The Right Way to do Guest Blogging – The definitive Guide To Guest Blogging

How to do guest blogging?

Guest Blogging Guide, tips & tricks: Search engine optimization or SEO as it is shortly referred to is a technique which can get your website or blog to the top in the search engine rankings and make it come up at higher ranks in search engines like Google. It focuses of shifting the attention of users for a particular query specifically on your site rather than your competitors. This is useful for attracting more visitors to your site. This is a very good thing to apply to your blog if you’re  blogging for monetization.

There are many methods used for applying genuine white hat techniques for SEO. Guest blogging is one such technique that can help you to increase your blog’s back links, provide great organic visits and increase your reputation as a genuine writer. You can use the blog as a fresh medium for uploading your contents and contact the owners of the blogs who are having their blogs on the nice of your expertise. Reading clear and concise meaningful blog entries will drive the visitors to know more about you which will land them to your blog ultimately. The back links that you get for your blog from Google are an added advantage.

How can guest blogging be useful?

Guest posting on other blogs can be a fun and rewarding experience. Guest blogging helps you to connect with fellow writers on the internet, meet new content creators and get to know some journalist and expand your knowledge on various niches. The side benefit of getting more visitors is always there. A guest post is a post that is written by you on someone’s else’s blog and which contains the material that is relevant to both yours and the owner’s blog.

The idea is to bring fresh content for the owner’s blog and to give enticing feeling of freshness to the readers who would be eager to see more of your own content on your target blog. This way all the parties are benefitted with guest blogging and it is recognized thus as a perfectly white hat technique for applying SEO to your blog.

Role of Guest posts in SEO

The guest posts that you submit on other’s blogs allow you to put a link in a small section at the end of your post called the resource box. The resource box contains the overall idea about the writer’s post, his expert niche and a link to his own target blog. Thus reading the resource box will get the visitors to click the link of your blog and they may like your blog and subscribe to updates. Thus guest posting plays a major role in SEO.

All in all guest posting has quite a few benefits both tangible and intangible for blogging. Thus one should always develop the practice of guest blogging and get to know about the fellow bloggers on the internet. The added benefits of link building and monetization though referral programs are just like icing on the cake. It is a great technique to make your voice be heard in front of the world.

Some SEO firms are in a state of panic! With Panda 2.0 rolling out, they are afraid that the usual practice of guest blogging is not going to work anymore. Ill-informed SEO pundits are predicting the end of guest blogging as we know it. However, the well-informed tell us that nothing can be farther from the truth! Guest blogging will continue to flourish as it did before Panda or Penguin came into the arena. This discrepancy is not due to faulty information or lack of knowledge. It is because of how you look at guest blogging.

The Right Reasons for Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is very much in vogue these days. Many SEO teams are creating blogs as posting it themselves as ‘guest posts’! The reason for this popularity of guest posts, which are not guest posts in any sense of the term, is that they are tagged to get links. SEO teams are always after guest posts to get them links from popular blogs and websites. In this context, Matt Cutts has already made it clear that such techniques put you in the red zone when it comes to Google.

So what are the right reasons to generate guest posts and request others to publish it on their pages? Here are a few:

How to do guest blogging effectively?

Guest Blogging Strategies

No More Spamming or Fake Guests

What Panda 2.0 has done to the world of guest blogging is a kind of weeding out the fakes and reinstating the genuine more strongly. With Panda keeping a close watch on your guest posts, you can no longer get spam content online using the pretext of guest blogging.

Also, the days of having your in-house writer churn up something and publishing it as a guest post is not going to work either! If you want to use guest posts, you have to be transparent about the source of the post and also the quality of the writing. Also the guest writer must have a strong online authority and genuine author bio.

Reference is the Key

To begin with, give credit to the guest blogger who is writing for your website or blog. Other than the name and a link to their blogging profile or social media page, there are other ways of attaching value to your guest blogger. You can write a short genuine bio on your guest blogger with reference links to other credible websites that contain their works. In short, your aim is to maintain transparency about the identity of your guest blogger. It also makes the writers feel special and you are sure to get more posts from them in the near future.

