If you are confused about what is a guest post it is quite normal, I was confused too!
Guest blogging or also called writing a guest post is a powerful way to get your website/blog in front of other audiences.
The concept is very simple, instead of writing an article on your website, you will write one on another website.
Most of the websites online allow guest posts, and they have a page with their specific guidelines.
What’s the catch?
The website where you will write a post as a guest will get an awesome piece of content for free that can eventually rank for them and add value to their site.
So you might ask: Am I stupid that I write for someone else, for free? Share on X
Not really, in this digital world, you will be rewarded for doing this. The biggest reward you can get is a quality backlink.
You can read more about what are backlinks here.
This will help your site authority to grow, because usually when you write a guest post you are allowed to link to one of your articles from your blog.
Here, you can read my guest post guidelines for this website here.
How To Create A Guest Post Plan
You can not just waste time writing everywhere. This will be a lot of work and most of the time not very useful.
You need to create a guest posting plan and understand the reasons why you are doing this.
Talking about me, I like to write posts on other websites because I don’t like to bother people and beg for links.
Also, I like it when famous websites accept my articles. This gives me a lot of confidence. I never got denied one single guest post.
Instead, if you beg for links you will get rejected a lot!
I usually put a lot of efforts when writing for others. There is not a lot of people out there that creates awesome stuff like me.
I have got articles approved on very authoritative and awesome websites for my other sites. Also, I have already a few good guest posts for marcodiversi.com
What you need to do is to search for websites related to yours and then put on Google something like:
- write for us YOUR COMPETITOR WEBSITE URL.
- guest post YOUR COMPETITOR WEBSITE URL.
There are also other shortcuts you can use but overall the ones above are the ones I like the most.
I am using SEMrush to find out my top competitors to use the trick above. I also look at where they get links from via SEMrush.
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You can also use these queries:
- keyword “guest post”
- keyword “submit a guest post”
- keyword “write for us”
Where you want to replace the keyword with your keyword like:
- SEO “guest post”
Keep the double quotes in your query! Share on X
What Is A Guest Post Strategy
Like everything in life, if you want to be the best, you need to make a plan of your vision.
I am going to tell what I usually do step by step when I start a blog, and most of these steps are guest posts related.
- I get the best hosting plan, I suggest you get TMDhosting. Read my TMDhosting review.
- I search for a good domain name based on the niche I want to blog about. Read how to start a successful blog here.
- I develop the website using WordPress or I code the whole thing. You can learn to code at freecodecamp.org
- I grab OneNote and start to write down titles that are popping in my head.
- Once I write 100 titles I re-read them and put their main KW of these titles on Google keyword planner.
- I delete the titles that people are not searching for.
- Then I sort them from high volume search to low volume search.
- The ones that have a medium/high search volume and high competition I will use them for guest posts. (Because since I have a new blog I have no chances to rank for them on my blog. Meanwhile, I might have chances to rank if I will publish them on a more affirmed blog).
- I start to write at least 30 quality articles for my blog.
- Once I have 30 articles on my blog, I go back to OneNote and start searching for websites I am an interested to guest blog.
- I am using the shortcuts listed above, and I try to find at least 100 websites that allow guest blogging.
- I sort them into my bookmarks from highest DA to lowest.
- I start to do guests posts for websites that have a 28 ≤ DA ≤ 40.
- I read a few articles of these blogs, and I am trying to figure out what they would like to have posted on their sites.
- Once I have figured out what they are looking for I start to write them a pitch or I send them an email mentioning that I am interested in guest blogging for them.
- Once I get some sort of feedback, I write an awesome article.
- When you start to have 5-10 articles posted on websites with 28 ≤ DA ≤ 40 your DA in a few months will go up.
- You can then go and reach out to the websites that have 40 ≤ DA ≤ 55.
- You will need to write 4-5 even more awesome articles than before.
- Then you can attempt to go for the websites with even higher DA and so on.
- A few awesome backlinks like the ones above will increase your DA and reputation and chances to get approved.
- What you should do then is to keep writing on your blog, and make 1-2 guest posts a month.
- This process works very well, it usually requires a few years if you aim to do a good job but then it will pay back.
- I suggest you read very well the guest post requirements each time you are trying to submit your articles.
- I usually submit them via Google docs and Google drive.
This is my blueprint for a very effective guest post strategy, but of course, it is a little more complicated than that.
If you need help please contact me or even better comment below. Share on X
How To Write A Guest Post
To write a good guest post you need to, first of all, meet the criteria written in the write for us page of the website you are looking at.
If you don’t deeply understand the arguments that the website is talking about and you feel like you can not add any value to them just drop it.
Don’t focus only on getting a backlink or visibility.
Try to understand that if you are doing a good job backlink and visibility will come and you will not waste time writing and then not getting approved.
Try to always add your biography at the end of the article including a link back to your site.
You should always have a backlink in the bio and one in the article.
It is recommended to add a few relevant internal links to other sources and no more than 2 links included the one in the bio back to your site.
If you add too many links to your site the editors won’t like it. Also, Google will think that it is not natural and a bit spammy or even worst that you paid to get a link to that article.
Scroll over the articles of the website where you want to write an article and try to create an article that respects their standards and patterns.
For instance, if you see that they like to have a picture every 400 words you should do it as well etc... Share on X
Guest Posting Biggest Advantages
The biggest advantages of guest posting according to me are these:
- it’s the more legit way to get a backlink, you are putting a lot of efforts in it and you must be rewarded.
- you will get attention from the audience of the website you are guest blogging too.
- search engines will notice you more since other well-established sites are talking about you.
- you can eventually meet people interested in working with you.
- your brand will start to grow.
- if someone decides to write on your own site, you will get free content on your site as well.
- you will boost your confidence when people approve of your post.
- if the website you are writing for has a lot of interaction on social media and an email list, if they decide to share your posts there you can eventually grow your email list as well.
Tips To Follow Before Writing A Guest Post
There are some things you must take into account before writing an article on another website.
There are many websites that are built only to attract people to guest post on it. These websites are usually not very good for SEO and having a backlink from.
These websites are called web 2.0 sites and most of the time they will not add any value to your site as well.
How to spot a web 2.0 site?
Some web 2.0 don’t even have their own domain and there are hosted on a subdomain. Sometimes they are just full of articles that are not making a lot of sense in the context of the website.
You want to target sites related to your niche, do not write an article on a website that is only there to attract content.
You also want to check out their backlink portfolio and authority. I am using SEMrush and the Moz bar to do that.
Take also a look at the quality of the traffic and the volume of the traffic.
You might want to start with websites with a low domain authority to increase the chances to get approved meanwhile your website DA is still low.
Some of these low DA sites most of the time are paying for traffic on Google Ads etc..
So it will be good for you to guest post there since the traffic they are getting is targeted traffic.
And last but not least, make sure that you will get a dofollow link! You can read more about this here.
Something you absolutely need to avoid is to link to any affiliate link you are promoting. If you do that your post will be discharged immediately.
Conclusions
So now you must know what is a guest post and how to create an effective guest blogging plan. There are many advantages of doing this and I have listed some above.
If you need a nice list of guest post sites that allow guest blogging. I really love this website called outreachmama and this is a nice list.
You can also create an account here at myblogguest.com. Although the website looks pretty old it is pretty active and you can find good opportunities.
Another website I use pretty often is twingly. This will allow you to search for new blog posts related to your keyword.
The more traffic you get on that article the best it will be for you as well even if it’s not on your blog.
I suggest you make an account with SEMrush now since it’s the only tool you will need to make your website awesome.
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Much Love and Peace Out,
Marco Diversi.