Guest blogging is a good strategy to promote a personal or corporate brand. The individual or the company owning the brand writes and publishes a blog post on a third-party platform, which helps them improve their website’s SEO and market their content.

Guest blogging benefits both the publisher and the guest blog author. The publishers get high-quality content, which they need for their voracious readers, while the authors benefit from a platform that reaches out to a large audience and makes their brand more recognizable.

Guest blogging can be an effective social media marketing strategy that allows authors to get free publicity and increase their reach. A guest post/guest blog is usually targeted to be informational for the audience and not overly promotional.

The author includes an author bio at the end of the guest post, which links to their brand and creates awareness among the audience, leading to greater exposure and promotion. Websites that offer guest posting services also benefit from getting free content, which entices return readers and increases website SEO and ranking.

Before you look for guest blogging opportunities, you first need to determine your guest blogging goals so that you can move forward with a clear purpose.

Guest Blogging Goals

When you know what you’re aiming for while searching for guest blogging opportunities, it’ll make it easier for you to narrow down your search and decide which specific blogs or websites you want to submit your guest post to.

Many third-party websites provide guest posting services, but not all of them attract the same audience and publish the same content, so you need to be clear about your goals before you begin your search.

Let’s look at the three goals of guest blogging:

Creating a unique name and reputation for your brand

The first goal of guest blogging is to build your brand’s solid and trustworthy reputation among the target audience. Irrespective of the industry you’re in, customer loyalty and trust are important if you want to build a user base and retain your audience.

Customers are more likely to trust brands established as a prominent and worthy voice in the industry. 

Your aim should be to create a well-known reputation that sparks familiarity in customers and allows them to trust your authority and position in the industry.

Creating awareness and getting exposure

The second goal of utilizing third-party platforms’ guest posting services is to create awareness of your brand and promote it to a larger audience.

Your brand will become more popular among customers if it receives more exposure. More exposure will generate more traffic back to your website and encourage customers to click on your website link and browse through your offered services.

Promoting your brand on other websites will also increase your reach and allow more readers to find out about your brand and its services, so it’s also important to look for varied guest posting platforms for better growth.

Backlinking to your website

The third goal of guest posting is to engage with the audience and build backlinks to your website to increase traffic and SEO ranking.

Make sure you submit guest posts to a platform with strong domain authority, and using the SEOmoz toolbar can help you find these websites and blogs for free.

Looking For Guest Blogging Opportunities

Here are a few ways to search for guest blogging opportunities.

Search on Google

Using targeted keywords to search on Google can help you find websites that offer guest blogging services. For example, if your keyword is ‘website SEO’ and you’re looking for guest posting platforms, type the following keywords in Google’s search bar:

• “website SEO ‘submit a guest post'”
• “website SEO ‘guest post guidelines'”
•  “website SEO ‘accepting guest posts.'”

Using a keyword in your Google search will help you find platforms that cater to your niche/specific industry. Hence, you can be assured that when you submit a guest post to these sites, their audience will be interested in your content and will more likely open the link to your website.

Adding a variation of the phrase ‘guest post’ will help Google take you directly to a website’s guest post guidelines page, their submission page, or to published guest posts written by different authors.

Submit to the Same Sites as Prominent Guest Bloggers in Your Industry 

Before writing a guest post, compile a list of all the prolific authors and writers in your industry. 

Type the name of one of these writers in Google’s search bar and add the words ‘guest post by’. For example, if you’re in the online marketing industry, Danny Iny is a popular guest blogger who’s written many guest posts on different platforms revolving around online marketing.

Therefore, type “Danny Iny ‘guest post by'” and you’ll have a list of websites that Danny Iny writes guest posts for. Now submit your guest posts to these websites to promote your brand.

Keep an Eye on Your Competitors’ Guest Post Submissions

Another way to search for guest posting opportunities is to check where your competitor is submitting their guest posts and then submitting yours to the same sites.

You can do this by typing in your competitor’s domain name and adding the phrase ‘guest post’.

For example, if your competitor’s domain name is bettybuilders.com, then search for “link:bettybuilders.com ‘guest post'” and this gives you an insight into your competitors’ backlinks. Reach out to these websites and use their guest posting services to build backlinks for your brand.

Use Social Media and MyBlogGuest

Many writers share their guest posts on their social media platforms. So, head over to Facebook or Twitter and search for your keyword and the phrase ‘guest post’ to see who has recently posted or tweeted about writing guest posts and the site they’ve reached out to.

For example, search for “link building ‘guest post'” on Twitter and then click on the link in the tweet to see which websites or blogs are accepting guest posts related to your industry, and then submit your work to them.

There is also a community of guest bloggers called MyBlogGuest where you can sign up for free to search for third-party platforms offering blogger outreach services. 

About the Author 

The author is an expert at writing about guest blogging and its importance for SEO. He offers guest posting services, website SEO, and link building services to help clients optimize their websites and maximize conversions.