Guest Posting 101: What works best and what doesn't?

Do you know what the most asked question about guest posting is? It is whether guest post service still works or not. Is guest posting worth investing time & money or not?

Considering it is one of the primary SEO tactics to build authority and traffic on a website, many marketers still wonder whether it is worth the time and resources spent.

The concept of guest posting is very simple. It is a marketing technique where you approach high-quality websites to write posts for them. In return, they give a link back to your website homepage or any other webpage that you ask for.

Benefits of Guest Blogging

But, what do you gain from writing on someone else’s website? The answer is, it helps you in more than one way. When your post is published on a high-authority website, it helps you build quality backlinks on your own site. 

It also helps you develop authority in your niche and aids in brand awareness. With the growing recognition, you will also see an increase in your posts' social media shares, which will further boost your credibility. This will also improve direct and referral traffic on your website, and you will see a boost in sales. 

Google rewards websites with high-quality backlinks by improving their PageRank and thus their SERP. When Google discovers that your website receives quality backlinks, it indexes your site more frequently, which helps to better rank your web content.

Therefore, it won’t be wrong to say that guest post service is a crucial technique to determine the success of a website in 2024. 

Striking the Right Balance in Guest Blogging

Matt Cutts declared in 2014 that guest blogging is dead because a lot of spammy practices were prevalent back then. Marketers were just focusing on building backlinks and weren’t giving much impetus to the quality or the frequency of guest posting. 

Thankfully Google noticed these spammy practices and was quick to issue a warning on the same. It added restrictions on the buying and selling of links or any other form of link exchange to manipulate PageRank.

It also warned webmasters against publishing keyword-stuffed guest articles and recommended they avoid working with writers who have limited knowledge of the subject they’re working on. 

Additionally, Google also asked webmasters to put an end to publishing the same article on multiple websites. With the guest posting guidelines laid out by Google, many websites got penalized, and the spammy practices were put to an end. 

Fast forward to 2024; guest blogging is now more of a planned approach. It has become a tool for building relationships with bloggers from similar niches or industries. Moreover, it is not just the quality of backlinks that matters in guest blogging today, but also the quality of the content that is published and the value that you’re adding to the readers.

We have discussed below the dos and don’ts of guest posting in 2024. This will give you more clarity on the process and help you develop the best practices for guest posting services.

Guest Posting Dos

Given below are some guest posting tips that you must follow. 

Do: Research the Sites You Are Pitching to

If you pitch 100 bloggers for guest posting services, you might receive a reply from only one or two of them. This is because there are many marketers like you who are also approaching these sites with the hope of getting their posts published. 

Moreover, in order to reach a large number of bloggers at a time, most of these marketers will forward the same pitch to all the bloggers. These pitches are very generic in nature and look like one of those marketing emails or sales pitches that flood your spam folder daily.

Consequently, such outreach emails don’t elicit responses most of the time. It is, therefore, recommended that you shortlist only a handful of sites for guest posting initially and research through their website to see if they publish posts in the same niche as yours. 

You should also check whether the website has a responsive design and supports mobile viewing. From an SEO point of view, you should analyze the site’s domain authority (DA), spam score, organic ranking, trust flow, and citation flow to determine its quality.

You must also check the site’s social influence by analyzing the follower count, engagement rate, frequency of posts, total shares, etc. on social profiles. Additionally, you should also learn about the site owner and go through some of his online works.

Once you confirm all these criteria, only then you should compose a personalized pitch and send it across to the blogger. You must create new pitches for every blogger that you approach to create a positive impression and form a lasting relationship.

Do: Pitch New Content Ideas For Guest Posting

If you want your guest post to be read, liked, and shared, invest your time in researching unique content ideas. Sometimes finding new ideas to write on can be a tough task to accomplish. However, that shouldn’t be an excuse to write a guest post on a topic that has already been covered before.

Finding new content ideas is not that difficult as it seems. Once you get a nod of approval from the blogger to write a guest post, you can compare it with a few other sites in the same niche and discover topics that haven’t been covered in his blog yet. You can also look into his blog comments to understand what people want to read. 

You can also look for trending topics in your niche and write something related to it. Many times, it is the blogger who asks you to write on a specific topic. You may utilize the opportunity to ask the blogger you’re approaching to suggest something. Once they recommend a few topics, you can analyze the ranking opportunities for the keywords and shortlist a topic.

Writing content on new topics will generate more engagement and motivate readers to share it on social media. Moreover, fresh content will add more value to your readers and keep them updated. It will also improve your authority on the subject and help your guest post rank over the competitors.

