How to Find Guest Posting Opportunities: Steps & AI Tools

Guest posting is an important SEO tactic for building quality backlinks to your website. Every marketer who has the time, budget, and resources often uses it. According to Referral Rock, 50% of guest bloggers reach out to at least 10 contacts for guest posts each month, while 7% pitch to 100 or more blogs monthly.

However, it’s difficult to find blogs that willingly accept guest posts, making it harder to develop a guest blogging strategy that is beneficial to your business.

In this guide to guest posting, we will look at how you can find guest posting opportunities and sites, and learn to write guest posts that drive traffic, engagement, and leads to your website. We will explore the manual – often time-consuming and cumbersome – methods, along with AI-powered tools that simplify the guest posting process.

What Is Guest Posting?

Guest posting is the process of writing and publishing articles on other websites. It’s a quid pro quo methodology: the guest blogger gets industry recognition, fame, and backlinks, while the guest blogging sites receive quality content for their audiences.

You can easily identify a guest post on a popular site; it’s usually marked by a "guest author," "contributor," "guest post by," or other similar tags. Here’s an example from the Search Engine Journal.

A guest author’s bio typically includes their social media handles and RSS feed, along with a link to their personal blog or company website. Guest blogging sites offer valuable backlinks to the author's site, passing link juice and user traffic that boosts its visibility and search engine rankings.

These backlinks can either be follow, which passes page authority to the linked website, or no-follow (marked by the rel=”nofollow” attribute), which does not pass any link juice. Although the latter link type might seem useless from an SEO perspective, it can be useful if present on a high-profile site like Forbes and drive significant traffic to your site.

Besides building backlinks, SEO professionals and companies use guest posting to increase brand awareness, referral traffic, SERP rankings, and domain authority.

Common types of guest posting

Websites that accept guest posts feature different kinds of guest blogs. It can be an editorial piece, a simple five-step tutorial, or Q&As with experts. You can find the types of guest posts they publish under their guest post guidelines.

How-to guides are the most basic type one can write. These step-by-step articles present informational content that helps users accomplish a particular task, such as How to Use SEO Persona to Boost Search Performance. Thought leadership offers expert opinions, insights, and market predictions. You can even express your views on a current event or trending topic with opinion pieces that spark discussions within your community.

Case studies are popular with guest blogging sites since they showcase real-world problems, solutions, and data to back up any claims.

Product reviews, listicles, and recommendations used to work in the past but are hardly accepted by site owners these days. You can, however, submit posts that share resources, tips, or relevant infographics like the one given below.

Publications, research, and data-driven studies that analyze new findings, simplify existing data, and validate claims are in demand and have a higher chance of being accepted if well-researched. Consequently, interviews featuring Q&As with industry leaders and influencers are sought after due to their interactive nature.

No matter which type of article you write, each guest blog serves a different objective and should be personalized to fit both your target audience and that of the guest blog.

Is guest blogging important in SEO?

Guest posting is one of the most important factors in off-page SEO. Off-page SEO involves activities that seek to improve your website’s experience, expertise, authority, and trust (E-E-A-T) – factors critical to Google’s SERP rankings. Marketers carry out link-building programs and try to improve branded search, social media engagement, online reviews, and ratings.

Basically, things that prove your website’s legitimacy and authority.

Link building is of two types: natural and manual. The natural way involves creating link bait articles, infographics, or resources that attract links organically because they provide some value to the reader. In contrast, manual links are acquired via direct outreach and rely on other sites to link back to you. Guest posts, link exchanges, and directory submissions are popular examples.

When you find sites that accept guest posts and get links from guest post contributions, you can:

• Attract quality user traffic from the host site
• Increase your website’s domain authority (DA)
• Diversify content format and topics
• Generate leads via powerful call-to-actions and landing pages
• Collaborate with prolific guest bloggers and experts

Writing a guest post and sharing it on different social networks further helps grow your social media presence, likes, shares, and engagement – powerful social signals for search engine algorithms. Guest blogging SEO does not only focus on generating backlinks; it also includes republishing your original content, articles, infographics, or videos, on websites that allow it, and reach a wider customer base.

How to Find Guest Posting Opportunities

So, how does guest posting work? First, you find a list of candidate websites and read their guest post guidelines. If required, you pitch your guest post idea. When accepted, you write your guest blog and share it on different marketing channels after it’s published.

A successful guest posting strategy revolves around three questions: where, what, and how.

• Where do you want to publish your content?
• What do you want to write in your blog post? What is your main goal, topic, and backlink strategy?
• How do you pitch and submit your guest article?

Sites that cater to your target audience or whose readers match your ideal customer profiles are the perfect candidates for guest posting. Once you have a list of such websites, you filter them according to their monthly traffic, domain authority or ranking, and spam score.

