How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities [9 Ways that Don't Suck]
Still, wondering how to find high-quality guest blogging opportunities? In fact, let’s begin with WHY you need it in the first place.
Here’s the deal, creating good content with an intent to providing value to the community and yet seeing no visitors show up can be really heartbreaking. What’s more heartbreaking is to see that blogs within your niche with thin content are doing much better than you.
One thing that really helps is Good BACKLINKS!!
And Guest Blogging is one of the go-to ways for building these good backlink profiles for your website. Guest Bloggers are essentially doing content marketing and they have to be really picky when it comes to choosing the site to build a backlink.
I mean let’s face it. Why should Google rank just any website that’s putting out content, the sheer amount of competition in any niche that exists in the blogosphere is unbelievable.
There are millions of blogs vouching to rank in the #1 position. The Google Algorithm factors in more than 200 ranking factors to rank a website (nobody knows the exact number, it’s a trade secret)
This is not to say that links are everything, there are tons of other factors into the play, but getting good quality referring domains to your website is quite important.
Deploying outdated techniques like building links on submission sites and social bookmarking sites doesn’t really work as great as it did long ago, with time the Google Algorithm has evolved, algorithm updates like Rankbrain & Penguin can see detect malicious activities and derank a site that otherwise deserved a better ranking position.
In fact, building links on Social Bookmarking sites has proven to add spam to the page you are trying to promote. (Source)
Read this blog till the end to discover how you can find guest post opportunities for FREE.
A Few Benefits of Guest Posting
Helps you build high quality dofollow links
You get to choose anchor text of your choice
Building authorship of sites of your choice which you don’t own
Content Syndication
Qualified and targeted traffic
Rich Backlink Profile
Helps boost E-A-T Score
Now without further ado! Let’s get started
8 Guest Blogging Opportunities That Works Like a Charm
The good old Google advanced search operators to find guest posting opportunities never goes out of fashion. There are a number of codes to do that.
This is by far the guest blogging strategy to find some really good sites.
Here are some ways to do that
Your Niche “submit+post”
Your Niche “guest+post”
Your Niche “write+for+us”
Your Niche “guest+bloggers+wanted”
Your Niche “contribute”
Your Niche “contribute an article”
Your Niche “want to write”
Your Niche “Add content”
Your Niche “Submit news”
Your Niche “guest post guidelines”
The science behind this technique is that Google results the web page containing the exact match keyword within the “quotes”, so if you search Technology “submit+post”, then Google results /submit-post page of the website.
Using this technique you can ensure to find website that are quite indexable and are popular in their niche, as those pages are ranking and moreover the websites ranking on the first page qualifies as popular sites in their niche, you can validate the same by running those sites through metrics like Moz Domain Authority and monthly average traffic via SEOQuake
If yours is not that big of a blog still in introductory stage then it’s recommend to reach out to sites in maybe page 6, 7 or even 8. These sites will be easy to get in touch with for free or paid guest posting.
Next is you have to approach them as a guest writer requesting them to let you publish quality content on their platform. To do this you will need the prospect’s email address. It’s best if you have both email address and the first name of the person so that you can personalize the email and expect a better opening & response rate.
There remains only a selected few things in Facebook that makes us wanna go back, one such thing is Facebook Group, I can’t express enough how much valuable these Facebook groups and there are groups for everything; search whatever you want in Facebook search and hit the groups tab to find the communities that you could join.
For Guest Post outreach Facebook acts like a goldmine, there are certain Facebook Groups dedicated to Guest Posting, groups like Free and Paid Guest Post, Free or Paid Guest Post , Guest Post Sites & Network, Bloggers Guest Post Shares, Authority Guest Post Marketplace
It is quite easier to reach here as people are online and can respond in real-time using Facebook Messenger.
All you have got to do is join these Facebook Groups and post your requirement, like
“I am Looking for a Guest Posting Site in Lifestyle Niche with X DA & XXX Monthly Traffic” and boom; people having sites fitting your requirement will either comment on your post or will send you message, some may go so far as to sending you an excel sheet containing the database of Guest Posting sites segregated according to niches with metric like Domain Authority and Traffic.
You can take a step further and search in group with your niche keyword like “Tech” for example to uncover all the tech guest post sites requirement post and go through their comments to find sites (I know it’s sneaky but works) as you search for this you may even find link shares containing your niche keyword i.e tech.
The person who has shared that link has to be the owner of that website; you can DM that user asking if he’s accepting guest post; if he is then you can strike a deal.
Twitter is a microblogging platform where you will come across people sharing articles and pretty every accomplishment small or big. Here you can find some seriously high-quality guest blogging opportunities.
People would even post a minor update like Published a Guest Post on so and so website using the 240 character limit microblogging platform.
What you can do is search hashtags like #Guestpost #GuestPosting or just search the keyword guest post to explore all the tweets containing the search hashtag and text.
That is how you find sites that are accepting guest posts.
One more thing you can do on Twitter to explore guest posting opportunities is that you can build authority over the platform by consistently putting niche-specific tweets or just sharing industry-relevant links.
Doing so you can attract the tribe, a lot of these tribes can include established bloggers who build relations with you by retweeting your content, you can directly contact them and see if you can land a guest posting opportunity over their blog.
FYI: This site that you are seeing in the snapshot above gets 329K visitors a month of which 50.54% is organic.
The Ubersuggest backlink method works like a charm. The one thing that I am really really grateful to Neil Patel about is Ubersuggest the ultimate SEO Tool.
