“How can I find guest post opportunities?”
That’s a question many bloggers ask.
By now you may have identified some guest posting possibilities in the A-List Forum exchange, and possibly even written a post or two. But eventually you’ll want to look beyond ‘the neighborhood’, and find a larger pool of blogs that fit your topic and expertise.
The first step is identifying appropriate blogs. But that’s just the beginning. In order to turn those blogs into real opportunities, you need to create a connection with those bloggers and then craft a stellar pitch.
We’ll be addressing each of these in depth in the next couple of articles.
First let’s look at the question: how do I find good blogs for my guest posts?
It’s actually quite easy to find dozens of different blogs to pitch guest posts to – no matter what your blog topic is. Use the strategy below to come up with 50-100 blogs that are suitable to your topic or niche. This might sound daunting, but this strategy works, and it can apply to any topic.
Once you have such a large list, you can begin your guest post campaign in earnest.
Let’s use the topic of vegetable gardening as an example.
Your first task in finding suitable blogs is to get to know the leaders in your field. Remember your tracking spreadsheet? It’s time to open it up and have it at the ready as you go through the next steps.
The easiest way to find the top blogs in your field is by finding blog posts that list outstanding blogs. I searched for best vegetable gardening blogs on Google. Here’s a typical post I found:
Top 15 Vegetable Gardening Blogs
Make sure that you find at least three different list posts that list the top blogs in your topic area.
Now that you’ve found at least 15 blogs that are in your topic area, it’s time to look more closely into whether they accept guest posts or not.
Continuing the example of vegetable gardening, the first blog on the ‘Top 15’ list is Veggie Gardening Tips. In order to find out whether Veggie Gardening Tips accepts guest posts, search on Google for the URL plus the word guest.
Here is what I searched for:
http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com guest
If you can see some links to posts by guest posters, add the blog to your spreadsheet. But first open up one of the newer guest posts and check that there is a byline with link to the guest poster’s blog. (You only want to write for blogs that allow you to include your byline with a link to your blog.)
Fill in the other fields on your spreadsheet such as URL, blogger’s name and contact info. But don’t worry about filling in your post idea – unless you already have a good one!
As for blog size, you’ll find that the bigger blogs show their subscriber numbers. If you can’t see the subscriber number, just leave the field in your spreadsheet empty.
Continue to go through this exercise until you find at least twenty leading blogs in your field that accept guest posts.
Here’s a simple shortcut for finding blogs that accept guest posts: follow that tracks of each guest poster that you’ve discovered in the exercise above.
Once you find a blog that accepts guest posts, check out at least 5 guest posters. For example, I found this guest post: Three Crucial Steps to Growing the Most Nutrient-Dense Vegetables
It’s by Phil Nauta. Your next step is to find other guest posts by Phil Nauta (or whoever the guest poster is that you are researching), because this will lead you to directly to more blogs in your field that accept guest posts. Here is what I searched for:
Phil Nauta guest
This particular guest poster has written a lot of guest posts and led me to at least ten more blogs that are good targets for potential guest posts on vegetable gardening.
As you can see from the example above, it’s easy to find 100 guest post opportunities in your topic area. Here are the steps:
Once you have compiled your spreadsheet with at least twenty blogs that are opportunities for guest posts, sort your list in order of blog size.
You will end up with some blogs that are very big, some medium blogs, and others where it’s unclear how many subscribers the blog has.
Focus on the smaller blogs first. Wait until you have some guest posts on smaller blogs before you target larger blogs.
You can also use this strategy to find blogs in adjacent niches. For example, a vegetable gardener could pitch guest posts to general gardening sites, or minimalist sites, or cooking sites that they’ve identified using this system.
In the next article you’ll learn how the research the blogs you have found, and narrow down your top contenders for guest posting.
Author: Mary Jaksch