7 Ways to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities

Guest posts are central to most link building strategies.

Why?

Because you can find tons of blogs( that write about the same topic) which you can get published on. Hey presto, you’ve got a quality and relevant link.

The problem is actually finding worthwhile guest blogging opportunities.

It can be hard to find blogs accepting guest posts. Blogs that do accept them might not be high quality enough to be worth pursuing.

And vice versa; those that are good enough quality might not accept your guest post.

If you are going to do some guest blogging, knowing a few tricks to find good opportunities can save you some time, and land you better links.

Every SEO wants increased chances of having a guest post published, right?

How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities

To kickstart your guest post campaign, you need to find blogs that accept guest posts. Here are the seven best ways to find guest blogging opportunities to get your list started:

1. Google Search Operators

Most blogs that accept guest contributions will have a page on their website with their guidelines for guest authors to follow.

This makes it easier for you to find them with a Google search. And even easier if you use some advanced Google search operators.

You just need to look for the same terms they include on the guidelines page then mix in your topical keyword.

Here is a table with some of the best examples of search operators to get you started:

Example

Let’s say your business sells accounting software solutions. You can search accounting software “guest post” in Google and find over 500,000 results:

Now you can quickly copy the links you find into a spreadsheet for deeper analysis later on.

Then change “guest post” to one of the other operators listed above and repeat the process. This is the best way to build a huge list to start with.

This is a good way to find a high volume of websites accepting guest blogs, but won’t help you analyze each site to assess their quality. That step will come later.

2. Prolific Guest Bloggers

Once you finish going through step one, you can start looking at the actual sites in more detail.

See what types of guest posts they have published. This helps you figure out if it’s really a good fit for you, but it also serves another purpose.

You should start to find some authors coming up frequently as “prolific guest bloggers” in your niche.

When you do, you can look them up on social media or on Google.

On social media you will see them promoting their guest blogging content. On Google you should find other posts they have written.

This can help you find other websites that accept guest contributions from other writers. You will either find links to the articles themselves, or their author page on various websites.

Here is an example of a website that Tim Soulo — the CMO of Ahrefs — has an author page on.

Start adding new websites you find this way to your master list.

This method is a good way to find other websites that accept guest authors, but not in a great volume. You may also find that these sites only accept contributions from very high profile writers in their field, and less likely to accept yours.

3. Competitor Backlinks

If you want to find quality and relevant guest post opportunities, you can use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush.

Take your top competitors and check their backlink profiles. You will find any recent links from guest posts that they gained.

If they already accepted a guest post from a competitor, there’s a good chance they’ll accept one from you as well.

And you already know it’s likely relevant to your niche, and good quality. Otherwise why would your competitor have gone for the guest blog themselves?

This is a very good method to find very good quality and relevant opportunities.

It’s also good because you can quickly replicate the efforts of your competitors, letting them do the hard work of finding it before you.

4. Social Searches

We touched on how social media could help find opportunities with prolific guest bloggers.

You can also use social media searches in general. Here are a few different ways you can find opportunities through social media:

• Check your competitor’s feeds to see if they promoted any guest posts
• Use similar search terms as Google Search operators by combining your keyword and guest blogging terms together
• Set up alerts for prolific guest bloggers in your niche so you find new opportunities as they get promoted

Let’s go back to the accounting software example and apply it to one social media platform: Twitter.

Use the search function and add the term “accounting software guest post”, and you will see results like these:

You can sort by “latest” to make sure you find more recent results. Or you can sort by “people” to see if you can find specific accounts or guest bloggers promoting their content. Check their profiles to find their websites, and add them to your list.

This can help you find opportunities that don’t appear in searches or competitor backlink checks. You won’t find the same volume or quality as some of the other methods on this list, but it helps you find more opportunities.

5. Target Guest Post Sites

You will find some websites are actively looking for guest contributions. Some might even openly advertise that fact.

Guest contributions help them to attract new readers and develop new content for them, saving them time and money and earning you a link.

Everyone’s a winner.

Now you can spend ages researching and collecting these sites, or you could use our list of 350+ guest post opportunities to kickstart your research:

You can get access to the guest post list here.

Each guest post site has been categorized with a niche + Ahrefs data to help you prioritize your link outreach.

6. Buy Them (from a trusted vendor)

Buying backlinks has always been a murky grey area for acceptable link building tactics. This presents extra difficulty for guest blogging, because many sites will only accept guest posts if you pay for them.

On the one hand, paying for links is something that goes against Google’s guidelines. It could get your website penalized, which you obviously want to avoid. However, despite that it is still a common practice and most sites do not get penalized at all.

This is because what Google wants to penalize is abuse of paid links that results in spamming low quality and irrelevant links to game the system. But if you are only paying for guest posts on websites that are high quality, relevant to your niche, and a trusted source you will be fine.

You do need to be careful not to be lazy and use paying for guest posts to cut corners. That’s how you do get penalized. Make sure you only go to trusted vendors for these opportunities.

7. Join (+ contribute) to online communities

There are many online communities for digital marketers that you can join. You will find them on Reddit, Slack, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms that allow people to create their own groups.

For guest post opportunities, you will find some communities where members share guest blogs they wrote. They might also have shared lists of blogs accepting guest posts. You can use these communities to find current and future opportunities.

First, you need to find and join these communities. You also need to actively participate and contribute to the discussions and shared resources. If you earn people’s trust and build relationships, they will come to you with new opportunities.

Here’s an example of a public Subreddit that includes such a list:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6iw9zc/3000_blogs_that_accept_guest_posts_promote_your/ 

This is a great way of finding guest blogging opportunities. These sites will already become vetted by peers in the digital marketing community, who can attest to the quality. They can also pass on useful information to help you improve your acceptance rate.

The worst drawback is the time you invest in joining and contributing to these groups. That’s a small price to pay for having a reliable source for finding new opportunities on a continual basis.

Summary

If you don’t know how to find good quality guest blogging opportunities, it can be a daunting task. But if you know all the best strategies and tricks, it will save you a lot of time. This list is a good way to get started if you’re not experienced with the process.

As time goes on and you get more practice, you will be able to learn all the extra little details to improve your success rate. Joining online communities is one of the best ways to get advice and valuable insights to refine your strategies. Just keep at it and you’ll have great success in time.

If you need more info about kickstarting your campaign, check out our guest blogging guide.