How To Get Guest Posts For Any Type Of Site

Guest posts are an excellent way to reach your target audience, spread the word about your brand, and grow your website’s rank in Google’s SERPs.

Guest posts not only position your brand strategically where your audience will find you, but they also allow you to redirect some of the audience to your website.

If your post resonates soundly with your readers, many of them will click on your profile to find out more about you.

The links allowed in guest posts are one of the main reasons why people actively seek guest posting opportunities.

The more the number of such backlinks a website has, the higher it will rank in search results.

It is no surprise that many link-building campaigns are mostly about finding guest posting opportunities.

However, finding high-quality guest posting opportunities can be a challenge.

This piece will look at how you can find websites that accept guest posts in your niche, and how to make sure your post is published with your links included.

Finding The Right Site For Your Guest Posts

First, here is how to determine if a website is a good fit for your guest posts.

Confirm Relevance

A high number of backlinks indeed increases your ranking in Google, but the search giant looks beyond the numbers.

The site hosting your guest post and backlink must be relevant to your niche. This is referred to as domain relevance.  

So the best websites for guest posting are those that are in the same niche as your brand.

The guest post topic must also be relevant to your brand.

Check Domain Authority

Every website is assigned an authority score by Google. A guest post published on Forbes will not be rated the same as a guest-post on a small personal blog.

The higher the domain authority (DA) of the website you are looking to post on, the better. 

High DA sites will give more weight to any links you secure with your guest-posting campaigns. 

Google’s exact formula for DA scores is unknown, but MOZ and other companies in the SEO world have done an excellent job at providing estimates.

So, before you include a site on your outreach list, use a domain authority checker to confirm that the site has enough authority to have a positive impact on your website. 

Ensure Links Are Dofollow 

Outbound links can either be nofollow or dofollow.  If the links on a website are nofollow links, your published guest post on the site will not pass on any authority to your website. 

You can confirm if the links are dofollow or not by using the “inspect” option when you right-click on outbound links in Google Chrome. 

Pressing CTRL+SHIFT+I will achieve the same result.

If you are only looking to gain clout with your guest-posting, this point may not matter to you.

Still, it is a discussion you need to have with yourself as you plan your guest-posting campaigns. 

How To Find Sites That Will Accept Guest Posts

Research Your Competition

Checking out your competition is one of the easiest ways to find websites in your niche that are accepting guest posts.

If they already have a robust guest posting campaign going, half your job is done. Just take note of the websites linking back to them.

There are some tools online that can help you find the source of your competitor’s backlinks.

When you have seen them, take note of the high domain authority sites and those that enable dofollow for outbound links.  Linkminer is one of the best tools you can use here. 

The websites may not all be relevant, though, so you still need to spend time to analyse them individually.

One advantage of finding guest posting opportunities this way is that you can mention your competitor’s post and show that you have analysed the host website. 

Ask Your Colleagues

If you have colleagues or friends in your niche that are also writers with high traffic websites, you can reach an agreement to swap guest posts with them. 

Since you are in the same niche, it will be easy to find topics they have already published that you can expand.

If this isn’t feasible, suggest a new topic.

Be sure to discuss the writing plan, so you don’t end up working on the same topics.  

Google Search

You can find anything on Google, and guest posting opportunities are no different.

With this method, do a general search around your niche like “guest posting marketing”. 

If you can’t find enough results to create a list, substitute the search string for others like “submit a guest post” +niche, “bloggers wanted” +niche, and so on. 

If you’d like to find guest posting opportunities on specific sites, you can use the following search strings: inurl:guest-post-guidelines, inurl:guest-posts, inurl:write-for-us.

Replace the URL with the sites you are targeting to find out if they accept guest posts immediately. 

If you’d like to automate the process, Scrapebox is a good solution.  

The poor security of the website is a red flag for many, but it is a popular tool for this task. 

Look At Directories

There are tons of lists on the web already for sites that accept guest posts in your niche. 

