Guest blogging is about taking what you already do well and spreading your knowledge into other areas of your target market to increase your reach and build a reputation for subject matter expertise.

1. Why is Guest Blogging Suitable for You
Guest blogging is about taking what you already do well and spreading your knowledge into other
areas of your target market to increase your reach and build a reputation for subject matter
expertise.
It can grow your online efforts into something sought-after, authoritative, and even profitable.
But what is it? And where do you begin?
What is guest blogging
Guest blogging is a mutually beneficial exchange between a blogger and another writer. The
concept is quite straightforward:
> The author writes an article and shows it to the blogger;
> The blogger then decides if the article fits his blog, and if the answer is yes, publishes it on the
site.
Thus, the blog owner who hosts a guest blogger can take a break from creating content, while
adding a fresh point of view for readers. The guest blogger gets the chance to reach a new
audience, attracting new readers to his or her own blog or website.
Usually it's the would-be guest blogger who gets in touch with a blog owner to request publication.
Blog owners who are open to guest contributions will
accept pieces that they consider a good fit for the blog. The normal practice is for the blog owner
to give proper credit to the guest blogger, and to include his or her contact information.
Benefits of Guest Blogging
There are many benefits to becoming a regular guest blogger. You can grow your audience, build
your online reputation, earn more links to your own blog or website, and meet influential people in
your industry.
Digital Organics: Web Design Sunshine Coast - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800, SEO Sunshine Coast

2. Building a Targeted Audience
Guest posting on blogs related to your particular niche can expose you to a whole new community
of people who are interested in your area of expertise.
These readers are your potential new fans, followers and long-term readers. If they like your work,
they’ll promote it to their own fans and followers.
> Short-term benefit - Quick spike of interest in your site or product.
> Long-term benefit - Acquisition of loyal readers and followers.
Building Your Reputation
Every time you write for a different blog within a specific niche, more people interested in that
subject area will become acquainted with your work. If you
consistently produce high-quality content, you’ll soon win recognition and respect as an expert in
your niche area.
A credible online reputation will burnish your brand, helping you build trust with prospective
followers and customers.
> Consistent guest blogging helps build trust and a solid reputation.
Going Viral
As your reputation grows and you reach more targeted communities, you will have increased the
opportunity for your brand to go viral.
Guest bloggers can achieve viral popularity in two ways: slow and fast.
The slow way is to build a readership across many blogs. You’ll gradually spread your influence
beyond each blog’s core readers to new ones as they share your work with friends in Twitter,
Facebook and other social networks.
The fast way requires a lot of hard work and more than a hint of good luck. If you manage to
publish a guest blog spot on a particularly active and popular site, your work could suddenly go
viral. Your story could hit the front page of Digg, or get tweeted across the entire micro-
blogosphere.
Digital Organics: Web Design Sunshine Coast - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800, SEO Sunshine Coast

3. > Short-term benefit - Reach front pages of popular social media sites indirectly by publishing your
content on highly popular sites.
> Long-term benefit - Build up a solid following by consistently exposing your work to social media
users who frequent different blogs in your niche.
LINK BUILDING
Most guest bloggers write for established blogs – blogs that search engines regard as pillars of
authority and trust in their specific niches. If you’re trying to earn high rankings in search results
for your own blog or website, backlinks from these leading blogs can be worth their virtual weight
in gold. They’ll add an air of relevance and authority to your own site.
Don’t treat guest blogging as just another link-building tactic. Most blog owners won't post poorly
written content that’s been designed solely to get links. On the other hand, well written articles
that include links to relevant websites are more than welcome on most blogs.
> Long-term benefit - Build up high-quality backlinks by providing useful content to high-authority
established blogs.
Networking
The established bloggers in any given niche are often connected to prominent figures in the
related industry. When you provide good content for these
bloggers, you build your visibility and reputation with the people who matter in that industry.
When you're first getting established, this is a great way to win attention for your brand. If you do
a good job for the established leaders in your field, they’ll
be more willing to help promote you and your future projects.
> Long-term benefit - Establish solid relations with niche influencers and earn their support by
providing high-quality content.
> Remember, the key to guest blogging is to provide high-quality, original, relevant content that
adds value to others in your niche. Always strive to produce your best work to make sure you get
the most out of your guest blogging strategy.
How to find Guest Blogging Opportunities
Guest posting is one of the most effective ways to promote your blog, meet new audiences and
build valuable contacts. Therefore most A-list bloggers guest post, and that’s why if you are a
blogger, you should too.
Digital Organics: Web Design Sunshine Coast - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800, SEO Sunshine Coast