Do: Follow Site Guidelines Carefully

When you approach sites for guest posting, some of them will have specific guidelines for posting content on their site. It is essential to follow these guidelines carefully if you want your content to be accepted on these websites.

Guest posting guidelines are usually not very hard to follow. Websites that typically offer guest posting guidelines are very particular about the quality of their content and the way it is presented. It is, therefore, important to maintain uniformity in the content quality and structure for these websites.

Do: Write Quality Guest Post

Irrespective of whether a site provides you with writing guidelines or not, you should also strive to give your best in writing quality guest posts. Besides choosing a unique topic, you should also focus on framing an attractive headline, using keywords sparingly, preventing unnecessary interlinking, and breaking your content into small paragraphs for ease of reading.

You must also add bullet points, numbers, and subheadings within your content pieces to structure them properly and add images, videos, infographics, or other visual elements wherever necessary. Avoid using jargon within your content, take care of the grammar (use a writing assistant like ProWritingAid) and sentence structure, and explain a topic simply.

You must also double-check before sending your content and ensure that it is plagiarism-free. If you don’t set these guidelines for yourself, you will end up writing substandard content that will fail to resonate with the audience and offer you the desired result.

Do: Guest Posting Consistently

Guest posting is an activity that delivers results in the long run. This is why you should be consistent in your guest posting activities. Guest Posting helps you expand your professional network and build lasting relationships with bloggers and contributors in your niche. 

With regular guest posting opportunities, you also get to write content on interesting topics that help you garner attention and grow traffic on your own site. Additionally, it also enables you to build authority in your domain. This will help you grow a loyal audience base and generate qualified leads for your business.

As you grow brand awareness through blog posting service, the sales cycle also gets shorter as most of your leads might already be aware of your business. Most importantly, you can improve your backlink profile when you are consistent in guest posting activities.

Guest Posting Don’ts

Given below are a few tips to avoid guest posting mistakes.

Don’t Send the Same Guest Post to Multiple Bloggers

When you’re pitching bloggers with guest post topics, don’t recommend the same topic you've written for another blogger or try to send a post that is already published elsewhere. This can affect the ranking of the blog you are writing for and raise questions on your morality. 

If you want to write a guest post on a topic already covered before, you can try to repurpose the existing content by making substantial changes to it. For example, if you have written a listicle on “10 tips to stay healthy at 50”, you might choose a FAQ format to write on the same topic for another blog.

Don’t Wait For the Blogger to Suggest You Topics for Guest Posting

As you might be already aware of the immense pressure bloggers go through while shortlisting people for guest posting on their site, you don’t want to make their task even difficult by asking them to suggest topics for guest posting.

When you decide to pitch a blogger, ensure that you research enough, and come up with 3-5 unique guest post ideas. This will make it easier for the blogger to approve a topic and get you started on it. 

In case a blogger is interested in suggesting a specific guest post topic, he’ll do it by himself. But why take the chance?

Don’t Demand Your Guest Post to be Published

It is the blogger's sole discretion to determine whether your content will be published in his blog. No matter how good you think your guest post is, the blogger gets to decide its value.

Therefore, if you see that your content is not being published yet, don’t demand it to be published. Many bloggers provide guidelines for writing guest posts, which, if you fail to follow, can lead to rejection. If you think your article is a good fit for the blog, be polite, and send a follow-up email asking whether the blogger liked your content. 

If you receive an email stating that the content is rejected, follow up with the blogger asking about the changes required. Edit your guest post accordingly and resend it to the blogger for consideration. 

If the blog owner denies accepting your post even after making the changes, don’t get rude and demanding. Instead, be courteous and say, “thank you.” Remember that the aim of guest posting is not just getting backlinks but also networking with the bloggers.

It doesn’t make sense to send guest posts related to fashion to a  technology blog. This is because they solely cater to people who love to get updates on new technologies. This is why you should research a blog before submitting your guest post.

It will give you an idea about the topics being already covered, and allow you to choose a suitable topic to write about accordingly. If you submit irrelevant guest posts, it will ultimately lead to rejection and will be a waste of your time and effort.

Don’t Pester Bloggers 

Bloggers that accept guest posts get emails from many people every day. It takes a lot of time for a blogger to shortlist genuine emails and reply to them individually. So, if you send an outreach email, don’t expect an immediate reply. Allow 2 or 3 days to the blogger to reply you back.

If you keep pestering them for a reply, they might get agitated and block you. Therefore, you must follow-up with bloggers very carefully and avoid bombarding them with unnecessary emails very frequently.

Conclusion

Guest posting is still relevant for 2024 and is helping businesses grow. Follow the above dos and don’ts of guest blog posting service and build quality backlinks like a pro.