This is an awesome tool for finding trending topics that in your niche:

Why is this important?

Well, bloggers want to publish posts that are on hot, trending topic.

(Because it means more traffic for them)

So when you offer them content on a hot topic, they’re MUCH more likely to accept.

3. Check out their other guest posts.

What have other people posted already? This will give you an idea of what the site owner looks for when vetting posts.

For example, when I looked at the Buffer blog, I noticed that most of their guest posts were case studies.

So I decided to send them a case study for my guest post.

Simple.

4. Guest Post Guidelines

I know you have better things to do with your life than to read a site’s list of guest post guidelines.

I get that.

But some bloggers have really, really specific guidelines.

Some are there to standardize their posts.

Others are there to make sure people actually read them.

Either way, it’s important that you take them to heart.

Because there’s nothing worse than writing up a 2000-word masterpiece… only to have it rejected because of a word count limit.

Step #3: Send Your Pitch

Imagine for a second that you’re the owner of a growing authority site.

You’ve got posts to write, tweets to tweet, and an overflowing inbox.

How are you going to react when you get a generic guest post pitch?

Yup! You’re gonna hit the delete button as fast as possible.

Here’s a battle-tested email template to use instead:

Hi [Name],

I’m a long time reader. You may have noticed my comment on your post on [Article] (awesome article by the way).

I’m writing to you because I’d love to contribute a guest post on [Website].

I’ve been brainstorming some topics that I think your readers would get a ton of value from:

[Idea #1][Idea #2][Idea #3]

I’ll make sure the piece overflows with information that can’t be found anywhere else.

To give you an idea of the quality I’ll bring to your site, here’s a link to a guest post that I recently published on [Other Website].

Cheers,[Your First Name]

Here’s what makes this email template so effective:

Starts off with something specific about THEIR SITE

Short and sweet (<150 words)

Gives them 3 specific topics to choose from (less work for them)

Soft sell

Touches on your experience and published work

And now it’s time for…

Step #4: Write Your Guest Post

So a blogger is accepted your pitch.

Awesome.

Now you need to actually send them something.

Here’s how to do it…

My Patented “2 Tier System”

Look:

There are only so many hours in a day.

You can’t write a 3000-word ultimate guide for every site out there.

That’s why you should separate your targets into two tiers:

Tier 1: These are the top 10-20 undisputed authority sites in your niche. Sites that you can name off the top of your head. Sites you actually visit, read and follow.

Tier 2: Tier 2 sites that are blogs that are acceptable enough to warrant a high quality guest post. But they’re not big enough to spend a week writing mind-blowing content for.

With that, let’s cover what to send Tier 1 and Tier 2 sites.

Tier 1 Content

Content for tier 1 sites should be as good or better than what you post on your own blog.

I’m talking mind blowing pillar content that forces the hand of the site owner to hit “publish”.

Content that changes minds, sparks conversation, and spurs action.

Content that could appear on the homepage of Life Hacker or The Huffington Post.

Remember: Authority sites are authorities because they only post quality stuff. Period.

And they’re not going to drop their standards just because you commented on their site a few times.

You really need to bring it. Here’s how…

Here are 4 things you need to include in your Tier 1 guest post content:

1. Send a System: If you look the best content on any site you’ll notice that they have one thing in common:

They lay out a complete step-by-step system for reaching an outcome.

Why? Systems have a MUCH higher perceived value than a set of random tips.

For example, with my Buffer guest post, I showed people the exact steps I used to increase my blog’s conversion rate by 134%:

That way, people could follow the steps from the post… and improve their conversion rate.

No theory. No BS. Just a step-by-step process that anyone could follow.

2. Length is Strength: Longer articles have a higher perceived value than short posts.

That’s why I shoot for AT LEAST 2500 words for tier 1 sites.

For example, my Buffer post is a staggering 2,993 words.

But as you can see, this isn’t a bunch of fluff. It’s 2,993 words of insanely actionable content:

3. Custom Screenshots, Flowcharts and Images: Include lots of screenshots and other visuals. These help you stand out… and adds lots of meaty value to the post.

