Throwing yourself into guest blogging is not an effective method, it is better to proceed step by step in order to guarantee the success of each guest article you propose. First step, learn what to know and what to do before submitting the guest article.
1) Define your objectives
The first thing to do before writing guest articles is to determine the objectives you want to achieve. Indeed, guest blogging allows you to improve :
- Short-term traffic: Increase the number of visitors to your website;
- Natural referencing: Gain in SERP ranking thanks to backlinks;
- The level of expertise in your subject matter: Make your blog and your expertise known.
Before thinking about the question of “how to find a blog to write your guest articles”, think first of defining the objective you want to achieve among the three mentioned above.
For example, if you want to increase traffic to your website, you can choose only those websites that have high traffic.
If you want to highlight your expertise in the topic, you can target blogs with a particularly engaged audience: The level of engagement of the community. Indeed, sharing through reviews, exchanges… are good ways to create your own highly engaged audience.
Finally, if you decide to act on your natural referencing, making guest articles for blogs with a high authority is a strategy that pays off.
These are obviously just a few examples and your goals may be a simple combination of the three above. But to achieve all three goals at once, you need to choose the most relevant blogs and the following step can help you do that.
2) Find the blogs for your Guest Posts
There are several techniques that can help you find the websites where you will publish your guest posts. First of all, be aware that very large sites such as Hubspot do guest blogging and it is wise to do your research properly to get the most authoritative blogs possible. To do this, I’m presenting you with the six methods that I think are the most interesting.
Method 1: Google search
This is one of the easiest methods to use and it consists of searching directly for sites that clearly indicate that they accept guest posts. To do this, do a search on Google and add to your topic keywords such as
- Guest article + your topic;
- Guest writer + your topic;
- Article written by + your topic;
- Guest blogging + your topic;
- Become a contributor + your topic;
Method 2: Use the reference website
In your field, there are probably some blogs that you consider to be references. Make a list of these blogs and check if they accept guest articles or not.
When some blogs do not explicitly show that they receive guest articles, this does not necessarily mean that they refuse guest blogging. For this, you can try to make them a direct offer that they may well accept.
Method 3: Spying on competing sites
Spying on your competitors means checking whether they use guest blogging and identifying the blogs on which they publish guest articles. In fact, all you need to do is to see the backlinks that your competitors receive and where they come from. To do this, you can use several tools including :
- Ahrefs ;
- Link Explorer
- Etc…
To go further on the subject, you can consult this resource by Neil Patel. Indeed, the study of your competitors’ links is likely to give you very good ideas on the websites on which you will publish your next guest articles.
Method 4: Take inspiration from a blogger you like
This method consists of checking whether your favourite bloggers are also doing guest blogging. Indeed, some people dedicate a special page to articles they have published elsewhere, which can help you easily find out the sites they publish on.
In addition, you can research these bloggers a little further on Google and also on social networks. The idea is to pay attention to the profile of these bloggers to see if they use the same profile picture almost everywhere. This then allows you to search through their image and find the sites they are active on.
Method 5: Refer to your community
When your website or blog has some visibility, you are bound to have comments and interactions with your readers. In fact, you may have readers who have blogs that are perfectly suited to receive your guest posts.
Therefore, be sure to research those who comment on your posts. They will be more likely to publish your articles when you have a history of providing them with high quality content.
Methods 6: Being interviewed as a blogger
Admittedly, this method is a bit different from guest posting, but it could well complement it. Indeed, there are websites that offer to interview bloggers
always with the aim of improving their visibility.
This is a very interesting alternative and to find these kinds of websites, you just have to search on Google :
- Blogger Interviews;
- I interview bloggers ;
- Etc…
To find out how to get interviewed even if you have just started your blog, check out this resource from Smartblogger. In addition to getting your name out there, this option also allows you to :
- Get quality links;
- Show your expertise;
- Generate traffic.
3) Choose the most relevant blogs for your guest posts
With the previous tips, you have probably found several blogs that can publish your articles. Now, you have to sort out the blogs that are the most relevant for the publication of your guest articles. To do this, I invite you to take into account four criteria, which are the most important in my opinion.
A blog that accepts guest posts
This is obviously the first criterion for your article to be published. In fact, not being an obligation, many blogs do not accept guest posts, but at the same time, some blogs do not explicitly state that they accept them even if they do.