A search on “websites that accept guest posts” + your niche will bring up these lists. Go through the results to collate as many sites as possible, then rank them according to relevance, authority and dofollow or nofollow.

The free directories often are loaded with unverified and spammy links, so you have to handle this with caution, and have to do the due diligence from your end.

Vetted Backlink Database – The Best Way To Find Quality Backlinks Opportunities Easily

The major drawback of the free directories and lists is that you have to do a lot of research for finding the relevant guest blogs and also have to individually evaluate the quality of each of the links which is a very time consuming and unproductive task.

One way to make this hectic task easier is to go for a vetted directory like SEOBirth.com which basically provides a big backlink database which is verified, at a nominal yearly fee – so you can get into the link building task right away without wasting your time in doing all the VA like tasks.

How To Make Sure Your Guest Posts Are Accepted

When you have found enough sites for your guest post, the next step is to start sending in pitches.

If your pitch looks spammy, the webmaster or whoever is in charge of responding to your email will ignore it.

Even when your pitch looks good on the surface, other mistakes will lead to being ignored. Some of these include:

• Poor grammar
• Zero research about the website
• No personalisation
• Vague email content

So what should you do?

Remind yourself that guest posting is a mutually beneficial relationship. You are investing your resources to craft content that will add value to the host website.

However, you need to ensure they can see the value you are offering in the couple of minutes it will take to read your pitch. 

Other things to keep in mind:

Personalise Your Pitch

Go through the target site and glean as much information as you can about them.

By linking recent posts, projects they may be involved in or the writing style in your pitch, you are communicating how you can add value to them.

You need to show the website owner that they are not just another name in your mass-emailing software.

A proper background check, reading the about section or analysing the social media page of the website owner or brand is a great way to find elements for personalisation.

Highlight The Benefits For The Target Audience

By highlighting how the user base of the website will benefit from your guest post, you can give the recipient of the pitch more reasons to pay attention to your offer and read your submission.

Don’t Give The Site Owner Extra Work

If you are submitting a draft, state clearly that it is a draft and make sure it is in a format that can be easily viewed (no PDFs!).  On the other hand, if you are submitting a completed post, make it 100% ready to go on the blog. The format can be a .docx or a .txt file. 

Attach high-definition versions of your images and ensure you have done all the necessary formatting.

If the site has a file format request in their guest post guidelines, stick to it completely. 

If the site owner has to do any work other than just publishing the post, your post will be ignored. 

Use The Right Language In Your Pitch

You may think massaging the ego of the website owner or intimidating them with arrogance is an excellent way to get their attention, but in many cases, it will backfire.

Don’t talk about how marvelled or humbled you are by the writing on the blog.

Don’t boast about the awesomeness of your post and why the site owner must collaborate with you.

Don’t sound robotic either with extremely formal email content. Many decent samples exist on the web.

Find them and draw inspiration from them, but remember. It must be personalised.  Are you good with humour?

You can infuse some funny content in your pitch. Keep it appropriate and ensure it is amusing.

You don’t need to be a stand-up comedian, but don’t make the reader go “ba dum tiss” with forced humour. 

Mention Your Portfolio Briefly

If you have guest-posts already published in top-rated websites, mention these websites with a link to the post.

This use of social-proof works best when you are only pitching ideas, as it communicates the fact that you are no rookie and makes it easy for anyone reading your pitch to form an opinion on your writing style.

If you have an article on Forbes or Huffington Post, for example, many website owners will be keen to receive a guest post from you. 

Conclusion

Guest posting is an excellent way to generate buzz for your brand, draw more traffic to your website, and get the search engines to notice. 

The process is time-consuming, but worth it in the long run. Do not use a shortcut. Find high-quality sites, send in your pitches, submit the post and wait for it to be published.

Follow up on all emails and work with a long-term goal in mind.  As your reputation increases, the difficulty of the process will reduce.