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If you want to gain your links through Guest Blogging for SEO, the first thing you need to do is always remember that this IS FOR SEO.

Fluffy posts will try to convince you that the best way to obtain a Guest Blogs trust and cooperation is to forget about SEO and try to create a friendship with the Blog owner. Now although I do believe that this is a key part of obtaining guest Blog opportunities, you should never forget about SEO. I’m not so “fluffy” instead I prefer to remember what my original goal was and how I want to obtain it.

After all the reason you are doing this is to improve your visibility and rankings on the WWW. So with that in mind let’s take a look at finding a Guest blog that suits your needs, or your client’s needs.

By needs I mean relevance, although (any link is a link you should be happy with – unless its in a footer / blogroll / blatantly paid anchor text / blah blah blah). However let’s stick to looking at relevant post and blog ideas:

Finding a Blog:

This is the most important and longest part of a guest blogging process, and you wouldn’t believe the amount of different routes you can take. First and foremost lets start off simple:

1. Using a Search Engine, what am I talking about, I mean Google:

Start with a generic search, something that can provide immediate results, make sure it is generic and always exact search around terms like these:

“Guest Post”
“Guest”
“Guest Blog”
“Write For Us”

Then take the most generic term that surrounds your topic of interest, and you will usually be provided with a list of sites that already have guest posts on them.

This is the long list way of obtaining a huge volume of guest blogs, and it can usually take some time to pull these out. (Ahem) There may be some ways of pulling results like these into a spreadsheet I think I saw somewhere….

Simply follow the link and check out the guest post; see if it has any links to other sites (dofollow preferably) and then if contact details aren’t obvious, then check about us page and see for email address. Direct contact shows that you have made the effort, rather than a BOT sending an automated message.

2. Find a Guest Blog through a Guest Blog?!?!

Many Guest Blogs form a network with each other, so one Guest Blog can sometimes provide you with links to other Guest blogs. There seems to be a trend with many Techie Blogs or Internet oriented Blogs where they have a Blogroll list to each other. Just another one of those simple ways to find other attributes.

3. Competitor Analysis

Pure gold, finding the links that your competitors have managed to obtain and then receive the same ones can help to give you an advantage. You can really push the boundaries, by investigating further and actually finding more resources than you originally expected. Running them through Yahoo Site Explorer, can sometimes provide a large amount of results, but try results with long URLS (these will be the Guest Blog Page themselves).

4. Utilise your own Guest Posts!

If you are confident and you manage to get yourself a Guest Post on a popular blog you could end up finding that people comment on your posts. My favourite kind of Guest Blog location is through comments. Those that leave comments usually link to their own Blogs, and always worth investigating, or they leave a comment to their own sites, SMASHING! So I have created a Flow Chart for you to use on this method, this is best used for both Comments and Bio links within Guest Blogs.

Apologies if this looks confusing, but it does the job! Basically this just allows you to broaden your search usually to more relevant blogs as people will generally have relevant sites linking to them. If they Guest Blog regularly you can find them!

5. Contacting Guest Bloggers:

Be direct and upfront, but definitely don’t be too demanding. Explain that you have a guest blog for them and that you were wondering if they were interested, say nothing about links. If you already have the post ready (best approach) then attach it to the email and send it over, allow them to look through, but make sure you include your link within the Bio. If they don’t like the link, don’t just give up, suggest that they have that one without a link but maybe contain one within the next, and give them two posts. Always try to find an ultimatum, but try not to be too pushy. As soon as they ask you for money, its time to walk away, there are plenty of respectable blogs out there that are happy to pay you for your work rather than the other way around…

6. Don’t be scared to have an irrelevant link.

If you include one relevant and one irrelevant link, don’t be too concerned about it, try to make sure that the prominence is with your relevant one, but why not have a link to your other site or your twitter account?

7. Guest Blog Communities

My Blog Guest from Ann Smarty and the likes of Cathy Stuckers Blogger Link Up, provide perfect opportunities for those looking for a starting place and even a regular blogging platform.

Well that’s it from me, hopefully this helps!

About the guest author:
Mark C is an SEO working for a Ski Resorts Tour Operator.