Even though Google's former Engineer Matt Cutts declared guest blogging"dead" in 2014, it is frankly more alive today than ever before. Current SEO experts understand that the benefits of using guest blogging to accomplish online success are a quick win when it comes to ranking high. These benefits include things such as:

• Reaching a new audience.

• Building authority in your area.

• Increasing your domain authority via high-quality/relevant backlinks.

• Creating inbound sales and/or business opportunities.

Additionally, there are many benefits for publications that accept guest posts, for example:

• High-quality content when you're running low on topics, new.

• New perspectives and/or themes that are new.

• New audience (that is mutually beneficial).

• Opportunity in the guest blogger for backlinks to your website.

Note that there are also SEO benefits to guest blogging, but just take care to not abuse them, unless you want to risk the wrath of Google.

These advantages are currently assuming high-quality guest posters, as well as high-quality guest posting chances. The advantages don't hold true if either end can not claim to be high-quality.

Quality vs. Quantity

Guest blogging is all about generating quality content while implementing good SEO practices. In the past, guest blogging has been focused on quantity, as was used primarily as a search engine optimization strategy to acquire links, comment spam, or even to keyword stuff.

We all know content and links account for two-thirds of Google's top 3 position signs. It's just as important to put in the work required to get hyperlinks while it's great to have quality content on your own website that can help your visitors to boost your SEO.

People know the advantages of guest blogging and as a result, many of them email to different websites and publications in hopes of creating content for those audiences.

People who are experienced guest bloggers know that most of the emails you will be getting back from publishers will be requesting money for this exchange. This is standard practice but you have to make sure you don’t pay them too much money and research their site data to see what would be a practical cost for adding your guest blog to their site. Less then 1% of all the publishers you are emailing will do it for free and that is if you're lucky. The guest blog cost is definitely worth the long term ROI.

Identify Your Niche

You need your content to attract the right audience for you and your business. Defining your market will let you more easily concentrate your guest blogging pitch (and composing ) efforts. Attention is also paid by Google to the kind of websites which link to your website.

The more closely related a guest post is to your own niche, the better the backlink it's going to be for your search engine optimization efforts.

How to Find Quality Sites

When it comes to guest blogging chances, look for:

• Websites which operate in the same (or a similar) business or niche.

• An audience that, in many (or all) manners, matches your target customer.

• Signs of high involvement (e.g., a multitude of opinions on posts or large social share counts of posts ).

• A content distribution strategy that ensures eyeballs on articles.

Metrics to Identify a High-Quality Guest Blogging Opportunity

There are a number of relevant metrics to consider when it comes to identifying a guest blogging chance, such as things like:

Guest Blogging SEO Metrics

1. Ranking for relevant industry keywords - SEMRush is an excellent tool for determining the SERP positions for keywords across sites that are aggressive.

2. Backlink Portfolio - Monitor Backlinks provides a solution that is totally free for checking into a website's backlink portfolio.

3. Domain Authority (DA) - Moz uses this metric to predict how a site will rank.

DA is a metric guest bloggers use to rate the worth of a website that is potential. In theory, the nearer the DA score of a website is to ranking, the more traffic and 100 it should count on.

Think about searching for guest posting chances on sites to help your website to gain rank. You are able to use Moz's Open Site Explorer tool to check the DA of a site: the higher the better, especially if you're doing an extensive guest post.

Social Media Factors

• Facebook likes & shares

• Tweets

• LinkedIn shares

• Alexa Rank

• Comments per article (though the quality is possibly more important than quantity )

Though social media does not have a direct impact on SEO, it does have an indirect impact on SEO and it may still help efforts in guest blogging. Therefore, it's important when it comes to qualifying a possible guest posting chance, to think about the audience and social factors. Comments, likes, and stocks are all actions for giving content more exposure.

Poor Guest Posting Factors

There are a number of qualitative factors to consider when it comes to identifying guest blogging opportunities, for example, though the metrics focus on quantitative variables:

• Too many advertisements above the fold

• An outdated/poor website design

• Poor information architecture

• A lack of a process

• No posted writer requirements

• DA under 25

Added Factors

Listed below are two important factors when trying to identify blogging opportunities to consider:

Exclusivity: Does the website accept everybody or only those who have good thoughts and reputations? You can check by performing an internet search on the web site you're eyeing and"stalking" their subscribers.

Linking: Why does the site nofollow links from guest authors? It's far more difficult to find a link, particularly. This is very important, Even though a nofollow link shouldn't be your top motivation for guest blogging, for many people. Then you can prioritize blogs that provide dofollow links, if this is you. Just know that these websites may be smaller and have much less ability, so it is debatable how much it will help your SEO efforts.

Pitching Guest Blogging Opportunities

It is time to start considering the pitches you are going to be sending out When you've established a list of guest blogging opportunities.

Some things to Remember:

• Don't send a pitch correspondence that is generic it will get ignored.

• Personalize every pitch correspondence with something you respect or want about the book you are pitching.

• Introduce yourself and tell them why you want to guest blog, and what you could do for these (not how you anticipate the chance to profit you). Some sample links to articles you have printed, particularly those that could demonstrate involvement and good numbers.

Remember If you pitch a post idea -- it is not about business, service, or product. It's about selling yourself.

To increase your odds of getting accepted, avoid bad pitches and guest blogging practices. Note that a few companies prioritize submissions from prolific guest posters so in the event that it is possible, try working your way up the rankings by beginning to pitch into "smaller" websites.

To demonstrate an example, let's say I'm pitching Search Engine Journal to print my article, this one, about How to recognize High-Quality Guest Posting Opportunities. Here's an example of an email I might send into the editor.

Example:

Hello {Publishers Name}

My name is {Your Name}, also that I compose for [a few relevant publications in the digital advertising business ]. I'm an active reader of [name the publication] and enjoyed your recent story about [recent narrative subject ]. In a bid to become more actively involved in your book, I'd like to pitch a topic that I think would be of interest. Here are the facts:

[Several paragraphs summarizing the subject and why it's relevant to this viewer ] (bonus points if you provide some subheadings and bullet points to flesh it out a little more)

What should you believe, [editor name]? Could that be of interest?

[Your Name ]

The more you can present your interest and how you can benefit them, the more probable your pitch will be to be accepted.

The editor won't even bother with you, if you focus on the benefits you will receive out of being published on a certain site.

How to Identify High-Quality Guest Blogging Opportunities

Although guest blogging has been assaulted by many such as Google and other SEO experts, it manages to flourish as a clever digital marketing activity because of the numerous (mutual) benefits it can bring into the guest poster and also site they're posting on.

While this tactic has been abused in the past, it is still possible to use it today to improve your own SEO plan -- provided that your focus is on creating high-quality articles.

Conclusion

As you can see from reading this blog guest blogging is highly effective for SEO purposes but not easy to do. We know from data and testing that guest blogging helps increase your website value or domain authority and your overall rankings on Google. If you want more information about guest blogging or need assistance with your guest blogging strategy please contact us or go to our guest blogging services page.