This tool can be exploited to find high-quality guest blogging opportunities like no other tool. Period. I have found tons of guest posting opportunities thanks to this tool.
The process to find guest posting sites is rather simple. Just search the domain of your closest competitor on Ubersuggest.
Step 1: Go to the traffic analyzer
It will show you the top pages of that domain, ascendingly ranked according to the number of average monthly visits it gets.
Step 2: Click on backlinks to view backlinks
Upon clicking backlinks you will be able to see all the websites where that top page built link, taking a look at anchor text you can tell which were the guest post contributions or link building links and where the natural links. In the above screenshot, you can see that they have built a link on entrepreneurshiplife.com which means you can too reach out to that site owner to contribute a guest post.
Using SEMrush you can explore guest posting opportunities using not one but two of their features.
#1. Using domain analytics you can search a domain and find it’s organic competitors, now you can reach out to these organic competitors seeking a guest blogging opportunity.
#2. Using Backlink Analytics feature you can find number of backlinks built over a single web page that web page could be a guest blog post, you can find all the backlinks built at which site, what was the site title, slug and anchor text; you can filter out the results by choosing to see only follow links and not nofollow links.
Since SEMrush’s crawler is more advanced hence you will be able to find much more data.
Let’s suppose in your niche there is a blogger who is building authority by consistently putting out content on tons of sites, if he is building authority for his blog then chances are; he is leveraging the guest author bio section.
With the adoption of Google E-A-T you will definitely see a lot of bloggers using author bio mandatorily in guest blogging.
One such blogger who is putting out a ton of content in Guest Posting sites is Ryan Biddulph founder of Bloggingfromparadise.
If you go to his blog, open one of his blog go down to his author bio and right click on his bio headshot and select search google for this image, Google will show in results all the websites where that bio image is to be found and bam! You have just discovered all the sites where he has contributed content.
P.S. You can do this same practice by reverse search the social media profiles images too.
Step 1
Step 2
Now you can individually reach out to all these sites to see if you can explore guest posting opportunity there.
It’s been awhile since a while that we are seeing the infographic method deriving good results for grabbing guest posting opportunities. Neil Patel confirmed it as he was having a candid interview with Amit Mishra on his YouTube Channel.
The internet folks are drifting towards visual content, it’s all the rage right now. An Infographic is preferable by users simply because an infographic covers a ton of information which it covers beautifully with attractive visual elements, it covers multiple data points.
In many ways consuming content via infographic is somewhat equivalent to consuming a lengthy blog except that consuming an infographic doesn’t take as long as it takes to read and an infographic increasingly gets shared on Pinterest. That is the reason why a lot of bloggers will deceptively put pin it buttons on the infographic so that it gets repinned plenty of times.
As for guest posting purpose, you can create an infographic covering not more than 8 data points and reach out to prospects offering them a free infographic and claim the backlink in the author bio and infographic source link.
The reason why this method works remarkably well is because it takes a lot of effort to create a visually appealing infographic; more importantly it takes a graphic designer to create a visually attractive infographic; if you are to offer such an enticing asset for free to publishers in exchange of links then I bet they will be all for it.
Brian Dean has published an amazing guide on how to score backlink opportunities with infographics, he’s even named it; it’s called Guestographics, be sure to check that out if you want to dig deeper into this.
What if I told you that some bloggers/content creators have already done the job for you of putting together a list of guest blogging sites so that you can find all these sites in one place?
That is exactly what I am telling you. Just go ahead and search on Google
“Instant approval guest posting sites”
“Guest posting sites”
“Websites that accept guest posts”
Alternatively, go to Quora and search for the same, people on Quora have also put together the list in their answer to these questions. Moreover, you can find a list of guest posting sites on Decode Digital Market which I have curated myself and manually verified.
Blogging directories are resources lying dormant where tons of guest posting opportunities can be discovered. For example you can go to Blogging directories like AllTop & Feedspot to discover blogs in multiple niches, these maybe guest blogs that you couldn’t discover otherwise with manual Google Search.
For example, if you are looking for Indian blogs to contribute content to, then Indiblogger is a good place to start your search, it’s a good directory where you can find Indian blogs belonging to multiple niches.
Wrapping it up
I have shared 9 ways you can find guest posting opportunities over the web, doing outreach there does comes a time when we feel that we have ran out of free sites and that people are charging ridiculous prices for guest posting. As and when that happens which it would, NEVER forget to try all the methods shared above to keep bringing in new sites.
Happy Guest Blogging!
Kunjal Chawhan founder of Decode Digital Market, a Digital Marketer by profession, and a Digital Marketing Niche Blogger by passion, here to share my knowledge
Man, that was very helpful…keep publishing such great content 😊
Regards
Divyanshu
Thanks Divyanshu,
This article really contains my personal experience of building 100’s of guest post links. I learned with trial and error. These techniques definitely work and are super important in an ongoing link-building campaign.
Yes its really helping to us…🙂
Thanks, Gaurav
Learned a lot about guest post outreach from you
Awesome blog. I enjoyed reading your articles. This is truly a great read for me. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!
Thanks Priya,
Glad you liked this, I hope this helps you in exploring Guest Posting Opportunities in a healthy way 🙂
Thank you for such a informative article. Looking forward some more such informative article.
Guest post is the most authentic way to build relationships and bonding with the fellow bloggers. This list will help me a lot. Keep inspiring . visit ekhie digital for more research on keyword