To know if a blog accepts guest blogging or not, you can simply
- Check if the blog has guest posts;
- Check if there is any information on the guest posts such as a guide or a call for editors / contributors;
- Ask directly.
A blog that is consistent with your theme and target audience
Make sure that the websites you choose cover topics related to your theme and target the same audience as you. This way, readers are likely to be interested in the content you offer. So it may be relevant to ask yourself the following two questions:
- The type of audience you want to drive to your blog;
- What websites they regularly visit and what they are looking for.
In short, find out if the readers of the blogs you want to guest post on would actually be interested in your content.
For example, my articles on SEO are not necessarily going to interest the readers of a DIY blog. On the other hand, people who need to give visibility to their online business are likely to flock to my website Twaino.com (yes, do flock ? ).
A highly reputable and authoritative blog
The purpose of guest blogging is to help you improve the visibility, authority and SEO of your website. For these goals to be achieved, you need to look at blogs that are far better than yours in all three aspects.
To do this, take care to check:
A high domain autority
The Domain autority is a parameter that allows you to apprehend the perceived quality of the site. In fact, it is a score from 0 to 100, and the higher it is, the more likely the site in question is to be a reference in its sector.
You can check the domain authority of websites you consider to be references in your field and check yours as well. This allows you to know your current level and to easily judge the relevance of the blogs that will host your guest articles.
Take care to choose blogs that have a significant difference from your own score, to ensure the success of your strategy. Moreover, you have little interest in choosing sites with almost the same score as you or with a lower level than yours.
In order to check this parameter, Moz is a very relevant tool and you can consult this resource from Smartkeyword.io which goes further on the subject. Apart from Moz, there are other tools such as :
- Ahrefs ;
- Majestic.
High traffic
Traffic can be a very important criterion when you want to do guest blogging. In fact, the more visitors the host blog receives, the more traffic you are likely to get to your website. To estimate the traffic of these sites or the number of monthly visitors, you can use tools such as :
- SEM Rush ;
- Similar web ;
- Quantcast ;
- Siteworthtraffic ;
You can read more about these tools in this article, before using them.
A living site
Publishing on a dynamic and active site is much more interesting than on an underactive or hyperactive site. In fact, while an underactive website will not allow you to get results quickly, a hyperactive blog risks quickly drowning your article among the large number of contents it will publish later. So look for the right balance according to your theme in order to choose the best blog.
For example, a blog dealing with current affairs will not have the same conception of “site dynamism” as a blog providing information, which is a little more timeless, like the blog of my agency Twaino.
To go further, take a look at the :
- Number of comments under the different articles: This will allow you to judge whether the website’s content really arouses the interest of Internet users;
- Number of shares of articles on social networks: This will also allow you to judge the engagement of the blog community;
- Number of subscribers on social networks: A website with a large number of subscribers on social networks is often more profitable, when it comes to shares and therefore backlinks, than a website with very few;
- Type of outgoing links from the website: If you want to improve your SEO, you should be careful with websites that use the “nofollow” attribute for most of their outgoing links. You should favour those that use the “Dofollow” attribute and you can use extensions such as Google Chrome’s NoFollow to perform this check.
- Etc…
A blog that highlights guest articles
The primary purpose of guest blogging is to get you exposure and if the host blog you choose does not properly feature guest posts, it is not worth it.
Therefore, check how guest posts are presented on each blog you select. Also, check how the authors are presented from their profile picture to their description. In fact, the better presented you and your article are, the more likely you are to get more exposure.
4) Rank the blogs on the list
Considering the previous criteria, you now have the blogs that seem to be the most relevant for publishing your guest posts. In fact, you have discarded some of them and for those that remain, it is important to do a ranking in order to highlight the best blogs and to know where to start.
To do this, create an Excel or Google Sheet file based on the following criteria:
- Number of monthly visitors ;
- Average number of comments per post;
- Domain Autority.
Then create the following five columns:
- Blogs: The name of the websites you have selected;
- URL: The URL of the blogs;
- Domain Autority: You can determine this with the tools mentioned above;
- Number of monthly visitors: Determine with the tools mentioned above;
- Average number of comments per article: Simply average the comments of the last three articles.
Once you have filled in this information, you can now proceed with the ranking in descending order. To do this automatically in Excel, you can consult this resource from Office support.
You now know on which blog you will publish your first guest posts!