VisualFizz’s Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting
We at VisualFizz put together this guide for our internal team to use as a guide when they are navigating the process of guest posting, finding places to guest post, and accepting guest posts for our business blog. We felt it would be handy for marketers and brand managers alike to see how we go about guest posting. Check it out!
What is Guest Posting
Guest posting means that authors from various websites submit content, sometimes paid but usually free, to other websites. This allows authors to showcase their expertise and “get published” on other sources, helping to expand their reach and clout. The websites that receive these submissions get free, high quality, usually-SEO friendly content for their blogs. Generally speaking, it is a great win-win for both parties.
Why We Guest Post
Businesses and online brands engage in guest posting to gain hyperlinked references to their websites, called backlinks, which are extremely valuable to SEO strategies. To be successful, backlinks should be focused on websites that are similar in concept, industry, or offering to the author of the guest post. This helps to further enforce what the author’s business/brand is about and where it belongs on the internet.
Consider a “backlink” like a word of mouth recommendation. If a clean, high quality website gives your brand a good recommendation, you will also be seen as clean, high quality, and worthwhile to display as an option for searchers. If a spammy, low quality website gives your brand a good recommendation, you will also be seen as spammy and low quality. You can see how building relevant backlinks to high quality websites would support branding goals, while building low quality or irrelevant backlinks would be detrimental to them.
What We Want from Guest Posts
It’s important to consider the industry, offerings, and strengths of your brand when reaching out for guest posting opportunities. For a full-service digital marketing agency, guest posts could be about a number of things:
- Marketing for [INDUSTRY]
- Each service line item
- Each service line item for [INDUSTRY]
- Using [STRENGTH WE HAVE] in [INDUSTRY]
- Marketing strategies for [LOCATION]
You’ll want to make sure your guest posting opportunities fit these criteria:
- The content is focused on your niche / industry.
- The audience of the blog will be interested in your industry.
- The blog has engaged readership (posts have been shared socially and commented upon).
- The blog owner is active on social media (so you know that they will be promoting the content at some point).
What We Do Not Want
Irrelevant industries
It’s important that we’re guest posting on sites that are similar in offering or audience. A tourism brand likely wouldn’t want to post on a financial advisor’s blog.
Though you might be able to get creative. We’ve guest posted for design brands with titles like “How Designers can Utilize SEO”, “Using Pantone’s Coral Pink In Your Branding and Brand Strategy”, We’ve guest posted on social media advertising websites, we’ve been on videography brands, media buying brands, etc. Don’t be afraid to branch out a bit, as long as we can tie it back into our service offerings in some way! If you think we could make it work, we likely can!
Spammy websites
Use SEMRush (paid tool, ask for login) or (free) Moz to determine if a domain is a good fit. We’re looking for high authority (each 3rd party has their own metric, generally circled around the higher the better), low spam score. High number of linking domains is usually a decent sign of quality as well, though this may be less important.
Duplicate Content
Each guest post we create (and receive) must be 100% unique. We can use existing content like you would a collegiate research paper, as references and information sources, never copying directly from the existing source, and always referencing what is used from other sources.
Link Farms, PBNs
‘Link farms’ are websites whose sole purpose is to provide backlinks. Private Blog Networks are usually a similar situation. See: spammy websites.
How to Find Guest Posts
Finding guest posting opportunities is easy in theory, and there are a few places to check when looking for opportunities that fit your brand. Google/search engines, social media, and competitor backlinks are a great place to start.
Google Searches
You can use any of the following keyword searches to find blogs that accept guest posts. Just replace “keyword” with keywords from your industry, topic, or line item.
- keyword “submit a guest post”
- Industry keyword “write for us”
- keyword “guest post”
- keyword “guest post by”
- keyword “accepting guest posts”
- keyword “guest post guidelines”
These searches should lead you to a blog’s guest post guidelines page, guest post submission page, or actual guest posts by other writers.
Competitor Backlink Audit
Competitor Backlinks can be a great place to look for opportunities for your own brand. They’ve already done the hard work for you! You can utilize any free backlink audit tool (we use SEM rush internally, ask for login). Simply grab the competitors’ URL/domain, enter it into a backlink checker, and look for the best options.
Create a list, ideally a spreadsheet, of all the link building/guest posting opportunities you’ve found. (If you’re working for us, it’s a good idea to share that with us!) When you have your list, you might want to take it one step further and organize by type, service offering, or likelihood of success.
How to Reach Out To Guest Posting Opportunities:
When you do find a strong guest posting option, reaching out directly via a contact form or email you’ve acquired is the best approach. You can also reach out on social media if appropriate, but the responses here might not be strong.
It is a good idea to take a look at the brand’s current blog posts. Begin to think about what that brand’s audience comes to their site for, what ideas and tips would be useful to them, and how we can connect the VisualFizz into that audience and help provide useful information. You’ll likely need to pitch some example titles, so having an understanding of what their readers would want to see is recommended.
An example guest posting outreach email might include:
“Hi [NAME],
I came across your blog post “TITLE OF BLOG” on [Google/channel] and found it to be a great article! I checked out a few of your other blog posts and also found them to be great, particularly this one [include example if you wish, genuine compliments go a long way].
Do you accept guest postings from other brands in similar industries? VisualFizz is a digital marketing agency in Chicago with a focus on [design/development/seo/social media/ppc/How VF is connected/similar to their brand]. I think we could create some really engaging, informative content that your audience will love! Here’s a few title ideas I came up with initially, but I would be open to your recommendations on what you’d like to see.
Creative title that they would actually want on their blog [check their competitors for ideas]
Creative title that they would actually want, with a different topic or service item.
What do you think of those titles? I would love to hear your thoughts! We have a full team of specialists and content creators, so I’m confident we can create a piece of content that your readers will enjoy.
Let me know what you’re thinking on the titles above (or any others!). Once approved, I would be able to assign to one of our writers right away and get something back to you in about a week. In return, we’d only ask that you allow us to put a short blurb about VisualFizz that mentions our website.
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR WEBSITE]
Guest Posting can lead to valuable traffic and added clout on the E.A.T. scale for SEO health and is a great addition to any ongoing content strategy.
