Guest Blogging Opportunities for SEO, How to be a Reverse Engineering Ninja

Guest blogging is a great way to build your brand online. It gives you the opportunity to gain exposure with two of your favorite targets: people in your market and search engine algorithms. It’s really the best of both worlds. You need to be careful about going overboard, but generally, it rocks for SEO and growing an online business.

In this tutorial we’ll cover the necessity of guest blogging, how to find opportunities to post pieces for other sites online, and a few pointers on choosing the right sites for guest blogging.

Why Guest Blogging?

If you’re brand new to digital marketing, you might be asking yourself: “Why should I guest blog?” You may even be thinking that you’re having enough trouble keeping up with content marketing on your own sites and you don’t have time to guest blog on other people’s sites.

That may certainly be the case, but the key phrase here is: “return on investment.” If you can get a better return on investment by posting on someone else’s blog as opposed to posting on your own blog, wouldn’t you like to do that? Of course you would.

Good news: It’s quite likely that you can.

That’s because you’ll almost always guest blog on established websites that have been around for years and likely have quite a bit more traffic than your sites do. Posting on a popular blog gives you two great opportunities.

First, you’re going to use your real name and your brand name when you post as a guest on another blog. That gives your brand more exposure. You’ll also create a link back to your site so that people who are in your target market will have the opportunity to visit your site and become paying customers.

Second, you’re going to provide backlinks to your site when you guest blog as a means of improving your search engine rankings. For me, this is the last thing I think about. In fact, I don’t even care if the link is nofollow, I just like getting our name out there.

The bottom line is that you should never be afraid to stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s great to build your brand with the assistance of others who’ve gone on before you and have established a solid online presence. Guest blogging gives you a great opportunity to do that.

Finding Guest Blogging Opportunities

Now that we’ve covered the importance of guest blogging, let’s look into the various ways to go about finding guest blogging opportunities so that you can further establish your brand in cyberspace.

Use Google

If you’re looking for something online, where do you usually go? Probably, Google. Your efforts to find guest posting opportunities should be no exception to this rule.

Go to Google and type in a search string that will return sites that allow people to guest post. If you’re not sure which strings to use, don’t worry, because we’ve provided them right here:

submit a guest post
guest post by
accepting guest posts
want to write for us
guest post guidelines
guest post opportunities
this is a guest post by
submit blog post
contribute to our site
guest column
submit content
submit your content
submit post
guest post courtesy of
submit an article
contributor guidelines
guest posts wanted

Keep in mind, all of those keywords will land you on sites that offer guest posting opportunities for a variety of subjects, some of which may have nothing to do with your niche. That’s okay, though. You either need to get creative and find a way to offer some valuable content to those sites or move on to one that is more in your niche.

However, you can enhance every single keyword in the list above by adding a niche-relevant keyword in front of it and then performing the search. For example, if the keyword you’re trying to rank for is “blue widgets,” then you would type “blue widgets submit a post” into the Google search bar. That should give you a list of sites specific to your keyword and that also accept guest posts. Make sure to review our ultimate guide on Google search operators to get the most out of your search engine.

You’ll find that, in some cases, you’ll need to contact the webmaster to request a guest post opportunity. That’s usually not a problem, since almost every website has a “Contact” link in the header or footer nowadays.

In other cases, the webmaster will provide you with a user interface that allows you to submit an article on the spot. It will certainly go through some editorial review, and may even get rejected, but it will give you an opportunity to create an article right away.

“Media Coverage”

You’ll find that some bloggers or brands in general list all their media coverage. See here.

I found this by searching for, jewlery “media coverage”. This gives me a great idea where they have been covered. I can find all kinds of placement opportunities as well as guest blog spots.

Also, use these other keywords in your Google searches:

my posts on other blogs
my guest blogs
posts on other blogs
I’ve been featured on
sites I’ve written for

These will give you more guest blog related sites.

Social Media

Sure, Google is a great resource to use if you’re looking all over the web for a specific keyword. However, you’ll likely find some additional opportunities if you perform specific searches on social media.

For example, go to Twitter and perform a search on “guest post.” That will give you a list of tweets by people who are bragging about a recent guest post. Even better, enter your keyword plus “guest post” (i.e., “blue widgets guest post”) to see niche-related results.

The great thing about performing a Twitter search is that your top results will typically be just a few hours old. That will give you a great opportunity to reach out to webmasters who are currently accepting guest posts.

Perform the same searches on Google+. You might find even more opportunities.

One more thing on social media… Keep in mind, most the people managing social media accounts ALSO manage the blog. So if you need a contact, a great place to start is by messaging a site on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and asking there first.

Find out What Your Competitors are Doing

If you’re like just about anyone else involved in online marketing, you’ve got competition. Fortunately, you can often leverage your competitor’s efforts to locate some guest blogging opportunities.

Fire up your backlink tracker of choice (Moz Open Site Explorer is an excellent option, as is Majestic SEO’s Site Explorer) and plug in your competitor’s domain. Then, view the backlinks to the site. Look for possibilities of guest posting through the list that gets returned.

This option requires a little more effort than the others, but you could come across some great guest posting opportunities on established blogs.

Use Guest Posting to Find Other Guest Posting Opportunities

You can feed off of your own success. Once you’ve followed the methods listed above and created some guest posts, you might find that some additional doors open.

For example, you can check the comments section of the blog post that you created. You may come across some great feedback from a couple of people who happen to run their own blogs. Why not reach out to those individuals and ask if they’re interested in the idea of you creating guest posts for their websites? They seem to like what you have to offer, so you’re already off to a great start.

In addition, once things start rolling it is hard to stop. If you land a couple big guest spots, people start finding you.

Be Lazy: Find a List of Blogs That Accept Guest Posts

Throughout this article, we’ve touched quite a bit on getting things done efficiently by letting others do the work for you. Why not get totally lazy and just find a list of blogs that offer guest posting opportunities?

Here’s a list that you might find useful. Google around for others. You might find this list of keywords useful:

guest posting sites
guest post sites
list of sites that accept guest posts

Posting on the Right Sites

Once you’ve found a list of sites that offer guest blogging opportunities, you’re left with the very good problem of deciding which ones you’d like to write for. Here are some tips for picking the right blogs.

High PA/DA

If you’re looking to create some solid link juice back to your website, then you’re going to want authority sites. Fortunately, Moz Open Site Explorer can tell you about a site’s authority. When you get info about a domain on Open Site Explorer, you’ll see two key metrics: Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA). They’re both numbers between 1 and 100, with a higher number being better.

If you’re just looking to provide some solid backlinks, then you should guest post on the blogs with the highest PA and DA that will accept your request. It’s that simple.

However, there’s nothing wrong with link diversity, either. Feel free to post on “lesser” blogs so you can get backlinks from a variety of sources.

Ignore PR

There was a time when Google Page Rank (PR) was relevant. It seems to be on its way to extinction these days, so it’s best to use the PA/DA metrics as described above.

Niche-Relevant Blogs

Obviously, a great way to build backlinks that have relevance and put your brand in front of more people is to find a non-competitive blog that’s relevant to your niche and offer up a guest post on that site. For example, if you’re in the construction business, you might create a guest post on real estate blog about the state of the real estate market in your area. That’s often better for reaching people in your target market than it is for improving your search rankings.

Wrapping it up

Now that you have an idea about how to locate and pursue great guest blogging opportunities, there’s no better time than the present to start your guest blogging adventure. Find some sites that will welcome your content, produce amazing pieces for them, and watch your own site traffic increase as a result. If you still want to learn more about advanced targeting, take the time to read these articles.

Have questions about guest blogging? Make sure to comment below.