Guest blogging in 2019 is one of the most effective strategies to grow your online presence and increase your blog’s traffic.

Search engines, now more than ever, rely heavily on authority backlinks to define search rankings and guest posts provide backlinks of the highest quality.

In this article, you’ll find everything you need to know about guest blogging in 2019 and why it should be part of your blogging strategy.

What’s Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging is when a blogger writes an article that will be published under his name by another website.

This is a common process around the internet among bloggers and niche websites.

Is Guest Blogging for You?

Many new bloggers wonder whether they should start guest blogging or just focus on their own content.

Though your content needs to be your number one priority, guest blogging has tons of benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked, regardless if you are starting a new blog or you have a well-established blog in your niche.

What are the Advantages of Guest Blogging?

At first, guest blogging was a way of website owners to publish more content for their audience, while the writer got some extra exposure.

Though these are valuable reasons for guest blogging, the main reason bloggers still write guest posts in 2019 is simple – to get high-quality backlinks to their own websites.

Backlinks, in turn, improve search rankings and increase organic traffic.

Here are some of the many advantages to guest blogging in 2019:

1. Boost in Rankings and Organic Traffic

As mentioned before, the most crucial advantage of writing guest blog posts on popular websites within your niche is to get backlinks from high Domain Authority websites.

Every industry has its big names and relevant sites.

But, whichever niche you’re in when your website has these backlinks, you get a boost in search engine rankings and organic traffic.

2. Referral Traffic

Apart from the SEO benefits of guest blogging, you also get referral traffic.

Whenever you write a guest post, you can place relevant links to strategic pieces of content on your website, such as to the most popular article you’ve written. (If it makes sense within the context and adds value to the post.)

These referral links are vital to bringing new readers to your website.

3. Lead Generation

Throughout your post, at least one of your referral links should send readers to a piece of content that has an opt-in email form.

It’s the perfect opportunity to generate more leads to your website.

4. Establish Authority

Another huge advantage of guest blogging, not as measurable as the ones discussed earlier, is establishing your authority within your niche.

When a niche blogger has blog posts spread throughout the most important websites of the industry, it tells visitors one thing – you’re an expert.

5. Build Trust

Being viewed as an expert by your audience and showing up in all those sites leads to trust.

It’s much easier for an audience to trust bloggers that have proved their value within the niche.

Once you build trust with your readers, it’s much easier to sell them your own products or recommendations.

6. Brand awareness

As a blogger, you are your own brand.

Brand awareness is vital to grow your audience and build a successful website.

Guest blogging can help you increase brand awareness when your targeted audience sees your post on leading sites within your niche.

7. Engage With the Community

Guest blogging is a fantastic way to get feedback from and engage with the community.

When a significant website publishes your guest post, chances are, the audience will leave comments on it.

Make sure you interact with them and reply to the comments.

This direct access to the audience is one of the major advantages of guest blogging in 2019 when building relationships is more important than ever.

Besides, guest blogging allows you to build relationships with the bloggers of your niche, which can play a massive role in your blog’s success.

By now, you’ve probably decided you want to include guest blogging in your online growth strategy, but how can you get started with guest blogging?

How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities?

To make the most out of guest blogging, first, you’ll have to find the right opportunities.

Within every niche, many popular websites thrive on guest posts.

It’s important to discover sites that will put you in front of your targeted audience.

1. Guest Post Opportunities With the Community

Being part of a niche market means belonging to a specific community, which involves the audience, bloggers, companies, influencers and so on.

Access to a community is one of the best ways to build relationships and, not only finding guest blogging opportunities but actually getting your guest articles published.

Wealthy Affiliate is one of the most popular affiliate marketing communities around the world, and it’s highly engaging.

It’s the perfect place for you to find other bloggers within your niche and create relationships that can lead to guest blogging and other profitable businesses partnerships.

When you join Wealthy Affiliate, you also get a chance to meet some of the industry authorities of your niche, which can lead to exciting guest posting possibilities.

2. Make a Targeted List of Relevant Websites

Since there are probably a handful of websites you already trust in your industry and read regularly, you already have a starting point.

Go through your favorite sites and check out if they accept guest posts.

Usually, they have a page dedicated to the details.

3. Google Search for Possible Guest Post Submissions

Searching for guest posting opportunities can be time-consuming.

To make sure your search is effective, focus on your main keyword.

Let’s say you have a blog about marketing online tools.

Go on Google, type in marketing online tools +

• “Write for us”
  
• “Become a contributor”
  
• “Guest article”
• “Guest post”
  
• “Submit an article”

And any other variation that could indicate a guest blogging opportunity.

4. Reverse Image Search

When you go to one of the guest posts of your favorite websites, usually, at the bottom of the post you can find the name of the author, her bio and an image.

If you right-click on the picture, it allows you to “copy image link.”

When you paste that on Google and conduct a search, you’ll find other guest blog posts the author has written, which will lead you to many websites that accept guest articles.

5. Search on Twitter

Another way of finding websites to write guest posts is to search on Twitter.

Most sites, whenever they publish a new article, tend to share it on Twitter, almost immediately.

If you search “guest post + your keyword” on Twitter, you’ll find many websites within your niche that accept contributors.

Plus, you might even see some posts asking for guest post submission, which is a fantastic opportunity if you are just starting out with guest blogging.

How to Choose the Best Sites to Guest Post?

Now you have a list of potential guest blogging websites.

It’s vital to narrow it down to the most relevant ones to implement an effective guest blogging strategy.

Here’s what you should look for:

• High-quality domains with a Domain Authority higher than 30 – SEO tools can help you check websites’ DA points.
  
• Well-positioned sites on Alexa’s ranking – A good global ranking is hard to define since it depends on your niche, but you should aim for websites with a global ranking within the 500,000.
  
• Popular websites within the niche community – Check out the websites’ social media presence and the audience’s engagement.

Also, some sites accept guest posts but bury the author’s backlink in the author bio box, which is far from ideal and won’t bring you much traffic.

Check out how the site displays other guest posts to make sure you’ll get a good exposure.

Before Pitching Your Guest Post

1. Develop a Relationship With the Blogger

Once you’ve decided which websites you’d like to write for, it’s essential to warm up to the owner before pitching your guest article.

In other words, get on their radar by engaging with their content in a meaningful way.

Thoughtful comments and sharing are a great approach to start developing relationships.

2. Find the Best Guest Post Topic to Pitch

Deciding which blog post ideas to pitch can be tricky.

Asking yourself the following questions will help you find the topics that will resonate the most with the owner of the site.

• What are the most popular articles on their website?
  
• What are the trending topics around the same subjects?
  
• Do they have anything similar to the topics you have in mind?
  
• What’s unique about your article?

Pitch Your Guest Post

It’s time to make your pitch.

There are many strategies to help you create the perfect one, but simplicity might be your best friend here.

If you’ve already started building a relationship with the blogger, things will be much easier.

You can write them an email addressing the following:

• Why you like their site
  
• How has one specific article impacted you
  
• Why would you be a great guest blogger for their audience
  
• Three topics you have in mind
  
• Any proof that you’d be a good fit (i.e., other guest articles you’ve written)

Guest blogging is a fantastic strategy to grow your audience, increase traffic and establish yourself as an industry expert in the eyes of your niche audience.

Your online success relies on community engagement, which is why being part of a network such as Wealthy Affiliates can have a massive impact on your results.

Join Wealthy Affiliate today and start growing your online audience.