You then comb through their web pages and guest post guidelines to find topics and keywords that align with your niche market and expertise.

A great idea is to look at what the guest blog audience wants, what the site is known for (e.g., gardening tools), and what you are proficient in. The intersection of all three is the sweet spot you want to target in your guest post. It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple question like, “Which tools help with lawn mowing?” As long as it’s not already covered, you can go for it.

Professional sites have editorial teams that review guest blog pitches and can reject articles that don’t match the overall aesthetic and relevance of their blog. Thus, you need to pen an amazing pitch when required – including a brief article outline, word count, and author’s bio.

It normally takes a person around three to four hours to manually create a basic guest blogging strategy.

The spreadsheet given above covers the generic aspects of guest posting: website name, domain, submission link, keywords, word count, and domain authority. You still need to come up with the guest blog topic and create a content outline. It’s a great starting point but again, requires time that can be better used elsewhere.

SEO Advisor, under Advisor by Delve AI (coming soon), is an AI-powered tool specially built for marketers that eliminates these manual efforts by automatically generating relevant guest blog opportunities for your business.

This tool automatically finds an exhaustive list of blogs that accept guest posts in your industry, filters it by domain authority and web traffic, and generates several Suggested Topics and Related Questions you can develop content around. For more information, you can click on the red button, which will take you to the guest blogging guidelines of each website.

What’s interesting is that only sites that are relevant to your website or cover topics you talk about are covered in this list.

It’s not an easy job to start writing guest posts from scratch, especially if you want to do it at scale. You have the See Outline option for this very reason; it gives you an article outline for each topic or query with a title, meta description, and section ideas.

Advisor by Delve AI leverages data-driven personas and its deep understanding of your ideal customer profiles to automatically generate effective guest posting opportunities for your business. It can greatly enhance and speed up your guest posting outreach plans since all you would have to do is write and submit the article. Sign up now to receive an email notification when the product launches shortly.

Automation aside, if you still want to find guest posting opportunities the old-fashioned way, just follow these steps.

1. Outline Guest Posting Goals

Guest blogging is a complete waste of your time and resources if you go into it haphazardly. You need a content map that outlines your guest post websites, keywords, topics, and goals. Only then will you be able to build brand awareness, industry expertise, and high-quality backlinks.

Here are some goals to consider before submitting your guest posts:

• Generate backlinks to increase page authority
• Drive referral traffic to a specific webpage (e.g., lead generation forms)
• Increase blog and email newsletter subscribers
• Get social media likes, comments, shares, and followers
• Diversify audience base and boost recognition
• Acquire leads and improve SERP visibility

Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals will help you select the right blog and topic. After all, your end goal will greatly influence your choice of host website and content.

2. Find Guest Blogging Sites

The right guest posting site publishes content focused on your niche audience. For Delve AI, sites like MarketingProfs, Search Engine Journal, and Content Marketing Institute are ideal since they cover marketing-related topics, have an engaged reader base, and maintain a strong presence on social media.

There are a couple of ways to uncover guest posting opportunities.

• Google search operators
• Competitor backlink profiles
• Social media sites (like Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Reverse image search
• Online communities and forums
• Mega lists of popular blogging sites

Make it a point to avoid spammy sites and focus your guest blogging efforts on established websites that regularly publish high-quality and engaging content. Quality blogs with high domain authority (DA) and traffic are a tough nut to crack but they yield better results compared to spammy sites that only attract junk traffic.

Advanced Google search operators

The simplest way to create a list of authority blogs accepting guest posts in your niche is by using Google search, specifically Google’s advanced search operators. These operators make it easier to filter out SERP results and find relevant pages.

Go to the search bar and enter keywords related to your sector or area of interest, followed by phrases like “write for us,” “submit an article,” or “become a guest contributor.” Be sure to check at least ten SERP pages before forming any conclusions — not just the first one. Add sites that meet your guest posting criteria to your spreadsheet for further analysis.

Here’s a list of advanced search operators you can use to find more guest posting sites.

• keyword “guest post”
• keyword “write for us”
• keyword “contribute an article”
• keyword “become a contributor”
• keyword “guest article submission”
• keyword “submit your article”
• keyword “guest blogging opportunities”
• keyword “guest post guidelines”
• keyword “guest post submission”
• keyword “accepting guest contributors”
• keyword “guest post request”
• keyword “submit a guest post”

These search queries will lead you to a blog’s guest post submission or guidelines page. If you want to publish an article on Search Engine Watch and find out if they accept guest posts just add a “site:searchenginewatch.com” before your search term.

As you can see, there are multiple results to a single query; the right page is ranked second and has different keywords in the headline.

So, you may have to go through a few trials and errors before you land on the right site. You can also use the BOOLEAN search query: “guest post” OR “submit a guest post” OR “write for us” OR “become a contributor” OR “guest post guidelines” AND [target keyword] to fast-track your work.

