Done correctly, guest posting will generate great content, get social shares, drive traffic, attract links, and improve search rankings. This guide is designed to take you through the steps of a guest blogging campaign done the right way.

There is no hotter form of “content marketing” than guest blogging. The “build great content” drum beat has been relentless for years, now. There’s only one “small” problem – just because you build great content, doesn’t mean it will rank on Google. Like it or not, that still takes links.

As “luck” would have it, one of the best ways to get links happens to be – guest blogging. If guest blogging is the perfect vehicle for great content and link building, what could possibly go wrong?

For starters, the explosion in guest blogging has led to a proliferation of “made for guest posting” blogs, guest posting networks, and even guest posting matchmaking services. Because of this perceived “abuse”, there has been rampant speculation that Google will “crack down” on guest blogging.

What is Google’s View on Guest Blogging for Links?

The reality is that Google will continue to crack down on spam, and that includes the poor quality websites that exist for the sole purpose of selling or trading guest posts. That doesn’t mean that guest posting is dead. Just like link building, there are right ways and wrong ways to do it.

Because guest posting gets rankings and can improve your position in the SERPs, there is a strong incentive to do it. Done correctly, guest posting will generate great content, get social shares, and drive traffic and attract links. This guide is designed to take you thru the steps of a guest blogging campaign done the right way.

This Isn’t Article Syndication

Back in the “good old days”, before Panda (BP), “content marketing” started with your favorite keyword tool. The tool generated keyword phrases, which were turned into headlines, and ultimately a series of keyword stuffed articles designed to rank a particular keyword phrase.

The articles were crap. They were published on loads of websites under the guise of SEO and republished on countless article directories. The search engines ate this “content” up and the user experience was awful. In response to this, Panda was born. Incredibly, I still see this same process being used for guest posting.

Contrary to popular belief, content creation is not the first step in a guest posting campaign. Instead, finding relevant high trust / high authority blogs is priority one. There is little point in creating the perfect square peg when our coveted target blog has a big round hole to fill.

Finding the Right Home for Your Guest Post

You need to look for three things.

Relevance. Is the target blog related to your Niche? This can be tough, as the many closely related blogs are often run by competitors. In those cases you may need to “stretch” the relevance a bit. Instead of the perfect promotional pen blog, you may need to look for Trade Show or other related websites. Trust signals. To paraphrase Google Fellow Amit Singhal, do you trust the information presented in this blog? Chances are, if the first three posts are payday loans, acne creams and diet pills, it won’t pass the “Trust” test.

Is the blog getting indexed regularly? We’re not looking for any particular PageRank or link juice – we just want some indication that Google sees value in crawling the site.

Organic Search

The tried and true way to find guest posting opportunities is via Google search using the following advanced search queries (among others):

.“write for us” + Keyword

.Keyword “submit a guest post”

.Keyword “guest post”

.Keyword “guest post by”

.Keyword “accepting guest posts”

.Amit SinghalKeyword “guest post guidelines”

Just replace the “Keyword” with the actual topic or niche that you are interested in.