Guest Posting Strategy Explained! - Step by Step Guide to Guest Posting - SEO Tutorial Series # 18

Welcome to the eighteenth tutorial of my SEO tutorial series. In the last post, we discussed the strategy of forum posting + forum signatures. The strategy is not that common and most underestimated by SEO optimizers. So there are high chances that you'll see many link-building opportunities for free. The only investment is "huge time".

It takes a lot of efforts to build your reputation on new forums because if you just register on those forums for the sake of creating a backlink, then there are high chances that forum owners/moderators will ban you permanently. I tried it once but the same reaction by blog owners. Even though my comment was on topic and constructive, but as soon as they saw the link in my post, they rightly suspected that my sole purpose is to create backlinks from their forum while posting constructive comments. I didn't break their terms but some forum owners don't really like to see backlinks hunter on their forums.

That's why I am not really focusing on forum posting strategy. I don't have much time to waste. I'd rather choose guest posts blogging instead of forum posting strategy because of the potential that it contains.

Yes, you've read it correctly. Guest posting is one of the best ways to create your goodwill, name, and fame in the business. This practice is very common and yet so successful because Google doesn't consider this strategy bad or some kind of blackhat. It is open to the public and therefore, you'll see that many blogs are willing to accept guest posters because it also serves their site and they make revenue by doing absolutely nothing.

Image Credits: WebConfs

In general, guest postings are done for one of the following purposes:

To create a backlink.
Introduction of the new author in the industry.
To drive traffic to an external site.

If you ask me which one is more important then I might not be able to differentiate the importance of any of above because all of them serves some kind of purpose and increases the reputation of your business. You can either pick anyone purpose of the above three OR you can try to hunt all three. It's like hunting 3 animals with one arrow.

Guest Posting Strategy - Step by Step Guide:

Let me explain the strategy now.

Step 1:

The first thing that you must do is, know your niche. If you think that you can start posting for other sites regardless of their niche and still gain positive effect on your SEO keywords then you are still a noob. Even though Google consider guest-posting a whitehat strategy, but that doesn't mean that Google will tolerate backlinks from an irrelevant site. In fact, you'd see the negative effect to your keywords instead of positive.

So, in order to ensure that you get the positive effect, it is must to know your niche. You just need to find your broad niche. If your blog is about some kind of disease or something then it falls under the category of health. In this case, health is your niche.

Step 2:

Once you've successfully found the niche of your site, the next step is to find the blogs that are related to your niche and also accepting the guest posters. Not all websites allow guest postings. This step can be time-consuming but unlike forum method, it works pretty well and also drive good traffic to your site. So overall, it worth your time.

You will need Google to find the relevant blogs that accept guest posting. Google search operators made the life much easier for us. If you frequently use their search operators, you'd know how amazing that is and how Google saves our investments.

To find the relevant blogs, insert this query in the Google search but replace the "keyword" with your main niche.

"keyword" "submit a guest post"
"keyword" "guest post by"

I believe that those queries will suffice you and as a result, you'll see many blogs related to your niche that accepts guest-posting.

Step 3:

It's time to find out which blogs you should select to post as a guest. In order to find the potential of blogs, we're now back to basics of SEO. Yes, the SEO metrics!

If you've already read my previous tutorials, you'd know what I'm saying. But if you are new to this series, then I'd suggest you read all of my tutorials. Links are added at the end of my post for your easiness.

We need to check the following metrics:

Domain Authority by MOZ
Page Authority by MOZ
Trust Flow by Majestic
Root Domains by MOZ

Here are my personal preferences (but that completely depends on your target):

DA > 25
PA > 15 (Optional)
Trust Flow > 15
Root domains > 200

But the question is, which URL should meet the above criteria. Is it the root domain of your desired blog where you want to guest post or is it the URL of the category of your desired site where you want to post as a guest. To be honest, I'd care more about the homepage rather than inside pages. So, that's a signal for you that you should go for "homepage" or "root domain" of your desired site.

Step 4:

Once you've compiled the list of sites related to your niche with their SEO metrics, you must select some of the sites to start with. It may take days to weeks to months to contact the blog owners to seek their permission and to know how you can move forward.

The best strategy is to choose the sites whose owners are active in social media. Sites that offer guest-posting opportunities usually have their official pages, go there and find if the owner is active. If yes, shoot them an email very politely and ask for their permission. Be good!

Step 5:

Keep your post interesting enough and don't try to optimize keywords in that article. You don't need your competitor to rank for your desired keyword, and if you do so much SEO to that article, you might lose your chance to rank in Top 10 results of Google.

But if your purpose is to drive traffic to your site through guest posting (i.e steal the visitors), then you are most welcome to implement SEO to that article to ensure that most people read that article. At least you'll gain some visitors that way.

Important Info:

In my coming tutorials, I'll explain the king of all strategies. Even though the strategy is grey-hat, but if you implement the strategy through the right way, then your site ranking is guaranteed. Anyways, I hope that you're excited enough. And if you are, please show your excitement by following me at @princewahaj and supporting my work. I'd appreciate your support.