As you can see, I made sure to include A TON of screenshots in my Buffer guest post.

4. Internal Links: Internal links are GREAT for SEO. So make sure to link to some of the site’s other content in your guest post.

This shows that went the extra mile to make your guest post as valuable as possible.

For example, I linked to a handful of other posts on the Buffer blog:

Yes, it took some extra effort to find posts from their blog to link to. But in the end, it showed the Buffer team that I actually cared.

Tier 2 Content

Tier 2 sites deserve some love too.

If they’re on your list of targets, the blog must have something going for them.

While I don’t go crazy for these sites…I still send something of value.

It just isn’t quite as amazing as the stuff I send Tier 1 sites.

Step #5: Follow Up

Here are some things I do to get the most from every guest post:

1.Actively Respond to Comments: Don’t post and run. Take the time to respond to people’s comments as they roll in. In fact, I usually leave a comment to show everyone that I’m hanging out to answer comments:

Then, I do my best to reply to all comments that come in within the first 48 hours:

2. Promote Your Guest Post On Social Media:

This is a win-win-win: The site you guest posted on gets some traffic. And you shared something of value with your community.

3. Send a Thank You Note: I usually send Tier 1 sites a quick follow up email letting them know I appreciated the opportunity. Again: this is something that no one does. So this little thank you note really helps you stand out. It also keeps the line open for the next time you want to guest post on their site.

4. Blog Comment Bonanza: Like I mentioned way back in Step #1, I’ll sometimes reach out to people that commented on my guest post… and ask to publish a guest post on their site.

Bonus Step #1: The Expanded Guest Post

Yes, traffic and links are great.

But building your email list is an underrated benefit of guest blogging.

Fantastic article! Newbies should remember that writing posts just for backlinks is a bad idea.
On the Warrior Forum, article marketers like Bill Platt never write unique content for a blog unless it has massive amount of traffic. Also, when sending traffic, don’t forget to put an opt-in form.

Really good article Brian. I found a lot of great tips in this article (and especially in your 17 Untapped Backling Sources article). You are helping me stray away from the “easy” way of building links to the way that actually works. Thanks!

Very definitive, however I’ve come to think of comment marketing as a sought of micro guest blogging opportunity in that the only benefit of guest blogging that you miss out on is reputation building…but even that you can achieve by a great comment. What are your thoughts on this?

Great point, Jonathan. You’re right: some of my blog comments on popular sites bring in MORE traffic than some of my guest posts. It makes me wonder why I waste my time guest blogging. Then I look at my analytics — see the difference in conversions — and start banging out another guest post.

In my experience, blog comment traffic doesn’t convert nearly as well as guest post referral traffic. And from an SEO point of view, a guest post also gives you a dofollow link…something a blog comment usually can’t do. But I’m glad you brought up blog commenting, because you’re 100% right: blog commenting is an underrated traffic strategy. If you’re the first or second comment on a popular post you can usually get some decent traffic.

unbelivable how deep you go into the theme – even im german part of europe / switzerland, i love to read stuff in english like this. bad, most of the ressources mentioned here are target for english content. you hardly find really good blogs in german 🙁

Great information presented in a way that makes it extremely easy to scan for specific information when checking back. Many articles on this subject make it a real pain to search through for a specific step.

What’s up Brian,
What if you just sent a high quality, fully exclusive article to a high traffic blog owner? Surely if it was good enough they wouldn’t be able to refuse using it as a guest post… Wouldn’t that strategy work?

Hey Lee. That can work depending on the blogger’s guest post policy. For example, I don’t accept any guest posts. So even if someone sent me the meaning of life I wouldn’t publish it. But you’re right: if you send someone an amazing post and they have a history of accepting guest contributions you should be good as gold 🙂

Thanks for the read. Everyone thinks that guest blogging is looked down upon, however if done properly then it shouldn’t be a problem. SEO companies who employ people to submit x amount of guest post for their clients per week are failing and yes, those websites will get hit.

