A guest post is undoubtedly one of the best ways to improve your website’s traffic and domain authority. Hence, you will often hear this term when you are into SEO and stuff. But do you know how to choose websites for guest posting?
Don’t worry if you are unsure about it yet, as this article offers everything to familiarize you with this and more.
So, ensure you read it to the end to make the most out of it.
As the name suggests, a guest post is publishing an article or blog on someone else’s website.
Simply because you want to attract traffic from other websites to yours.
This means the website you are writing for has high domain authority and more traffic.
Otherwise, you won’t feel the need to write a guest post for them.
Get Comfortable with How Guest Posting Works
When you write a guest post for another website, you tactically put a link somewhere in the text.
That link or anchor text is now a gateway for readers to come to your website or blog as you have intended.
Guest posting is one of the best ways to get backlinks from high-domain authority websites.
They surely help in attracting new customers to the website.
Plus, they improve the brand’s credibility and relationships with clients.
Furthermore, guest posts also attract more traffic to the host’s website, so it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaking of which, will the host website owner allow you to divert the traffic?
Will he charge for this? How to choose websites for guest posting?
Just keep on reading!
How to choose websites for guest posting: Step-by-Step
Since you need a guest post to attract visitors from other websites to your blog or website.
Therefore, you must have a blog or website in the first place.
Moving on, your website or blog must have content in the form of blogs or articles to link to the guest post.
Now let’s discuss the step-by-step approach of how to choose a website for guest posting.
Step1: Get to know the site’s audience:
Yes, the website you like has millions of visitors, but it’s not your niche. Hence, either your guest post request will be declined, or it won’t get the expected engagement. Therefore, the first step is to find a website that aligns with your niche. Type one of these in the Google Search Bar to begin:
- Your niche or keyword ‘Submit a Guest Post’
- Your niche or keyword ‘Guest Post’
Step2: Pick websites that have guidelines
Such websites are more credible as they offer value to their readers.
Step3: Get an understanding of the website’s Traffic
You can’t log in to check analytics. But most of the guest posting websites have mentioned their stats. It tells you much about the primary audience, page views, and more.
Step4: Check the Website’s Domain Authority
Once you have picked a website, check its domain authority using any of the free tools available. For ease of understanding, this is how you can categorize domain authority for guest posting:
- Websites with domain authority 60 to 100 – Excellent for guest posting
- Websites with domain authority 40 to 60 – Good for guest posting
- Websites with domain authority below 40 – Not that good for a guest post but considerable on the grounds of traffic
Step5: Go through published posts
Scroll through the articles of a website to get an idea of the type of content they accept.
Ensure that the topics you want to pitch are not already discussed.
Make sure to maintain an excel sheet with details, as it will help you keep track of the efforts.
It may sound like an unnecessary step at this stage, but trust me, as you get deep with this guest post thing, you’ll realize its importance.
Ensure that yours excel sheet has columns for website names, guest post ideas, and contact emails.
Now that you have picked a website or two for guest posting, you can write a pitch email to the owner.
A pitch email will politely request permission to upload a guest post on the owner’s website or blog.
Writing an email pitch for guest posting
You will use an email pitch to win the website owner’s trust. Therefore, you must keep it short, simple, and sweet.
Be specific with why their website needs this guest post.
You can also briefly introduce yourself in the beginning so he regards you worth his time and effort.
Clearly explain what you offer and what they will have in return when the guest post is published.
Since the recipient of this email feels no obligation to read it, there’s a better chance you might never hear back from them.
That’s where you need to follow up with another email after a week or, at most, after a month from the first one.
Here’s a list of things you should take care of when writing a pitch email for a guest post:
- Most websites have a guest post page or write for us page. The editor has some details for you there that a contributing company must follow. So, if you have failed to address those in your pitch email, you will not hear back from them.
- Don’t pitch with a topic similar to their already published topics. Yes, if you think an article is now outdated or has factual information missing, you can mention how you can get it right.