Internal Linking

This trick is for the guest bloggers to follow. To ensure that your work is validated on the host’s website or blog, use internal web links that establish contact between your guest post and the host’s website. This will enable Google to understand that you are an authentic guest blogger who understands the responsibility and is willing to put value on the content of both your post and that of the host. Of course, along with these points, your content must be unique and relevant.

Strategizing Effective SEO Techniques Using Quality Guest Posts

Every website is not effective enough to attract audience at the first place. A website is built and then it has to be worked upon to make it reachable to a wide range of public. Walking through these odds makes us come across a special tool called the guest posting. This form of content publishing mixes the concepts of original content to the link building concepts helping the publisher to direct traffic from other sources to his own website.

This aims at publishing an unique piece of writing at a selected website which is somewhat popular allowing guest posting to be done and then the links which are to be publicized have to be hyperlinked with the appropriate content. Clicking on these hyperlinks allow the viewers get directed to the selected websites which need to be promoted. This is an effective method and reduces the requirements of cost oriented link buildings, which may, on expiration of account can show them as broken ones.

SEO Significance

The concepts and functionalities of guest posting has become an imperative aspect of any SEO service. The search engine optimization aims at making the client websites popular by making their pages go viral over the net and thus ensure continued surfing. This process is made of a few simple steps like:

• The publishing website is being contacted by the professionals asking it to allow link publishing in lieu of good and genuine guest posts.
• When the website confirms a sample article is being provided to assure them of quality matter.
• Once the publishing is allowed and completed the link of the website to be promoted has to be provided at the publisher’s info. These are active links and navigate the viewers to the selective domains.

Noted Guest Blogging Guidelines

Many websites have selective norms related to the publishing of articles. Some have strict guidelines regarding the type and topic of the content which can be posted on their pages. Along with these there are many other steps which need to be followed by the SEO companies so that their clients can reap maximum benefits:

• Originality is a must. The topics which are to be published must be written by experienced content writers as one needs to build strong relations with the website owners to allow continued postings.
• The content must not be irrelevant to the requirements and should be of educational nature to induce attention.
• Proper researches must be done and pictures to be added if required.
• One must look to build communal relationships and hence as soon as a post gets published, a note of thankfulness must be returned to the selected webmaster.
• Content must be factual with notable reference sources and not merely based on opinions.

Benefits

The guest posting techniques if undertaken efficiently can make the job of the SEO easier. They lend the following benefits to the client website and thus become helpful:

1. Getting increased amount of traffic for the website.
2. Making the website globally visible.
3. Creating online influence.
4. Increasing credibility and authoritative influence.

Summary

An SEO company must always resort to experienced writers for penning down the guest post content as publishing them on a website means entry into the traffic of a gainful source. These sources have their own demands as they wouldn’t allow free link promotions. They look for creative and informative posts for their sites and in return the link building job is allowed.

Description

To gauge the importance of guest posting in the field of SEO, allowing the clients get increased attention and traffic directed to their sites.

Know More About Guest Blogging!!

Today we’re going to discuss guest blogging from unusual point of view. There’s a plenty of articles about guest blogging. Most of them are :

a) Guest blogging for dummies. This kind of articles usually answers such questions as:

– What is guest blogging?

– What are the benefits of guest blogging?

– How can I find websites for guest blogging?

– Are there any sample pitches?

b) Advanced guest blogging tips, answering questions:

– How to evaluate guest posting opportunities?

– Which are the best pitch advices?

– Are there any non-obvious ways of finding blogs?

These are really good articles which can not only show you how this link building technique works, but also they can give you some valuable experience instantly. The truth is that this knowledge is not enough to succeed while guest blogging. Here are the main points of how we can benefit from guest blogging:

• Inbound links
• Social media signals
• High quality traffic
• Exposure

Your guest blogging will turn into chaotic process without proper organizing, and the only thing you’ll get instead of benefits is gonna be just a few more clicks/links/contacts.

Assuming that you’ve already got acquainted with such kind of material and have already got your own experience (or just decided to), I want to put your mind to organizing your link building campaign. All tips mentioned below are a mix of my own experience, ideas and materials I’ve read, and I really hope they will help you with your Internet marketing efforts.