Brian,
Thanks for the information. As someone who is new to the SEO world trying to get my website to rank for many highly competitive keywords, being able to read your advice and get your help has made these very difficult tasks a little bit easier. Thank you.

I’ve always heard about guest blogging, but I never made time to figure out how to really do it. Thanks for sharing these tips, that are sure to come in handy. But my main concern is how do you get past the “gate-keepers” that would allow the content to be posted? And how do you keep up with writing so much original content?

I have been doing guest blogging but in most of the cases, I was far away from getting a published guest post. Even there were some problems to find good blogs to submit guest posts. But your article has solved almost all my problems. I have read this article and applied all the things you mentioned here. The result is really better and great for me. Thanks for sharing such great tips with us.

Thanks For all the great info some of the methods are working out for me but having a very hard time in my industry. I have a new site in robotic pool cleaner parts that I am trying to rank cause my old site was destroyed by old black hat seo tatics.

Hey buddy thanks for this awesome post. I will start a guest blogging campaign in few days and I want to know how to build the correct links. Which is better to insert a link inside the body of the guest post which links to one of my articles or to set the home page under the author bio.

Great post! I’m going to apply this strategy right away. I’m curious though: you mentioned that you only recommend “warming up” the top tier clients due to the time commitment. This makes sense. But how would you position your pitch if you sent it cold? (i.e. if it’s for a lower-tier site that you would be happy to get a link on but don’t want to spend weeks tracking and commenting on their site.) Would the psychology be different?

Amazing article, Brian! Full of relevant and timely advice. This is definitely going to come in handy. We’ve offered infographics and custom graphics for guest posts before, but it never occurred to me that we could provide videos and .PDFs to REALLY make an impact to the person receiving the article. Brilliant!!!

Can’t wait to show this article to the whole team at SlideGenius 🙂 Thanks again for so kindly sharing all this information, Brian!

Hi! Brian, Superb and valuable information. I have a doubt regarding sending the post in a HTML format. Do you recomend simply going to wordpress and copying and pasting the HTML code or you use a diferente method. Second in regards including a opt in do you think this need to be talk first with the webmaster and do you have any tips in how to negotiate the opt – in. Thank you very much!

Sorry for the spam, but I want to ask how you judge the quality of a blog. I’m assuming social shares and # of comments would be the biggest factors, assuming the blog is on topic and related to your audience. I was reading earlier somewhere that when starting out you want to pick a blog with around 5-10 comments so you can gain experience and have a “resume” for when you contact more successful blogs. Would you agree with this or just go straight for the big shots?

I’m guessing it wouldn’t hurt to go after both, and if I get rejected I can always ask again once I got some stuff on their competitors blogs that they’d be jealous of. 🙂

Sometimes my guest post rejected by guest blog owner. I can not properly understand why my guest post rejected. But some guest blog owner accept my guest post. You have mentioned very useful valid point here. These tips are very much needed for me. Thanks for post and keep posting.

Immediately I saw the post title I had to head over and devour the content. I love this. SO informative. My friend Kingsley has always talked about you, and now I know why.

The guest blogging template you shared is wonderful. I copied it immediately, and I will use it in my next campaigns which will be coming up soon. I believe they will generate results just like you said in the post. And when they do get me the kind of results I anticipate, I will reach back and thank you again.

I appreciate the effort you put into this. You just taught me some great lessons man.

Hi Brian, great job! I’m wondering if you now use any outreach software. Thanks, in part to you, my SEO/SEM business is growing and I’m getting clients that require larger amounts of guest blog posts. What do you think about outreach software? Thank you.

This is truly a terrific article. Thank you so very much! We recently started a music collaboration website which is for members only, and decided to have an external blog as opposed to it being on the actual site – that way the public can get involved. We figure having guest bloggers would be ideal. So thank you again, this is very informative!

I actually found you on Facebook because you had an add on there about SEO. I’ve recently gotten into the aspects of guest blogging and was looking for a simple email template with a suggestion of what to say to approach blog owners about guest blogging and I found this on your website. “It’s 100% gold!” Your tips will make it very easy for me to find sites to post on. Thank you very much.

