Any seasoned seo will tell you that not all links are created equal. In the eyes of Google a contextual link from an authoritative website is worth far more than a link on a footer of some site with nothing to offer other than duplicate content. A great method for acquiring some of these contextual links is to look for guest blogging opportunities from blogs in your niche.
Finding blogs to guest post on can be tedious and time-consuming but if you’re up for the task below are some search queries you can run to find bloggers who have at some point accepted a guest blog post.
- {keyword} “guest blogger”
- {keyword} “guest post”
- {keyword} “guest article”
- {keyword} “write for us”
- {keyword} “guest column”
- {keyword} “become a contributor”
- {keyword} “contribute to this site”
- {keyword} inurl:category/guest
To do this search I use the advanced search in Google and I toggle the results per page to 100. Personally I like to work from the bottom up and basically what you’re looking for are blogs that regularly take guest bloggers. On occasion you’ll run into certain blogs that only take guest posts from authority figures in the niche or have regular guest bloggers only. While you can still approach those bloggers I’ve found that only very rarely will they accept guest posts from other writers.
The key with this little exercise is obviously to go through the list as quickly as possible and to find as many possible guest blogging opportunities as possible. What you’re looking for are websites that regularly accept guest posts from different guest bloggers. Each guest blogging opp is a possible link back to your site!
If your website is relatively young and you don’t have any linkable assets your best bet is probably to write up an original article and send it along with the guest post request email. In order to do this you’ll want to spend a few minutes at the site to determine what type of content they post and get a good feel for what type of content stands a good chance of getting accepted.
I wish I had some tips or a magical template that would increase your conversion rate to 100% but I’m afraid I haven’t fount it yet. Writing good content seems to work pretty well though and so does thoroughly checking out their site to look for any guidelines or restrictions they might have on guest posts. You know for those of you looking to drop 12 links in that one article…
I digress.
I like to shoot through a bunch of targets and then take a closer look at all the blogs that I didn’t get a response from to see if they’re worth continuing to pursue. If the website shows all the characteristics of an authoritative site than I might continue to try and communicate through comments or through Twitter or Facebook. If they have a Twitter or FaceBook account it would probably be a good idea to follow them. For those of you that think now is a great time to hit them up for a link go ahead and smack yerself on the back of the head for me…
If you have a Twitter or Facebook account yourself you can share their stories as a friendly gesture. In the end it all boils down to building relationships with people and sharing content with them that would be useful to their readers.
Guest blogging works if you’re looking to build contextual links and not only is it a great way to build links but let’s not dismiss the fact that you’re placing yourself in front of an audience that is in a somewhat related niche. In other words the link could mean more then just link juice, you could also be looking at a spike in traffic and new readers.
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