Competitor backlink profiles

If you don’t have the time to conduct thorough website and keyword research for your guest posting plans, simply look at your competitors’ backlink profiles. You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest to find the keywords your site ranks for, identify top competitors, and analyze their backlinks.

Or you can just enter competitor domains in their backlinks checker.

It takes a bit of work to see which referring pages are guest posts. This activity may help you find the blogs they have published on different websites and discover who they have previously written for. You can then reach out to those particular sites with your guest blog pitches.

Besides competitors, you should also consider active guest bloggers within your industry.

Use the search operator site:domain "guest post by" to find people who post frequently on popular sites. Locate their personal or professional website, and then run a backlink check to review their backlink profile.

Social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn

Many bloggers and guest blogging sites share materials on social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn. You can enter “[vertical, topic, or keyword] guest post” or other hashtags in the search bar to find those that presently accept guest posts.

An advantage of using social media sites is that the results will be more recent.

You can follow famous guest bloggers plus publishers, and set up email alerts or app notifications to be informed whenever they send out a post requesting guest post contributions. Further, there might be people in your LinkedIn network who are open to accepting guest posts from you.

Reverse image search

If you know some influential bloggers in your sector, you can find out where they regularly post by looking them up online. Replace the keyword ‘guest post by’ with the author’s name followed by ‘guest post by.’ You may need to scroll through a few pages to find their guest blogs.

Another method you can use is Google’s reverse image search (we ran one on Rand Fishkin, the founder of SparkToro).

Since many guest bloggers use the same headshot across multiple websites, you can easily get the profile picture from their website, Twitter, and LinkedIn handles and conduct a reverse image search to find where they’ve published in the past.

Lists of popular guest posting sites

Now, if you don’t want to go surfing through multiple search results pages to find blogging sites that meet your requirements, you can directly go to blog directories and identify the most popular blogs within your niche.

There are readymade website lists created by bloggers covering different categories like marketing, finance, technology, ecommerce, and more. These websites will be sorted by industry, domain authority, and keywords. Others have done the job for you and all you need to do is go to Google and type “industry/keyword” plus guest posting website list.

Online communities and forums

Engaging with online communities and forums on platforms like Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn is a strategic way to uncover more guest posting opportunities organically. Active participation in discussions will help you make a name for yourself in the community and connect with the people in your niche.

Who knows? Building a rapport with these individuals might just score you a guest post in the future.

Social media networking not only paves the way for guest posting but also fosters relationships with popular influencers. Once you find them, make it a point to regularly interact with them on social media, react to their posts, and share valuable information. This will amplify your reach within their circles and allow you to position yourself as a thought leader.

3. Develop Relevant Guest Post Ideas

The key to successful guest posting is writing an article that benefits both the guest poster and the site owner. But before deciding on a post topic, you should clean up your website data. There is no right or wrong way to do this — delete any blogs that seem spammy and carry out practices that may lead to a Google penalty.

Start with quality guest post sites

Consider these factors when deciding which blog sites to post on:

• Domain authority
• Relevance
• Incoming user traffic
• Backlink profile
• Audience engagement
• E-E-A-T signals

You must select relevant sites that have a domain authority or domain ranking (if you’re using Ahrefs) higher than 50 and a spam score that’s lower than 2 percent. For those who don’t know, spam score measures the likelihood of a website being penalized or banned by different search engines.

Picking sites with a strong online presence and website traffic gives your post a longer shelf life, ensuring that you have a steady supply of people reading your blogs. This traffic must consist of engaged audiences and social media followers who will share, comment, and interact with your post once it’s published.

Your host site should have a diversified backlink profile. Review their guest posts and check the links provided. It would be amazing if they used follow links and prominently displayed the author’s bio.

When everything looks good, you can move on to the next step: choosing a topic to write about.

Find content ideas

You have a couple of options here. You can pick a popular topic and provide additional content that builds upon what’s already been published on the site – given that there’s no post on it. Or you can submit an editorial, guide, or thought leadership article on a completely new subject that’s bound to go viral.

To find a thought-provoking topic, you should:

• Stay up-to-date with the latest developments and social media trends.
• Explore trending headlines, questions, and content ideas with tools like Buzzsumo.
• Sign up for newsletters, publications, and RSS feeds.
• Check Google Trends to find popular topics, see how interests change over time, and discover related topics.

Another thing you can do is to look up their competitors and find any content gaps or topics they haven’t written about. Run a simple site:domain “keyword/topic” search to verify that it has not been covered by your guest post site.

Create a topical map that centers around a general keyword (buyer persona), content type (infographics), and guest post keywords (buyer persona statistics). Keeping this topical map in mind, perform keyword research and jot down search volume, difficulty, user search intent, and related keywords.