1. Make a protocol of your guest blogging

I understand that some of you believe, they can easily memorize all blogs they’ve contacted. I want to ensure you that it will become impossible very fast after you start mass pitching. Your own protocol will help you to:

•  Avoid repeated contacting of the same bloggers
• Track the status of each blog
• Collect each blog’s guest posting criteria
• Easily compare basic metrics of guest blogging domains

It’s obvious that a perfect guest blogging protocol will be a spreadsheet. Here is a sample of spreadsheet used by our guest bloggers.

As you can see, there are no basic metrics like PR, MozRank, Alexa Rank and so on. Every Internet marketing specialist has his/her own vision of how to get benefits from guest blogging (links, social media, exposure, traffic, etc.). That is why I offer you to add a set of metrics according to your primary goals and preferences. Here’s a Google spreadsheet template, which you can easily copy to start tracking and scaling your process up.

2.Stop neglecting young (weak) and irrelevant blogs

SEO is becoming more and more popular every year, which causes a growth of organic competition. In such an actively growing environment we just can’t neglect any prospects. This prompt may cause numerous resentments, but let me first explain my point of view.

First of all, I want to say that there are blogs which can be harmful for your backlink profile:

•  the ones with adult or gambling content
• the ones banned from Google
• the ones with a huge amount of irrelevant external links in posts and blogroll
• the ones overwhelmed with banners, etc.

I believe that getting links from such blogs is a big risk for your project, that’s why I advice you to ignore them. But there is a huge amount of young blogs which just haven’t gained big audience, trust, and authority yet. But I believe that links from such blogs will never harm your website; they will give a minor advantage, hence we should use them!

I will try to explain my opinion with the help of a long tail graph.

EXPLANATION: A graph shows an approximate distribution of blogs on the Internet by their quality. An area under the figure (quality x quantity) shows us the potential of each group of blogs. As you can see, the neglect of medium and weak blogs will decrease your potential by ~66%. Also, the most popular blogs receive 100’s of guest posting pitches daily, and that is why it’s much more difficult to get your post approved there. So, I advise you to use the complete potential, which will multiply your results.

Sure, some readers will tell me, that they don’t want to build weak links to their websites. Even in this case you can use medium quality and weak blogs for your link building – use them to make your high quality guest posts more popular:

Variant 1

Variant 2

If you promote a microbiology website, you won’t find too much straightly relevant websites for this niche. That is why I advise you to find some blogs with close subjects, such as science, colleges, biology and so on. It’s obvious that a sports blog won’t be relevant to your niche. Use common sense while choosing relevant blogs.

3. Manage the effectiveness of each guest blogging source

Your guest blogging protocol will help you analyze your actions in order to make them more effective in future. There are numerous ways to find guest blogs:

• MyBlogGuest
• Twitter
• Google
• and many others.

Depending on your website niche and pitch manner, some of guest blogging sources may turn out to be more effective than others.

It’s very simple to compare these techniques just after 30 days of intensive guest blogging.

Just take the criteria which are the most important for your campaign (this may be average time of posting, average text size, average PR, Google Index, MozRank, etc), and build your own formula of effectiveness. For example, if those sample criteria are important for you, your formula will be the following:

Q=(PR x GI x MR)/(t x V), where:

• PR – Page Rank
• GI – Google Index
• MR – MozRank
• t – posting time
• V – required volume of article

This formula can be easily used in your spreadsheet; all you have to do is to fill your table in. The more experience you will gain, the more accurate results you will have.

At the end of the day I want to tell you that these are tips, which helped our link building team increase the overall performance of guest blogging. The main goal of article is to show you that predictable results always come together with organized campaigns.

What to Do Right to Pitch a Guest Blog Post (Advertiser’s POV)

Guest blogging is quite in vogue these days. Earlier on this blog, I had written about the advantage of writing and submitting blog posts as guest bloggers. In a nutshell, publishing your guest blog post on a popular platform opens up your work to a whole new readership. More netizens are exposed to your work and if they like your ideas and writing, these new readers will subscribe to your own blog. Guest blogging is also a fantastic way to catch the attention of influencers and opinion-makers in your domain of business.