- Attach some samples or include 2-3 links to relevant published work
- The best you could do is to allow them to have some options to choose a topic from. A variation of a general idea is not bad as it will allow them to think that you are aware of it.
- Explain the topic a little in two or three lines
- Include your introduction for credibility but keep it short and to-the-point
Still, if you receive nothing from the editor or website owner, don’t worry and try pitching another website.
As you normally will receive 10 replies out of 100 emails, out of those 10, 4 or 5 might be willing to accept your guest posting idea. So, keep on pitching!
Your suggested topics may also fail to impress the editor, but don’t worry since this commonly happens when pitching for guest posts.
So, you should get over it very quickly and pitch a few more instead. But this time, change your strategy a little bit to see how it is working.
Strategy? Yes, take a good look at the already published articles, try addressing all the requirements, and keep it short and simple with an attractive subject to hook the editor’s or owner’s attention.
How Guest Bloggers Do SEO
Guest posting is now a well-known SEO tactic, and guest bloggers contribute greatly to the website’s SEO.
Just think when your guest post is published on a high DA website with a traffic of millions.
Since Google likes links and it’s the primary ranking factor in Google.
That’s why your rankings will certainly improve when you get a do-follow link from a high domain authority website.
That’s why you must go to publish a guest post on a website that has high domain authority.
Keep on reading as we have more on how to choose websites for guest posting.
Approaching or writing a guest post
You should also know that even if the owner permits you to write for his website, you still have to impress him with writing quality content.
Hence a good number of guest posts get rejected even after submitting the final write-up.
So, it’s better to keep note of a few things before writing a guest post.
You often receive guidelines regarding the format, tone, and subject from the other website owner.
If you are familiar with writing a blog post or even an article, you will realize that a guest post is no different.
Except this one has a link to your blog post or service page and is uploaded on the other website of a similar niche.
Hence to write a guest post:
- Make sure you gain a good understanding of the website you want to write for
- Get comfortable with the type of writing style they follow
- Pitch topics that are not already published
- Keep your write-up free of Grammatical Errors
- Put a link naturally
Also, make sure you include the following:
Bring uniqueness: Since you know the importance of great content in SEO, so for achieving that, try to approach the topic from a different perspective.
Sometimes a more detailed approach to explaining concepts works, sometimes it doesn’t.
You can even include a personal story to make it more interesting.
Use their external links: Prove that you are a thoughtful writer by putting some links from their websites.
Deciding the length of your guest post
There’s no hard and fast rule to decide the exact length of a guest post.
But the owner’s requirement gives you a good idea about that.
If you are given a free hand on the article’s length, ensure it stays good to the standard SEO practices.
This also means that your guest post must have all the information to benefit the readers.
The best approach would be to initially forget the word count and just focus on completing the article since you can make the word count right at the end.
You can also scroll through these research paper topics, in case you get short on words when writing.
Guest posting for free – Websites for Guest Posting
You’ll see a lot of websites allowing a guest post for free.
In a Google search, type ‘Your Keyword + ‘guest post’ or ‘Your Keyword + ‘write for us to land on some good websites for guest posting opportunities.
You’ll realize that many of them are offering for free, particularly new websites because they need content for their readers.
Similarly, most of them with high domain authority will ask for payment before publishing your guest post.
Luckily, there are so many websites that allow you to guest post for free.
Simply because they need content for their audience, why won’t they publish your post if you could provide that?
To find such guest posting opportunities, search your niche + write for us to find out who is open to having free guest posts in your niche.
As promised, here’s a list of some amazing websites for guest posting:
– Mangools
Number of guest posts you should upload in a month
The more, the merrier! Just think, when you have a lot of guest posts directing traffic to your website, the better its SEO and domain authority will get.
Likewise, one post on a high domain authority website weighs more than several posts on low domain authority.
So, if you are working hard to convince an editor of a reputed website, and it takes a month, you are still better than your competitors who are consistently posting on low or medium-domain authority websites.