As we’ve mentioned before, Buzzsumo can help you identify the most popular content on a site.

Go to BuzzSumo's Content Analyzer tool and enter the host site domain. Sort the results by engagement, shares, and reactions on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Once you have your data, put it into a spreadsheet and label it Guest Post Content Research.

4. Create a Strong Guest Post Outreach Program

You’d be mistaken if you think outreach programs solely involve sending mass cold emails that follow a set template to a list of contacts you probably bought online. For starters, people — especially site owners — can easily tell when you're using a template.

Cold emails won’t work unless you personalize them.

For personalization, you need to be familiar with the kind of content they usually publish. Follow their social media handles and connect with editors so you can understand what their audience prefers.

The best way to pitch a guest blog idea

The first step: find the right person to reach out to. In most cases, it’s the content manager or editor who you can search on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Their contact email is often listed on the Guest Post Guidelines page but you can also use email finders like Hunter to get their email addresses.

Always write short and to-the-point email pitches.

Editors are busy people who have a lot on their plate. If your pitch is ambiguous, it will get trashed; you won’t ever get a reply. So, go back to their guidelines and include all the information they have requested in your pitch. Everything from your subject line to your credentials should be customized to increase your chances of getting a positive reply.

Propose a guest post idea that is refreshing to their ears and benefits the readers. A few more points to remember when you’re composing a guest post email pitch:

• Address editors by their names.
• Include guest post titles in the subject line.
• Add two to three topic/article ideas in each email to save time spent on redundant communications.
• Link to some of your previous articles related to what you want to write about.
• Tell them why you’re the right person for the job – add your industry experience, social media presence, and other factors to prove your writing capabilities.

Sending out the email does not mean that your job is done; if you don’t get any responses, be sure to send friendly reminders and follow-ups every two weeks.

Create a killer author bio

It’s a requirement to submit a guest author bio along with your articles to blogging websites. Sometimes, it is the only place that includes a promotional link to your website, resources, and social media profiles. Hence, it’s critical to include the right words in this 50 to 100-word paragraph you’re provided.

A good author’s bio typically includes the following details:

• A professional headshot image
• Link to your homepage or a landing page designed specifically for that audience to generate leads or acquire product subscribers.
• Free resources that compel readers to visit your website
• A strong call to action or CTA that directs them to do something.
• Your social media handles.

Pitch yourself hard – add anything and everything that sells you as an authority in that field, like your career profile, experience, and area of expertise.

5. Write the Guest Post Article

The guest post guidelines page is the holy grail of writing a successful guest blog. It includes clear-cut instructions about the content type, format, word count, graphics, and writing style accepted by a website. Ignoring these guidelines would be equivalent to self-sabotage.

Here’s a section of the Write for Us page by MarketingProfs.

Your goal should be to provide value in your guest posts that cannot be found elsewhere. Keep the promotional stuff out of it and incorporate elements that make them more interactive. For example, images, infographics, screenshots, dialogues, statistics, and quotes.

Nothing impresses editors more than a well-researched article – both in terms of content, grammar, and keyword ranking. Use tools like Grammarly for proofreading and double-check all your facts. Include backlinks to your website where allowed, and add internal links to the site to earn brownie points.

Don’t forget to add a CTA at the end of your post.

You should publish two to three articles a month to see quantifiable results in your rankings and backlink profile. Don’t stick to one blog, write for websites with different authority and relevance levels.

6. Promote Your Blog Posts Online

Share your guest post across all major marketing channels once it’s published. We are talking about email newsletters, social media posts, and links from your website articles. Encourage your subscribers and followers to read, comment, and share the post within their network.

Not everyone will see your posts the first time around, so keep on sharing them periodically. Respond to comments and actively connect with your audience. Doing so will boost your reputation in the community and site owners will be more likely to accept future posts and content collaborations.

7. Track Referral Traffic & Other Metrics

Compare your post performance with the objectives you had set in the first step, i.e., increase referral traffic, build more backlinks, get post engagement, and boost domain ranking.

You can leverage Google Analytics to track referral traffic (by source, medium, and domain) to your website or landing pages and create advanced audience segments based on this data to gain insights into visitor behavior. To check whether your content is trending on social media, set up an author search in Buzzsumo. You can easily verify SERP rankings for keywords manually or by using tools like Ubersuggest.

A Way Forward

In guest posting, you compile a list of websites, find guest posting opportunities, pitch articles, and share them on different social networks. Even though the results are slow, a guest post holds the power to improve critical SEO elements like domain authority, traffic, credibility, and search engine rankings.

You just need the right tools to speed up the guest posting process.

Advisor by Delve AI can help you find quality guest blogging sites and topics, generating an article outline with the click of a button so you can concentrate all your efforts on content creation.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up to get an email notification when Advisor by Delve AI launches shortly.