Steps to find guest blogging opportunities

Tips 1: Use Google search operators

For example, if you want to search websites that accept guest blogging on SEO, type these commands in Google.

Write for us + SEO
seo + “guest post”
“Guest post by” seo
seo + submit a guest post
seo “submit blog post”
seo “submit a guest post”
allintitle:seo + guest post

Tips 2: Find country specific or local guest blogging opportunities

For example if you want to find the sites in UK who accept guest posts on digital marketing , type the following in Google and see the results –

site:uk write for us + digital marketing
site:uk “Guest post by” digital marketing

Tips 3: Google reverse image search to find authors & their guest posting sites

If you see an author image in an article you can just right click on the image and can click on “search Google for images” and you can see the other sites where this author has contributed guest posts.

Tips 4: Find list of blogs that accept guest posts

Search in Google with the following keywords.

guest posting blogs list
top guest post blogs
guest posting sites 2020
guest blogging site list

Tips 5: Search for excellent topics

• Use Google trends
• Use buzzsumo
• Follow Twitter, Facebook, Quora, LinkedIn
• Follow Google’s “People Also Ask” [PAA] feature
• Follow high authority blogs in your domain and see their posts
• Set google alerts for the topics

Do not offer generic guest post. Write relevant guest post targeting the audience of the host blog

However, more often than not, guest blog posts are rejected by the host! The reason can be varied. The usual ones are quite obvious, though. You may, in your zeal, offer a guest blog post that is totally irrelevant to the host blog. For example, I write about the digital marketing world on this blog. If someone submits a guest blog on Indian classical music, will I publish it, much though I’d be flattered by the blogger’s interest in uploading their work on my blog? This is definitely the cardinal rule that you have to follow: submit guest posts only on relevant blogs.

Secondly, offering a shabby piece of work as a guest post is a strict no-no.

 Remember that the host blog already has a dedicated readership. They visit and read the blog simply because of quality work. If a host blog publishes substandard work on its page, it will offend the existing readers. It reflects quite poorly on the host blog. The host blog cannot and will not hamper their branding and credibility by publishing posts that do not measure up to their high standards. The lesson to learn here is, edit thoroughly and then submit your work.

Original & unique writing

The third point ensues from the second one. Other than the writing, the ideas you present has to be original and unique as well. No one likes reading borrowed posts that have a strong shadow of the original source. The online world is about expressing your views and original take on things. Walking the beaten path will not get you noticed. Even if your ideas are radical or somewhat impractical, if they are original and inspiring, they will click with the online readers. On the other hand, if you are offering research data and drawing inferences from them, make sure your research is accurate. Never forget to acknowledge the source of your stats.

Host blogs accept guest posts that add value to their blog. 

It cannot be a single-way traffic. If you are looking for more readers for your own blog and authority in your domain, the host blog is also up to something! The blog wants to offer variety of content to their established reader base. They want to treat their readers to something different and unique. These are parameters that your blog has to measure up to. Unless you add value to the host blog, they will never publish your work.

Be accommodating about rejections. 

Always ask why your post got rejected and work on your weak areas. You can try to offer two or three posts as options to the editor of the host blog. Let them choose which they want to publish. In your topic selection, make sure you go through the host blog and avoid topics which were already published in the recent past. Pick up topics that are not covered or present your post on similar topics but in a new, fresh manner. This will ensure that your posts are not rejected because the host blog has already published something similar sometime back.

Finally, respect your own time and that of your readers.

 If you want to say something, do that without beating around the bush. Popular host blogs have many posts waiting for the attention of the readers. If you have already managed to go through the editing board and published your work, don’t squander away that opportunity! Make it count and impress the readers. If the readers like your work, publishing the next guest post on the same blog will not be much of a problem.

Writing Guest Posts: Get Designated Writers

In present day content marketing, guest posts play an important role. But that role comes into play only if the posts are written with some degree of authority and knowledge. You have to be doubly sure about what you’re writing before you send them over as guest posts. In order to maintain a benchmark of quality, and to protect the reputation of your brand, you will need powerful writers to fulfill the job. A smart move is to set aside some writers who are designated to do the job of churning out guest posts.

