a Worthy List of Sites- Perform Site Scraping

First, you need to be sure that the platform has high domain authority and good readership to bring quality referrals to your website.
There are various online SEO tools (free and paid) to scrape websites for metrics. Once you compile a list of platforms you like, use the tool on each of them.
URL Profiler is a paid tool that provides you a decent list of the details of the websites.
The tool can find information such as:

• Contact page URLs
• Write for us URLs
• About page URLs
• Domain authority
• Google indexation
• Topical relevance
• Citation flow
• Spam and malware status

You should never write a guest post for a website without knowing about the quality of the site.

7. Plan Attractive Posts in Your Niche

Now you have a list of platforms ready to approach. But what are you going to write about?
You need to compile a list of topics and themes for your posts, and in fact, you should have at least the drafts of a couple of posts ready if the platform agrees to share them immediately.
Read a few posts on the platform to understand the kind of themes and tone they prefer.
Their socio-political inclinations should also be considered as you will have to decide if you can write a post for a platform that endorses opposite views.
Even otherwise, you need to have your posts (at least the topics ready) so that your pitch will sound confident and assured. You also need to search for keywords for your posts. This part is similar to how you plan a post for your website.

8. Your Pitch Email Has to Be Perfect

Famous websites get dozens of pitches every day, and they surely aren't going to pay attention unless your email forces them to do so.
Tip: One mistake many bloggers make is to use readymade templates to create pitches. If you have saved such templates, get rid of them first because it takes just one look at the email to know that you've followed a template.
Unless the platform specifies a format in which you have to mail them your pitches, don't follow the ones found on the internet.

• Create your template and follow it.
• Use a standard email like Gmail to mail your pitches and include your signature at the end of the mail.
• The logo of your brand, a link to your website, etc., should be set as the default signature.
• The tone should be simple, polite, and courteous.

9. Make Use of Free Plug-ins to Fill Forms and Send Pitches

If the platform has a contact form, manually filling it is time-consuming. Don't worry; there's a free plug-in to help you with this.
TextExpander works as a Chrome extension and lets you create custom keyword shortcuts for predetermined text. When you use the shortcut, the text gets posted in the form.
Cool, right?
Instead of typing or copy-pasting from a document, you use a keyboard shortcut.
Have you ever had trouble finding an email address of a platform you want to guest post for?
Oh, multiple times, isn’t it?
The site owners get tired of spam emails and bury their email ids. But how do you contact them?
Try to find at least one person’s name from the platform and trace their email. VoilaNorbert extension is a helpful email finder that will help you with the task.

10. Follow Different Approaches to Reach out to Bloggers

There is no standard method to approach every platform as it depends on different factors, and the most important one is the size of the site.
Yep.
For example, smaller blogs are usually managed by a single person.
Naturally, it'll help you more if you become a friend or an acquaintance before pitching your guest blog. Some of them have great content but don't get enough readers, and they will be happy to have your guest blog on their platform.
On the other hand, the established platforms are already doing well, which means that they like things to be formal or semi-formal as more than one person will access the email.
Pitch your guest post first and get through the initial levels and become a friend based on the regular interaction you have with the backend team.

11. Conduct a Reverse Search on Famous Guest Bloggers

Pick a couple of famous guest bloggers in your niche and run a reverse search. You’ll get a list of websites they write for. Check the type of posts these platforms prefer and start sending your pitches to them.
You can use the BuzzSumo tool for this by setting the content type filter to guest posts. Search using the person's author bio on Google.
Most people use the same standard bio to get links to all the blogs that carry this bio when you copy-paste the exact text.
Tip: If you already know one place and want to exclude it, here is the trick. Your Google search should be "the exact text in the bio"- the known platform's name.
Google will deliver the list of other posts. You can start compiling right away.

12. Track the Performance of Your Guest Posts

It is something that comes after you've successfully published your guest posts. Your job is far from over.
Platforms favor guest bloggers who interact with the readers and reply to their comments. It is also a tried and tested way to get more readers on your website.
Keep track of how the guest post is doing, and don't forget to ask the site owners to share the stats with you to find a way to improve them for the next post.
Websites don't prefer guest bloggers whose posts don't generate much interest in the readers. It would affect their site authority, isn't it?
You must promote and share your guest blog as much as you promote your blog. And use your author bio section to include a link to your site.

Guest Posting Tools

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1. FollowUp.cc

Guest posting tools are as varied as they can get. Why? Because these tools are used to either polish your content, analyze the target website, or increase your outreach. (Yep, you’ll have to write the post yourself).
One aspect you shouldn’t forget is to keep track of the emails you sent to the shortlisted websites.
FollowUp.CC is a small and effective tool that sends you reminders and helps you track and find the related conversations to the top of the inbox.
You don’t have to worry about missing out on any response from other platforms.

