An introduction to Guest Posting

Guest posting is a technique that has been used by bloggers for years and is catching on more within the SEO and online marketer’s communities. In this article I want to explore the reasons behind the increasing numbers of SEO’s utilising guest posts and how it could benefit you.

What is Guest Posting?

First things first, what is guest posting? A guest post is an article that you publish on a blog that doesn’t belonging to you. Only guest posts on blogs within the same niche and be sure to take a good look around their blog beforehand to get a feel for their writing style and try and tailor your article to match their blog. For example if you have found a great blog that’s niche is the environment don’t send them an article a new sports car, chances are it will get rejected.
From an SEO perspective guest posts are fantastic, as any SEO should know the key to a successful campaign is great content. Guest posting gives you a unique opportunity to share this content with a previously untapped market, increasing your brand awareness, your online authority, presence and a great source of backlinks.

How to find the best blogs for your niche?

This may seem like a daunting task, the internet is a big place and it is brimming with blogs. To identify guest blogs in your niche there are a couple of tools at your disposal.

Blogger LinkUp – Blogger LinkUp (BLU) is a fantastic resource for aspiring guest posters, set up by Cathy Stucker it is a completely free service that only requires you to sign up to an email newsletter. By doing so you will start receiving 3 emails a week, in these emails are lists of people that are either looking for or offering guest posts. From these lists you can then contact other bloggers with your ideas for your guest posts and hopefully get your article published.

I have been using it for a couple of months now both as a guest blogger and a blog that accepts guest posts and have excellent responses. However if you want to put your blog up for guest posts expect to be bombarded with emails!

My Blog Guest – The second tool which is another great asset to guest bloggers is My Guest Blog, whilst I am less familiar with this service it is still an excellent service for those looking to get stuck into guest posting. My Guest Blog is set up around a tight knit community of bloggers looking for new content, it is very welcoming. You can search through their database of blog and articles filtering by category, country, tags and even owner to find the perfect blog for your article.

Google – Of course our old friend Google has to be included in this list, the search engine giant is a fantastic resource when search for anything, guest posts are no exceptions. By making the most of their advanced search tools you can find blogs that accept guest posts.  Here a few examples of some search terms to get you started (make sure you include the quotation marks in your search):

• “write for us” – We will start simple, whilst this is far too general and it will still be difficult to find blog in your niche it gives you a good idea of how this all works.
• “topic” +  “write for us” – As you can see this is just a slight extension from the previous and it will provide significantly better results.
• “name” + “ Guest author” – You would use this if you know of a guest author in your field you could insert and find where they have provided a guest post.

This is just scratching the surface of what can be done using Google search, it is the most powerful search tool available and the examples used here are very basic. Be sure to try out different variations and combinations of search terms as every blog will not be the same, other popular  search terms for bloggers include “guest post” and “guest contributor”.

First Contact

This the most important part of guest posting as far as I am concerned. Your first contact with a blog owner is what will make or break your guest posting opportunity, it is well worth taking the time to construct a carefully worded email. Take care of the details, make sure all the formatting is the same and try and make it as personal as possible.

As an owner of a blog that accepts guest posts I get dozens of emails that are poorly worded and constructed and these often end up in my spam folder. If you can’t be bothered to spend the time to write an email properly why should anyone take the time to read it?

Ok rant over, I hope this blog has helped you with your guest posting needs. Remember to definitely check out Blogger LinkUp and My Blog Guest and keep those emails personal and well written. Best of luck and for more SEO tips and tricks be sure to follow us onTwitter and Google+.