Why do you need designated writers for guest posts? There are many reasons. To begin with, the more a writer deals with a certain topic, the deeper they delve into the topic. They carry out research and learn more about what they are writing about. It makes little sense to uproot them from this scholastic pursuit and get them to write on some other topic. Instead, let them work on the guest posts alone while you have other writers to deal with your different content requirements. This will save time and also do a world of good to the quality of your guest posts.

Writers, when they have been working with a particular client, understand their demands and preferences. Writing is a domain which every client claims to know something about! They will come up with suggestions, opinions and criticisms.

You will need more than just your talent as a writer to tide over these trying times. If you designate writers for guest posts, they will pick up the tricks of writing that makes a client happy. Sooner rather than later, they will write copies that will be published online as guest posts with no editing at all! Unless you have designated writers, you cannot achieve this kind of online content nirvana.

Leaving a writer to dwell, think and write on a single domain only improves productivity and creativity in terms of writing. Just like they say, a rolling stone gathers no moss! A writer who juggling topics like SEO, women’s hair products and celebrity gossip will fail to do justice to any of these domains. And with the kind of authority as a writer that you need for guest posts, designated writers are a must in this regard. Even if you have to get freelance writers on board, use separate writers for your guest posts.

Tips for Startups to Encourage Guest Blogging

It is very important for startups to encourage guest bloggers. The influx of guest blog posts will give out the message to internet users that your website is serious about providing credible and authentic information. By the use of guest blogging, you will be able to build up a community of readers who visit your website regularly. Google also shows special respect for upcoming websites that put up genuine, informative content. But guest bloggers need to be encouraged so that they come to websites run by startups to offer their writing.

Make it Convenient

To welcome guest bloggers to your website, you have to make the guest blogging process transparent and easy. No blogger will waste their time going through a number of steps in order to submit their work. At most they will email it in or fill out a small form along with the attached content page. Use email id on your Contact Us page that has a real name on it. Bloggers are repelled by email ids like [email protected]. Such email ids make bloggers think that the guest blogging submission procedure is dicey and may not lead anywhere.

Be Honest about Rejections

If you feel that a guest blog post is not suitable to be published on your page, make it known to the blogger. Do not simply delete it and forget all about it. Give reasons and explain it to the blogger why you could not publish it. That way you can stick to your guest blogging editing policy and yet not offend the blogger. It may be that the blogger will learn your policy and come back with content that subscribes to it. Ignoring a blogger who submits content to your website with all good intention is offensive and unethical.

Explain your Network

If you like the work of a guest blogger, get in touch with them and talk about other guest blogging websites that you have. They may be interested in submitting other blog post to these associated websites as well. It is a win-win situation for you! You get to keep the guest blogger close by for your other web pages as well. In the same vein, if the writer gets in touch with you and asks for other websites that you may have, be forthcoming and respond to the queries. 

N.B. – Be very careful about giving backlinks to author’s site. Check the quality of the site manually & periodically otherwise if your site looks similar to article sites pointing to numerous other poor quality websites, you might be hurt by Google’s panda & penguin search update. Guest blogging is very good if used wisely or else it can be boomerang.

Top 5 Tricks to Get Better Guest Posts (Publisher’s POV)

Accepting guest posts has a number of advantages. In this post we will discuss on how to get better guest posts in order to make use of them. You will be able to derive more benefit from your guest posts if you look at it from the perspective of the guest bloggers as well. When you think about both sides of the coin, you will be able to get better posts coming in for your blog. Here are the top 5 tips that you need to keep in mind to get better guest posts for your blog:

Set Written Guidelines:

Guest bloggers need to know what kind of posts you are interested in so that they know what to write about in order to be accepted. Have a written set of guidelines on your blog to make things clear to the guest bloggers. In this guideline, make sure you have preferred topics and keywords written down to make your intentions clear.

Let Guest Bloggers Upload:

Do not remain tied up with the uploading and publishing of guest posts. Allow the guest bloggers to do it. Let these bloggers select images, if any, to go with their posts and also embed web links and other backend accessories. It will give the guest bloggers more editorial control and more freedom to upload.