2. SEO Moz Toolbar

Moz is a popular SEO platform and offers some great tools. The MozBar tool works as an extension on Chrome and Firefox.
The tool provides you with a lot of information about the websites.
Data such as DA, PA, Alexa rank, highlighting the no-follow links, and website traffic can be used to determine whether the site would be an excellent place to share your guest post or not.
If you are using the Firefox browser, you can export the SERP results as a CSV file. You can download the tool for free from the Moz website.

3. BuzzStream

Buzz Stream has many tools (free and paid) that wonderfully help bloggers and brand owners with online marketing. Seven free tools help you-
Email Research Tool helps you find the contact details of the platforms you want to approach.
Extract links from the HTML tool help pull out the links from amidst the characters.
Extract domain from the URL tool helps extract domains and saves them in a CSV file.
You can also use tools like Extract page title, description, and keywords from URLs tool, Link building query generator, and Build Outreach lists from blogrolls.

4. ContentMarketer.io

As the tool's name suggests, this one has been designed for content marketers. The tool makes it easy for you to customize and schedule your outreach emails on Gmail.
You won't miss anything important to you. Of course, the tool has many features that help you track, find the mentions of other brands in your posts, and notify them to highlight your blog.
You can also check out the other tools by the company to see which would be useful for link building.

5. Klear

Klear helps you find influencers, analyze their websites, manage your network relationships, and do much more. It is a popular blogger outreach tool that assists you in finding important details about the platform you want to contact.
The reports generated by this tool are undoubtedly a highlight. They are detailed and list the key metrics such as the social influence of the site and the link building profile.
You can start by opting for a free demo to understand how the tool works and then invest in it.

Guest Posting FAQs

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Q1. How Do I Post a Guest Post on Others’ Blogs?

The usual way is to contact the blog owners and pitch your post. But before that, you will need to know what kind of content they prefer and the quality of the posts on their site.
Do your research so that you can also check who the other guest bloggers are. Remember that you may have to tweak your writing style a bit to suit the overall tone for the other website.

Q2. What Is the Difference Between a Guest Post and a Blog Post?

A blog post is the one you put up on your website, and a guest post is the one you share on another person's website. Since you are not a blog owner, you are termed as a guest, and your post would be a guest blog.
Your guest blog will be read by others who don't even know you but follow the platform you wrote on. It will bring you more visibility.

Q3. Is Guest Posting Effective?

Yes, guest posting is effective if you do it the right way, as it will bring you more readers, subscribers, and followers.
A single post will not bring you any traction. You need to find popular websites that allow guest posts and write informative and engaging posts for them.
Do it regularly, and you will see new visitors checking your website to know more about you. Guest posting is for promoting.

4. Are There Any Sites for Free Guest Posting?

Of course, there are. All you need to do is search on Google using keywords like the ones mentioned below.

• Become a guest blogger + your niche
• Contribute to our site + your niche
• Blogs that accept guest posts + your niche
• Blogs with guest posts + your niche
• Write a guest blog + your niche

Just make sure to check the Domain Authority of the site before contacting them.

Q5. Why Is the DA of the Site Necessary for Guest Posting?

DA is the Domain Authority of a website, a score measured on a scale from 1-100 (100 being the highest). Websites with a higher DA score are considered high-quality websites.
Guest posting on such websites will bring you more visibility, and the backlink added to your website will also do its bit to help with SEO.
Websites with higher DA are automatically termed genuine and famous because of the quality of the content.

Q6. Can You List the Pros and Cons of Guest Posting?

The pros and cons of guest posting are as follows-
Pros

• Your brand will become more visible
• You can attract new followers
• Your network will grow, online and offline
• Generate quality backlinks for your website
• Increase organic traffic and search results
• Improve your website’s domain authority

Cons

• It is time-consuming
• Guest posting is hard work
• The results take time

Q7. Is Guest Posting the Same as Writing on Forums? If Not, Which One Is More Advantageous to My Website?

Guest posting and forum posting are not the same. A guest post is when you write on another's website, while a forum posting is where you answer questions posted on online forums.
Quora and Reddit are the two best examples of forums. Both guest posts and forums are essential for your website as they increase brand visibility and awareness.
Even though guest posts and forums don't generate immediate traffic, they do their bit to improve your site's SEO.
Give it a try now or you can speak to our experts to know more about guest posting and its impact on SEO.