Hi Brian, I’ve been implementing a lot of the relationship building tactics and completed the SEO that Works course through my business, but I am struggling to get the requisite responses from guest posting prospects. I’m following them socially and commenting on blogs before reaching out, but I don’t appear to be standing out. Is there any way that I can really stand out from the crowd?

Hi Brian Dean!
Thank for your great post, I have learned a ton of thing. I just have one question, Could we add our website link into the guest posting content? Or just add link in profile of author.
Thank you.

Awesome post Brian! There is this free tool which creates the search queries for you depending on the types of links and niches that you’re looking for. It’s a very simple tool, but I can’t remember its name… Do you know what I’m talking about? haha

This is so awesome. Especially the search string options you provided. I’ve been sticking to about 3 different ones because I haven’t been able to come up with others that return a good number of results. Can’t wait to give these a try!

Thanks Brian, really helpful advice. I find that a lot of it comes down to win-win (reference: 7 habits of highly effective people, S Covey)..
When there is benefit for everyone involved, buy in / conversion skyrockets. Finding the ‘lead’ is the hard part which you have given some great advice on, from there, if you create value for the site owner you’ve given yourself a chance!

Great post. A mistake that I see bloggers often make when they want to start guest posting is using templates without adding anything original. I’ve received emails from bloggers saying how much they love my site, but they didn’t even know my name. It’s so irritating when they start with “Dear sir” or “Dear blog owner”.

By the way, this reminds me that I received emails from bloggers using your template to ask me to link to their posts. I found it so funny because I recognize it immediately. I think people should write something original. Many of them don’t realise that the more famous the bloggers are, the more identical pitches they will get.

Thanks for sharing this, Brian! My first time to try sending a pitch for guest posting and you’ve answered the major questions I had in mind. I’ve also bookmarked your site as I saw your “Proven SEO Tips” page. Will surely get back to that. 🙂

Another awesome post, Brian! I was on the hunt for a piece of content that provided a comprehensive overview of guest posting strategies and techniques to help teach new team members how to identify bloggers and influencers that accept guest posts, and this definitely fits the bill. So thank you 🙂

Now just to figure out a way to better systemise and scale a white-hat guest posting strategy for an agency environment, without sacrificing quality or blowing out costs. The struggle is real ;P

Guest post is definitely a powerful strategy. But it’s not suitable for every business. For example some B2B industries.

Let’s say a plastic manufacturer named ABC. ABC is specializing in produce kinds of plastic products (cups, packages, etc.) for some big brands listed in super stores. Maybe it also produces for some Amazon big salers. Anyway, ABC don’t sale any products named its own brand in the market. ABC doesn’t face to consumers directly, its clients are those brands who deal with people.

Now ABC want to rank for the keyword “plastic manufacturer” in SERP, he want to produce for more brands. How should he find targets to outreach for guest posts?
1) Looking for plastic industry blogs? It’s not a content-rich industry, it’s very diffcult to find such blogs, even accept guest posts.
2) Looking for general live blogs. Write something like teach people how to choose a cup for their kids. But it’s not relative to his business. People looking at the articles are not his clients. So, how google will explain this guest post? “ABC only want getting backlinks.”
See, ABC don’t want to be penalized by google. But he also need quality links. Guest post is not a good choice for him.

Hi Brian,
I have been reading a lot of your posts and watching a lot of videos on youtube. I just have a question about the 2 Tiers you mentioned in this post. Do you think it’s a good idea to go for the Tier 1 blogs if I’m relatively new to guest posting?
I’m asking this because recently I have been approaching blogs that you would probably classify as Tier 2. It just seems way too hard to get any kind of response from authority blogs.

Hi Brian,
Amazing post. Been following u for a while.
I’m in front of little dilema. I have written few great articles for my niche market but I have few questions before i decide to do anything with it.
– do i post that on my blog or do i guest blog it? Or could i craete few versions of that post (use sames images). My blog doesn’t have that much traffic.
– how do you create downloadable html file? Do you just write a post in draft mode and copy text like text editor?

