How to Get Started with Guest Posting: Complete Guide

Guest posting has never been so popular. As Google values the quality of backlinks more than their quantity, many bloggers seriously took up communication with potential partners. But what to do if you’re new to the industry yet desperately want to be a part of it?

You asked and we delivered! This guide covers all the important basics and intricacies of guest blogging in 2021. How to look for suitable sites? What do guest posts mean for SEO? What are the benefits for you? How to start?

All of these questions will be answered, along with more difficult ones.

Come along for a full guide with a step-by-step to release your first guest post!

What Is Guest Posting and Why It’s So Popular?

Before the tutorial, you have to learn about what guest publications are and their benefits.

Guest posting on blogs is a digital marketing method that helps you to:

• Bring awareness to your brand.
  Writing a useful piece of content and posting it on another website with the mention of your brand will bring more attention to it. If the website is relevant to your industry, there should be a curious, loyal audience. Getting some of it to visit your source is a chance to charm them with your content quality and usefulness.
• Find customers and partners.
  If you offer products or services, this is an opportunity for you to find leads and convert them into customers. If looking for partners, just shift the focus of your guest posts or/and links you provide there.
• High-quality traffic.
  People interested in the industry may find your blog useful and credible. They will remain as regular readers and help you promote further on social media and third-party sources. These people may also become leads and buy your products after all.
• Backlink opportunities.
  Although in 2021 some Google representatives say backlinks should be nofollow or mentioned as sponsored, this doesn’t mean backlinks for SEO won’t remain a working strategy for getting attention. Maybe getting higher in the ranks may become more difficult, but this isn’t the only purpose of guest blogging.

An important consideration for beginners is their purpose of writing guest posts.

Here are some:

• Building links to your website;
• Getting more traffic to a particular section, post, or your homepage;
• Building reputation as a credible source;
• Finding new people for an email subscription, etc.

It doesn’t have to be one purpose per campaign. You can combine a couple of them and achieve the best results in a complex with other promotion methods.
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Where to Post Blogs: Major Requirements and Steps on Finding the Best

One of the most important things you’ll have to do is finding suitable guest blogging sites for your posts. Without long introductions, let’s get to the point. To find blogs for cooperation, you need Google.

Open the main page and search for keywords like:

• Guest post;
• Guest post by;
• Write for us;
• Contribute to our/this/my blog;
• The post was written by, etc.

For more specific results, put the keywords in quotation marks. This orders Google to look for the exact phrase, not separate words.

You will see blogs that are popular among marketers who want to promote there. Many sources use their platform for guest publications to monetize it, so be prepared to invest. But only invest in the best services!

Now, it’s time to investigate.

The most important criteria on where to post blogs are:

• Research the website back and forth. See if the content posted there is high-quality and relevant. Check how many links they post and whether it looks like a link farm. If it does, proceed to the next option. You don’t need websites with poor reputation and quality on your backlink profile.
• Posting awesome content on an irrelevant topic won’t bring you many benefits. For backlinking? Maybe but not recommended. For audience? Totally not recommended. Only look for blogs with a similar topic or at least the one you can connect your niche to.
• If the website has data about their traffic flow in public access, research it. If not, look at the comment sections, shares, and reviews on other services. When posting on another site, you deserve to know if there are any people at all that may click your link.
• Website rating or authority is also very important. If it’s a relatively new website that isn’t indexed fully yet its webmaster asks for a considerable payment for a guest post, it’s not what you’re looking for. Check how many of the articles published there are on the top of SERPs and where the site is overall. Google tools will help you with that.

A common mistake by some bloggers is to write posts not related to their topic and look for any guest blogging opportunities instead of finding relevant services. Like, if you have a small local phone case business in Ukraine, posting about it on a website about engineering in the UK isn’t the best idea. It may be cheap or even free, but it’s not worth it.

If all of this sounds too difficult now, you need some extra recommendations.

One of the best tips for beginners is to look at how professionals are doing it. You can find more on the topic from Adsy, a guest posting service that knows every intricacy of the craft. As you take specialists as an example, the standards are high, but the results will be surprisingly great!

After surfing the site, come back here, and let’s start writing your first guest post.

Steps on Making Your First Guest Post a Success

From writing the post to replying to comments and seeing results.

1. Investigate the Publisher’s Blog Area

Look at every published title and see if you can deliver something different, better, more unique. It can be:

• A completely another topic relevant to your and the publisher’s niche(s);
• An update on the existing topic (…: 2021 Edition);
• A different look with interesting examples.

2. Write the Article

A nice tip is to try and mimic the blog owner’s writing style, but it’s not required. Having some similar features will cater to the blog’s audience that is used to a certain style. However, you should also create your own special patterns future guest posts will be recognized by.

Try to balance both and be:

• 100% unique (check with plagiarism services);
• Grammatically correct (also possible to check online);
• Valuable as a writer and specialist in the field;
• Ready to SEO optimize the post to necessary keywords.

3. Contact the Owner

You can either ask if they accept guest posts at the moment or make an offer right away. Be very polite, compliment their website, blog, and everything they do. Humbly ask to make a contribution, maybe send a snippet of the post.

If you get rejected, no problem. There are other blogs on the topic. And, after all, you can publish it on your website, why not?
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4. Reply to Comments, Promote, and See Results

When people start asking questions or commenting on your post with another purpose, reply to all of them. Be polite, explain things, answer questions, be grateful, and apologize when needed.

Meanwhile, notice the traffic changes on your website. When new readers flow there, create an introductory post for them on your source.

You can also promote the post on social media for more people to find out about it and your website.

When you conquer one blog, go further and higher. You’ll develop your own strategy, and guest posting will become a powerful promoting tool instead of a dreadful experience!

Frank Hamilton

Frank Hamilton is a blogger and translator from Manchester. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and SEO. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.