A Professional Guide to Guest Posting

A guest post is a written piece of content created for and featured on a website not owned by the original author.

Reputable websites that are burning the midnight oil are always trying to keep their pages active and healthy while also maintaining the efficiency of the other corners of their organization. So, oftentimes, when an opportunity for (usually) free, high-quality content in the form of a guest post presents itself, it’s hard to decline. 

This in turn becomes an opportunity for bloggers and smaller entrepreneurs, as they create desirable content for webmasters, and earn some publicity as a result. 

Why Is Guest Posting Important?

What makes guest posting important is how its help expands to almost every party involved.

When a guest post is written:

• Audiences get to hear a new perspective that still meets their expectations of quality. 
• The website receives content that lessens their workload for almost no price. 
• The original author sees exposure to a widened audience.

If the process is done right, all parties involved profit to some degree, which is why it’s such a popular choice for digital marketing experts. For example, according to Ahrefs in 2024, 64.9% of link builders use guest posting as their strategy for backlink acquisition. If so many people are turning to guest posting for success, then why shouldn’t you?

Obviously, guest posting takes a lot of time, and you’d rather not spend your precious hours on a strategy which doesn’t bring compensatory results for that time. 

When discussing the benefits of guest posting, you’ll hear a lot of professionals state that guest posting increases visibility or traffic and leave it at that. However, the list of advantages doesn’t stop there, as the avenues in which you’ll receive that visibility and traffic are plenty. 

The key benefits of guest posting include:

Increasing Brand Awareness

Brand recognition can be a massive factor for people to take notice of your products and services. Of course, if you’ve just kickstarted your business and website, that recognition is going to be hard to come by. Achieving the acclaim you think you deserve can be much easier with guest posting, as your brand will be placed front and center of your written work on a page with an established audience. 

Establishing Yourself In Your Industry

When subscribers of a reputable website read your guest post attached to that site, they not only see your brand and its benefits, they see you as well. Your identity as a professional can be formed or enhanced thanks to these publications, so long as you actually produce quality material. 

Increasing Networking Opportunities

One guest post can lead to another. Connecting with website owners to feature your guest post is a path to building relationships within your industry that can help you long-term. Additionally, it allows other similar sites to the one hosting your post to want you to contribute on their page as well. 

Improving SEO

One of the biggest benefits of guest posting is the potential boost it can provide for your website’s SEO. In the scenario where your guest post will be featured on a reputable website relevant to your own, the backlink you receive pointing to your page will do wonders. Always remember to have your link placed within the article, that way, your site can start climbing up the search engine rankings. 

Improving AI Visibility 

With the rapid advancements in the world of AI, your potential buyers are turning to AI engines to find services. In order to show up in the responses for those queries, directly naming your organization within your article or your bio section is necessary. These are called brand mentions, and they’re a top way to get your name cited by AI.

You can find websites which accept guest posts by using certain Google search operators, analyzing competitors, and browsing curated directories.

Finding blogs willing to take a guest post is no easy feat, but it doesn’t have to feel like an uphill battle either. Using certain tools, checking specific websites or just taking advantage of search engines like Google can give you a lineup of potential hosts.

To find sites which will take your guest post, you can:

• Use Specific Google Search Operators: Typing particular phrases into the search bar in tandem with your industry can locate the sites you need to find. These phrases can be as simple as the following:
  • [your industry] + “write for us”
  • [your industry] + “guest posting”
  • [your industry] + “become a contributor”
  • [your industry] + “article submission”
• Analyze Competitors: If your competitors are seeing success, it always helps to see the source of those accomplishments, namely their hosts for guest posts. To find these guest posts, you can:
  • Use search engines like Google, writing queries such as “guest posts by [competitor]” and “guest article by [competitor]”
  • Use tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to view backlink profiles and discover the locational placements of those links. 
• Scour Through Lists And Directories: At the end of the day you can always just go through pre-compiled lists of blogs and publications by industry, then pick and choose from there. 

How To Choose A Website For Your Guest Post

Now that you’ve narrowed down the list of publications that are willing to accept your guest post, you have to see which ones are going to be profitable. Not all sites are created equal, and you don’t want to write a piece that’ll reach the wrong audience or be left in the dust. 

When choosing a page for your guest post placement, consider the following:

• Industry Relevance: You want your post to reach an audience that can easily become your own. If a reader is already subscribed to your host website, chances are they’ll be interested in your own services as well if you’re working in the same niche. 
• Audience Legitimacy: Is there an actual audience for the publication you’re looking at? Besides metrics like traffic and authority, it’s also important to see if a blog is receiving comments, shares, reactions or any other sign of human involvement. 
• SEO Health: Indexation, traffic, backlink profile and other SEO metrics should all preferably be vetted and acknowledged before any outreach.
• Website Success: Nothing else matters if the potential host does not have any viewership or traffic. Granted, the blog can have an active community, but the size of that community needs to be taken into account as well. 
• Editorial Standards: See if the blog you’re targeting upholds certain standards in quality. Could be referring to their own articles, maybe their design or even just their provided services, check if they produce anything worthwhile.

Now that you’ve learned the basics of guest posting and how to find the right page to place your article, it’s time to actually begin outreach and writing. 

1: Make Your Pitch

Find the contact information for the website(s) of choice and let them know about your wish to connect and provide a guest post. This is where you’ll have to remain persistent, as it’s very likely that you’ll see plenty of rejections in-between your rare acceptances.

What Should A Good Guest Post Pitch Include?

