Guest posting is a white-hat link building method in SEO. It includes writing a piece of content and getting it published in a site that’s relevant to your niche.
If you are new to digital marketing or SEO, you might be thinking, why the hell would I write an article and publish it elsewhere? The answer is this a great way to build contextual backlinks. It’s also relatively simple and cost-effective as you only need to write an article.
If you are a digital marketer or an SEO agency, your question would be slightly different: Would guest blogging still work in 2021? Well, the answer is a definite yes. In my opinion, it will always work because the nature of this work has no cheating on it.
I’m an SEO expert with a non-technical background. So I always think of creating value and developing sector relations in my search engine optimization projects. I’m not a big fan of pyramid structures in SEO. I’m talking about using tier 1, tier 2, and even tier 3 sites when building links.
I agree this kind of link building is powerful, but it’s not white-hat, and I’m not favoring the use of Private Blog Network (PBN) sites. These sites are built for the pure purpose of SEO and link building, and most have zero traffic. I don’t understand why people bother acquiring links from these sites with no traffic even in tier 2 & 3.
That’s why guest posting is a strategy that I often use for my own site and clients. Because I know for a fact that gaining a single backlink from high authority sites such as HubSpot, Mashable or Forbes is equal to 1000s of PBN backlinks.
How to Guest Blog on Other Sites?
The process is fairly simple. First, you have to find relevant sites that are accepting guest posts. Next, you have to audit the site in question using a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz.
Last, pitch to the website owner to submit your guest post. To find guest posting sites, you can google search and make a prospect list. Here are some example terms to search for:
Well, you get the idea. You might as well skip the google search part and check out freelancer market places like Fiverr for a guest posting gig like mine: I will guest post on my digital marketing blog with backlinks.
But let me remind you that the overall quality on the Fiverr guest posting gigs can be quite low. As I told you, it’s best to avoid PBN links, and most of the gigs would give you backlinks from sites with zero traffic. That’s why you have to be process-oriented and follow the second step.
Checking Prospect Sites for Guest Blogging & Key Site Metrics to Pay Attention
You need to look at three things: traffic, Moz spam score, and the authority. If your target site has a good amount of traffic and that traffic comes from targeted keywords in its niche, the backlink from that site will be a good one.
You can also check if the site has a couple of pages in the top 10 search engines. For example, my site currently has relatively low traffic with +1.5K visitors monthly, but I managed to get at least a couple of posts to 1st position on Google 1st page. So a backlink from those pages is highly valuable.
Once you confirm that your prospect site has relevant traffic or great SERP, you better check it’s Moz spam score. This is important because once you get your backlink from a site, you get the seo power and the fraction of its spam score. I personally consider a site spammy if the spam score is 15+ and avoid them even if the other metrics are good.
When we talk authority, there are different metrics you can look at, such as Domain Ranking by Ahrefs, Domain Authority by Moz, or Authority Score by Semrush. Here is what you need to know: avoid inflated authority scores! Some black-hat SEO methods boost site authority almost instantly. If your target site has high DA but low traffic, that’s a dangerous sign.
Pitching to Site Owners for a Guest Post
When you finally complete your prospect list for guest posting sites, you can start pitching to the website owners. This is the most crucial part because if you do this the wrong way, all your efforts can ben for nothing. But don’t worry. The whole purpose of this article is to show you the right way to do it, and here is how it’s done.
Briefly analyze the content at your target guest posting site. Check out the SEO titles, headings, and content length. Come up with a content plan that includes a dozen relevant topics and get the articles ready beforehand. Once you create the content similar to your target site’s articles, it’s time to write an e-mail to the site owner.
Start by optimizing your e-mail subject since the inbox of a website owner is full of useless stuff. Write something personal and clearly explain that you want to collaborate or help the site owner. Below is a great e-mail subject you can use when you are pitching for a guest post:
[website owner’s name]: I got a great couple of articles for your site.
Once you get the webmaster’s attention with your compelling subject, you should then tell them that you came across their site, your sites are closely relevant, and you want to help them by submitting a well-written article in their niche. Then it would be best if you were listing the articles you wrote beforehand so that all they have to do is pick up a number.
Trust me, they will pick a number, and after that, if you deliver an article that’s close to their standards, your article is published, and you get your backlink by guest blogging method. So the vital point here is to find a relevant site, understand their content strategy, get a bunch of good enough articles, and pitch your way in.
You don’t need a ton of backlinks to get good rankings on search engines. But it would help if you had a bunch of good quality ones. That’s for sure. This is where the guest blogging method comes handy, and if you build these links patiently, they will pay off big time sooner or later.