4. Following are some useful yet lesser-known Google search tips that will let you find valuable guest
posting opportunities in your niche.
1. Make sure you use all Synonyms
Various bloggers use different words to invite guest authors. Some directly ask to "submit a
(guest) post", others offer to become their author or write for
them. Even the most straightforward invitation can be expressed in different words: you can be
asked to submit, suggest or send a post for example. Here's
more or less complete list of phrases bloggers use to invite people to guest post:
· “Submit a guest post” / “Submit post” / “Submit blog post”
· “Add blog post”
· “Submit an article”
· “Suggest a guest post”
· “Send a guest post”
· “Write for us”;
· “Become an author”;
· “Guest bloggers wanted”
· “Contribute to our site”;
· “Become a contributor”;
· “Become guest writer”
· “(Write for our) guest column”.
Now, you may have noticed that all the phases are surrounded by quotation marks . This is to
force Google to search for the exact match. Otherwise you will get too-general results randomly
mentioning “post”, “contribute” and “guest”.
If you add some words that describe the topic of your blog, you will end up getting tightly relevant
results.
Digital Organics: Web Design Sunshine Coast - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800, SEO Sunshine Coast

5. 2. Take advantage of the wildcard (*) operator
Some guest invitations can be slightly different aside from using quotation marks for better search
results targeting. For example, a blogger may write “Become our contributor” instead of “Become
contributor” or “Send us your post” instead of “Send your post” but these blogs will be filtered out
because we were using quotation marks and thus instructed Google to search for exact match.
So how can we include all those slightly different results without sacrificing on relevancy?
This can be done with help of Google’s Wildcard operator (*) which in search results get
substituted by one or more words. So if we, for example, search for “submit * guest post” search
results will include:
· “submit a guest post”
· “submit your own guest post”
· “submit your guest post”
· “submit one guest post”, etc
3. Use 'or' and '~' operators to better describe your niche
More often than not, it is hard to describe your blog topic with one (or two) words. For example,
your blog may be about money, saving, frugality, shopping, etc. The more words you use, the
lesser results you will get, because Google will do its best to show you only those pages that have
all of those words listed.
To get broader but relevant results, you should instruct Google to search for any relevant words.
Say you can use OR operator between the words - “money
OR saving OR frugality OR shopping” - because, essentially we are interested in guest blogging on
sites covering any of these topics.
To go even further in this direction, use ~ operator before a word that may have many synonyms
and related words, and thus instruct Google to look for all those synonyms. For example, a
“~money” search will include words like “currency”, “finance”, “financial”, etc.
More ways to find guest blogging opportunities
Look around your current blogging contacts. One of the best ways to start guest blogging is to use
your current network. Guest post at your friends’ blogs: this way you’ll be able to try your hand at
guest blogging in the friendly community you already know.
Digital Organics: Web Design Sunshine Coast - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800, SEO Sunshine Coast

6. Look for new, rapidly-growing competitors. The first thing to keep in mind here is that there are
no REAL competitors when it comes to blogging (this is one of the reasons why I love it). Blogs
can't really compete because each of them has its unique voice and thus takes its own place.
New bloggers have nothing; they are hungry and they've got to be creative. Watching what they
are doing and following their steps, you can learn a lot. It
doesn't mean you have to copy everything they are doing – you'll notice yourself getting inspired
by watching those active bloggers. You will also find plenty of unique ideas and way of doing
things.
You can search and track Twitter as you won't be able to (easily) find new bloggers in Google,
because they don't have enough link authority to outrank more established blogs. But you will
surely find them Tweeting.
Join a guest blogging forum like My Blog Guest - a free guest blogging community all guest
bloggers must join. It organizes guest posting offers and calls to let users find each other:
Except for the basic forum features, there other options that help bloggers build connections
through high-quality content. One of the most effective guest
blogging tools inside MyBlogGuest is the Articles Gallery. Basically, it allows members to expose
their content to the gallery for blog owners to come to
offer their blogs to publish the posts. It gives authors one place to publish the articles for blog
owners to come and apply.
Guest blogging is one of the best methods of increasing visibility on a web that is saturated with
blogs, both good and bad. Rather than investing energy in the shady world of article directories
and ezines that are flooded with questionable content every day, take some time to develop
worthwhile posts for growing websites.
Digital Organics: Web Design Sunshine Coast - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800, SEO Sunshine Coast