• Personalization: Try to shy away from templates and automatized methods of messages and greetings. Chances are, the webmasters and editors of those pages are bombarded with bland and cookiecutter approaches, and they’re definitely sick of them. Instead, look into their backgrounds and maybe even mention a past article of theirs to show that you know their work.
• Conciseness: Don’t beat around the bush or waste any time, fit what you have to say in a compact message that’s easily readable for your hosts. The last thing you want to do is waste time. 
• Value Proposition: Focus on why and how your work specifically can benefit them and their audience. Talk about your relevance and even give out suggestions for what kind of an article you’ll write. 
• Definitive Ideas: Be sure about what piece you’ll create, and be direct and concrete with the details of your article. Providing 2-3 topic ideas with a short description of each should do the trick.
• New Content: Always check and make sure that the host blog does not already have an article with your planned title/theme. Editors have a lot on their plate and it can be quite easy for them to forget whether or not they already have an article with your idea. Make sure to write new content to provide true value for hosts. 
• Proof Of Competence: Obviously a CV attachment is unnecessary, but adding links to a few of your past articles can not just give editors a taste of your work, but also back up and certify you of your abilities. 

2: Write Your Article

Your pitch was a success? That’s great! Now it’s time to put the work in. While your communications skills will help you get your initial guest post opportunities, your work itself can make your services a valued commodity. 

How To Write A Good Guest Post

• Write A Proper Headline: You want to grab the readers’ attention, and the best way to do that is by prioritizing your headline. Try to fit your value proposition in the headline, then use action words to really make your title stand out. 
• Understand Target Audience: Remember, you’re not writing for your website, so it’s important to understand what the audience of your host likes. Make sure you go through at least a little bit of your host page to see what readers really respond to.
• Follow Host Website Standards: What one host page likes the other might not. Try to figure out if there are any publishing guidelines you should pay attention to prior to posting, every site is different, so be sure that you don’t aggravate editors. 
• Back Up Your Points With Data: You don’t need to write a full fledged academic article, but having a primary and secondary source which act as building blocks for your article can help you really stand out. Additionally, it builds up your own reputation, as proper sources signal the fact that you know what you’re doing.
• Use Images: Don’t go overboard, but having complimentary visuals can always enhance the viewer experience. 
• Target Keywords: While not essential, focusing on keywords in order to maximize SEO potential can be a reliable way to get on an editor’s good side. You can use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to go deep into analysis and figure out what you need to target.
• Maintain Editorial Standards: Lastly, just make sure you’re not messing up the fundamentals. Whether that be grammar, structure or anything else, be sure that you don’t embarrass yourself when you submit that article for posting.

3: Submit Your Post

Now you’re done with everything you need, after a long process you can finally post your work and see the profits come. Of course, it’s not that simple, but it is a start.

Though submitting your post sounds easy enough, there’s still a few things you need to be sure of before you turn in your final draft.

• Proofread Extensively: Be 100% sure that every paragraph, sentence, word and character are all in their right spots. This isn’t your website, meaning you don’t have the luxury of simply going back and editing your mistakes, so be sure that everything is just how you want it to be.
• Include Assets: Provide the host editors with an author bio, a headshot, a link and any other information that points your way.

After you’ve published your guest post, it’s time to keep an eye on its success. 

Using tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz allows you to dive deep into the success or lack of success your article is seeing. Whether it be making sure that the backlink pointing to your site is still live, scanning the web to see how often it appears on the top page of the search engine results page, and of course simply tracking the amount of traffic coming its way.

You don’t need these premium tools to keep in touch with your guest post’s success. While it doesn’t contain the breadth of features like the aforementioned backlink monitoring tools, a site like domain.com can give you info regarding a page’s indexation status. If you add your guest post’s URL and it shows up on the domain.com website, then that means it’s showing up on Google. If not, then you can ask the host webmaster to request indexation for the article using Google’s own analytics tool. 

You shouldn’t let the host website’s reputation do all the work, it’s still your name and brand connected to that article. While it’d be easy to just leave the guest post as is, you’ll likely benefit more from some promotion on other platforms. Such promotion will help you two-fold, as your guest post’s boosts are the host article’s boosts too.

To promote your guest post, you should:

• Post On Social Media: Your followers on social media networks will likely take a look at whatever you post regardless of its location. 
• Post On Online Communities: Online collectives and forums within platforms like Facebook surrounding your industry are a hotspot for promotion. 
• Post On Your Own Blog: If you already have a decently sized audience, notifying your readers of your guest post is a simple enough way to gain some attention. 
• Request Internal Linking: To ensure indexation and ranking, ask the host blog’s editor to conduct proper internal linking. 
• Add Backlinks: If you’re doing some link building on the side as well, make your guest post a target page for backlinks. 

Even if you follow this guide to a t, you’ll likely make some mistakes on the way when guest posting. Nevertheless, it’s still valuable to acknowledge some common blunders that newer guest posters make in order to not repeat those mistakes. 

• Monotonous/Robotic Communication: Relying on automated templates or simply being unengaging can lose you some opportunities, always have your messages be personalized in order to maintain attention. 

• Too Much Focus On Own Brand: Remember, at the end of the day you’re writing for another website. While you should obviously leave your credentials and still tell readers where to find more of your work, you should not divert all of the attention towards yourself. It’s common courtesy and etiquette. 

• AI Content Creation: Use AI tools to help you all you want, but try not to give up your writing duties to LLMs, as AI generated content is seen as low quality and can leave an unwanted mark on your reputation. 

Guest posting is hard, but it’s also too helpful to ignore. The added attention, the backlink, and the potential traffic for your site can be gamechangers. Nevertheless, guest posting can prove to be too much of a hassle for a lot of marketers, and simply not worth the time. Luckily, you can always outsource this process to a guest posting agency like GoPeak, who go through the whole procedure for you, and all you have to do is see the advantages flow to your page.