Call for a Draft:

You can allow the guest bloggers to upload their work on your blog but always call for a draft of the piece for your approval. Brand value is not to be squandered in any possible manner! You wouldn’t like to upload something that destroys your credibility. Instead, edit the guest post at the drafting stage and leave the uploading to the guest blogger.

Google Guest Blogger Profiles:

You don’t allow an unknown person to be a part of your social media circle without checking their profile. Why would it be any different for a guest blogger? Research and finalize your guest bloggers before accepting their work. Find out what they have done previously and how distinctive their blogging identity is. That will help you keep away the unscrupulous guest bloggers.

Call Back Good Writers:

A time-tested way to attract excellent guest posts is to call back guest bloggers who have submitted quality content to your blog in the past. Keep in touch with those excellent writers because they are a rare breed! And call upon them to deliver again when you require guest posts.

Beware of ‘Spammy’ Guest Blogging

In a recent blog of Matt Cutts, he has pressed the panic button warning against the decaying credibility of guest blogging in the coming year. He has denounced bulk guest-posting as a “Spammy Practice”, which he equates with keeping bad company and hanging out with them. Is there a real, good reason to hit the panic button yet? We can try to delve a little deeper to fish out the reason for Matt’s concern.

Matt is disturbed to see the degeneration of guest posts over the time as the purpose of such write-ups has got changed and become more “Link” oriented. There was a time when receiving a guest post used to be more like getting a good introduction, written by a prestigious author. Gradually, guest posts have become nicely decorated envelopes to push in some do-follow links in disguise. In fact, internet marketers in some cases, go to the extent of offering money for what they think is a viable process to earn higher Page Rank.

It is unfair to blame them for turning a ‘once-upon-a-time’ authentic trend into practice as that is the process that fuels the entire process of SEO mobilizing internet marketing. Every time, something initialized in the big bad world of SEO, sparks some hope, the web masters use, reuse and abuse it to the extent that it becomes a wildfire and ruins everything around it. Guest-blogging has become such an overused tool for internet marketing that the search engines these days are flooded with results like, articles on “guest-blog outsourcing”.

Things have gone so bad that it is not at all a good idea these days to rely much on the guest-posting sites for credible link building. Matt seems too disappointed with the guest-blogging SEO strategy to believe just any site anymore to accept guest posts from.

In 2013, he warned the internet-marketing world against the deterioration of articles’ quality that might occur due to the overuse of this practice. By the middle of 2013, his anxiety started appearing in the SEO world in its concrete shape. More and more spammy sites started pushing their links through their guest articles.

All the bad effects cannot nullify the effective use of guest blogs for purposes like, reaching out to a larger reader base, proper branding, etc. The purgation process can be attempted only through smart selection of ‘what to take?’ and most importantly, ‘What not to take?’

Matt Cutts Advises to Go Slow with Guest Blogging

Are you into thinking that the best way to drive traffic to your website from territories beyond your control zone is to offer guest posts for other blogs? It’s time to rethink your strategy a little, if you go by what Matt Cutts of Google has to advise.

According to Cutts, you must offer guest posts only in moderation and not go over the top trying to bring in traffic to your website. He clearly states that if guest blogging is one of the main strategies that you have to bring in online visitors, you will be putting the brand reputation of your website under serious threat.

Answering a general query about the difference between genuine guest posts and ones that are written for payment in link building efforts, Matt Cutts said that there was a fundamental difference between them. And that difference comes from the purpose of the guest post that is written. Posts written for links are usually heavy on keywords and anchor texts.

The algorithms of Google quickly spot such posts and flag them as spam. However, guest posts written with honest and genuine intentions do not have a smattering of keywords or anchor links. Cutts mentions that while reviewing and checking spam reports picked up by Google, this basic difference is highlighted.

Matt Cutts is of the opinion that guest posts written for authentic reasons are usually by experts who have substantial knowledge in the subject. Because of their domain knowledge, the content is rich in information and low on deliberate use of keywords.

The number of anchor links is also few and far between. Another sign post that tags a guest post as genuine is that more often than not, spam posts have no link between their title heads and the content body. With more sophisticated algorithms working overtime on Google, such spam posts do not stand a chance at all! Cutts signs off with a warning saying that guest blogging should not be your ‘full-time job’.