There is no greater feeling in the world than writing a guest post, linking back to your site and seeing it boost your rankings.
I recently did bloggers outreach for a client and her website is currently ranking for the keywords I targeted. I am going to share the 8 things I took into consideration while writing my guest post so you would be able to achieve the same thing.
Stick around to the end of the article and I would share about 200 places you can guest post in 🙂
While looking for the best way to do my blogger outreach, I realized that there was a difference between a powerful editorial link and a link that provides little or no SEO value.
When google crawls a website, they look for signals that tell them the blog is a high authority site or at least not spammy.
If you check out those websites, you would realize they all have some things in common. These posts contain certain “triggers” that send signals to the search engines that the blog is legitimate.
After a little research, I was able to narrow it down to 8 important factors.
1. Effective Use of Internal Links
Internal links are links that link from one page of your website to another page of your websites. They are mostly used to increase a user’s ability to navigate your website. An added advantage is that the search engines are also able to locate your inter pages via this internal links
Usually, when writing an article, you should link to at least one other blog post. In practice, it is a good idea to link to more than one. It usually depends on the length of the article though.
A perfect example of the value of internal links comes from Wikipedia that ranks in the top 3 position for a lot of single keywords ever known
A good example can be seen below. Notice how they continuously link to pages that are related/relevant to the current page.
Google completely adores internal linking. If you have a personal blog or you are writing an article for a client, make sure you add a couple of relevant internal links to the article.
When writing a guest post, make sure you add a couple of internal links to it. It not only increases your chances of it been accepted, it shows that you have taken the time to go through their site and understand them.
2. Include Authority links
Contrary to a lot of “SEO Gurus” opinions, Google actually hates link hoarders.
Think about it.
If everyone stops linking to other sites, how would the crawler find other websites?
External links also help Google understand what the page itself is about i.e, if you write a blog post about SEO and link to different websites that talk about things related to SEO, it would help Google understand that your blog post is about SEO.
An added advantage is that your reader would also gain more clarification on anything you link on which would in turn help them understand what you are writing about.
So when writing guest posts, make sure you add links to relevant blogs that related to the topic you are writing on
3. Always Optimize Your Link
While this seems pretty obvious, I am still going to add it because it is the most important aspect of guest blogging.
If you are guest posting for SEO, make sure you add your website’s link to the external links from the article.
This actually links back to why you should include authority links in your guest posts. Your link would end up being among the other authority links.
It makes your website look like one as well.
I would advise you to link to an internal page instead of your homepage. Remember that the link as to be relevant to the article you are writing.
You should be creative with your anchor text for this external link. It must be something that would make your reader curious enough to click. You can simply use your URL too.
It is also as effective especially when you include a link to a post on your website you want to lead the reader to. Don’t try to over optimize the anchor text. It should naturally fit into the article.
4. Good writing
One of the quickest ways for your website, guest post or blog to be put on Google’s blacklist is when your content is badly written and barely readable.
Don’t get tempted to use the services of cheap freelance writers who will create a poorly written content for you. The service is cheap but your reputation will quickly go down the drain.
Always consider quality above all factors when writing a blog post, as a guest blogger, you should always try to add value to the blogs you serve through your posts. The benefits are rewarding – a solid reputation, this can translate to handsome financial rewards for you too.
If you have to employ the services of a paid writer, there are many experienced services that will give you top quality. You can write the guest post yourself too.
5. Show your Expertise Through Your Writing
A good guest post is beneficial to both your website and the blog owner. It is very common to read guest blog posts that have been badly written, mostly less than 400 words and barely relevant to the blog topic. They are posted for one reason – linkbuilding.
A standard blog post should be anywhere between 1000 – 5000 words, it should be interesting and informative. You can easily spot excellent blog posts. They usually have a lot of comments from readers who wish to express their thoughts on the topic. A post like this has no doubt been written by an experienced writer.
Building a good reputation by writing awesome posts will earn you the tag of a proficient professional writer. Your services will be highly sought after and well-paid for. There is also the added benefit that people would be more willing to link to your other contents since they already trust you.
As I said earlier, if you feel you write like an expert, hire one to write for you.
6. Post On Blogs or Websites With Good Social Signals
Identify those blogs that have very remarkable social signals to guest post on. It is quite easy to identify these blogs. They have a lot of Facebook likes and a large number of followers on the popular social media platforms- Twitter, Instagram, snap chat etc and most importantly, users that comment a lot.
When you guest post on blogs like this, a lot of people would interact with your content which would lead to increased popularity.
a. Social Signals Checker
This effective tool will give you quick results that clearly show the social signals of a blog. It will indicate the extent of likes, shares, and comments on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ among others.
b. Button Space Social Signals Checker
This tool has a wider application as it can be used for LinkedIn as well. It is designed as a tool bar on and can be used to run checks on one blog at a time.
Both tools will give you a clear indication how active the social media public is on the blogs you check.
7. Guest Post On Blogs In Your Niche
It is a well-established fact that link relevance place a major role in link building. Linking to an SEO blog from a blog on pharmaceuticals is a no no. This obviously means that links from relevant websites hold more weight.
This is what you should do, select about 10 blogs that are similar to your blog’s niche. Ensure your guest posts are of a very high quality and you will quickly see how this will benefit your writing career.
If having a few relevant links gives more SEO value that a hundred spammy links, you can as well spend your time and energy convincing a few relevant authority blogs to let you guest post on them.
8. The Pitch
If you have truly understood the information contained in 1-7 above, you are ready to make your pitch to a blog owner for permission to become a guest post writer for their blogs.
There are guidelines to make the perfect pitch for your services. Your guest post request can get rejected if you fail to follow these guidelines. More often than now, blog owners usually have a page dedicated to the guidelines you must follow when guest posting for them.
Whew. You made it to the end of the post. As promised, you can find a Massive list of websites you can guest post on here free!.
If you wanna go in-depth into getting guest posting opportunity on auto pilot, you could try https://www.guestposttracker.com/blogs.php
Not that we have that out of the way, do you have any set of rules you follow when you want to guest blog? Let me know in the comment section below.