So, it depends more on the traffic and domain authority of the intended website; hence, even one may suffice.
What about guest blogging services?
After you have picked a website for guest posting, you can use professional writers’ guest blogging services to help you craft a perfect post for the intended website.
Since these writers know the main purpose of a guest post, they can easily fulfill the requirements of the other websites.
So, if you are not confident in writing a guest post yourself, it’s better to look for a good guest blog services provider.
By any chance, if you are a writer yourself and want to pursue your career as a guest blogger, you can earn a good income in two ways.
The first and obvious one is that you will pitch and write a guest post on behalf of the other website.
Secondly, you can have your own website for which you can write blogs and guest posts to improve its ranking and eventually earn from it.
Getting guests to post on your website
You’ll only receive offers of guest posts when your website is:
– Trusted and secure
– Has a high domain authority
– Ranking well in a specific niche
All these must check if you want to be in the list of good websites for guest posting, and all of them will take some time to build.
So, all you need is to focus on publishing good content regularly, and with time and effort, your website will get good at receiving guest post requests.
So be patient and keep on working!
Should you charge for a guest post on your website?
Let’s say you have waited long, and your website is now ranking well in Google with 70 or 80 DA. Guess what, you are now receiving guest post requests, hurrah!
Now, is this your opportunity to earn? Why not if you are receiving too many guest post offers?
But before you go for cashing out this permission, keep a note of these two things:
– If your website is still very new in its niche, don’t charge for guest posts. Because it will filter out the large group looking for free guest posting platforms. Simply because they don’t have a budget to pay for publishing a guest post. Whereas, at this stage, you need contributions from content creators to have something for your readers.
– However, if your website has good content in the specific niche to play the SEO game nicely for a long, you can go charging for a guest post. Now, how much should you charge for allowing a guest post on your website or blog? Well, that depends on your niche, number of words and type of guest post.
How can you become a guest writer for your blog?
This is often confusing but can be cleared out with this explanation.
You can call yourself a blog writer when you write for your website, not a guest writer.
A guest writer means inviting someone else to write for your website in a relevant niche.
Exceptionally, you can be a guest writer for your own blog if you have another website and you put some links to that from this website.
But still, calling yourself a guest writer as a blog owner doesn’t seem appropriate.
Summing up
You can improve your website traffic in many ways, but guest posting stays at the top.
It simply means publishing your article or blog on someone else’s website of a similar niche to reach more people.
This eventually improves your search engine ranking and enhances your brand’s authority.
The benefits of guest posts are twofold; the company contributing to it gets a high domain authority backlink, while the publisher, in return, gets good content for readers.
Guest posts offer a range of benefits to the contributing company, including generating a high domain authority backlink and increasing website traffic.
This article was all about giving you an idea of how to choose websites for guest posting.
Plus, we have also listed some good details on how you can write an acceptable guest post.
FAQs
A guest post is written for other websites having high domain authority and good traffic. The purpose is to attract visitors from that other website or blog to yours. Such a post takes a link to the blog or a page on your website, so readers can get here via a click.
You’ll need to publish high-quality content in your niche if you want quality backlinks without guest posting. Plus, there are other techniques you can use to acquire backlinks, but they only count 20% compared to the 80% good content can bring.
The most popular link-building strategy is guest posting. Plus, there’s no alternative to quality content. Since you must have heard the phrase ‘Content is King’ quite several times. Yes, it is! Social media marketing and following good SEO practices also fall into the best link-building strategies.
Simply put, it’s the link in an article published on another website that points back to your website. In short, to get an editorial backlink, your content must be good, informational, and trustworthy.
I’m a tech enthusiast, entrepreneur, digital marketer and professional blogger equipped with skills in Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, and lead generation. My objective is to simplify technology for you through detailed guides and reviews. I discovered WordPress while setting up my first business site and instantly became enamored. When not crafting websites, making content, or helping clients enhance their online ventures, I usually take care of my health and spend time with family, and explore the world. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or read my complete biography.