Thanks for the read! I actually was wondering about becoming a full time guest blogger. For example, if someone had asked you to guest blog a couple times, and then after appreciating your content, asked if you would be interested in providing content (full time) how would you go about that? Should I expect to get paid?

I have been getting a lot of responses back with my guest post ideas, but almost all are asking for a payment… Isn’t the idea of guest posting an exchange of content – rather than paying to use someones blog.

I’m a little bit late to the party, but glad I still came across this! Definitely informative for me as I’m just getting into link building 🙂

Sorry if you’ve covered this elsewhere, but what’s your opinion on using a personal account vs a work account during the “Warm Up Your Targets” phase? I feel like starting with a personal account and then switching to a work account later on during the “Pitch” phase might alienate them, but at the same time using a work account would be more appropriate if I’m ultimately trying to represent my company and get one of our blogs submitted.

Hi Brian, I have a follow-up question to your article. Does Google ding the author from posting on their own site as well? And if not, should both be published at the same time or should you wait and post some time later? Thanks!

Hi Brian,
I have been reading your articles and learning incredible information from you for a few months now. I have a few things I need to say (no i’m not secretly in love with you so don’t worry!). In short I could say it like this; you’re awesome man. When I first started marketing (few years ago) I was of course naive and I tried to take on the massive “affiliate marketing” niche and as you can probably guess I failed. That’s when I started seeking information on SEO. Then as a byproduct of both my being naive and searching for info, I learned that low and behold SEO even has affiliate niches. THAT SUCKS. I searched sites day and night having to piece together bits of information these bloggers “let” me have and it was horrific. Everything was “buy this course” or “pay for this system so I can teach you how to post on craigslist” junk and it wasn’t helpful. This went on forever until one fateful day I searched “how to pick topics to guest post” and landed on this page. I was blown away with the quality and amount of information so of course I checked the rest of your site out. I easily learned 100% more information on your site than any other. It’s gotten to the point where when I am searching for SEO tips I will go to page two to see if you have a post ranked. Ended up back here, used the info and just like all the other things you taught me it worked. I know what you’re thinking “ok I get it long comment man” But I honestly owe every bit of my blogs growth to you and i’m sure I speak for everyone when I say THANK YOU!!!

Thanks for the great article Brian!
I have had some real fun with the reverse image searching when it pulls up some ‘interesting’ results and has been really useful for gaining a greater understanding of my niche. That being said, I found your article really great – Guest Blogging is something that I am trying still to conquer and I will implement your ideas – hopefully it will work wonders.
I wonder, what are your thoughts on repurposing old posts from a blogger that may be in need of an update-i.e. asking to guest post about something they have already talked about previously but with a more up-to-date edge?

Very informative piece there Brian! I learned a lot where to prospects some sites and cool tricks to do it. I didn’t even know about the Pre-Target list that it existed. Thanks a lot!
Quick question, is it practical to choose and approach sites only that have a specific contact person and not some generic email like “writeforus@..” or “submit@*mail.com”

As a beginner, I have a question here. What will you recommend for a new blogger that has like zero reputation and connection. Let’s say you have a resource to generate like 10 quality articles, how will you distritute them between these choices, and why?

a) Guest post on high authority domain like a huffpost, which needs a recommendation from their current writers. Nearly impossible though, but if you’re lucky, it’s a gem.

b) Guest post on moderate authority domains in the niche, which is easier to pitch and get posted on than a). But will still need high quality content.

c) Guest post on newer blogs in the niche that have lower authority with less requirements.

Great Article Brian Again !
I have been following you since long now and tried to implement your ideas if what ever i do for SEO.
To be frank enough with you i landed here through google while i was looking for best way to blog commenting.
Cheers!

Brian, you are always innovating which is one aspect that makes your approach to SEO quite unique and awesome. Great content, well written and excellent visuals. loved it and linking back to it definitely.

Great post. I just opened up one of my sites to guest posting. Assuming I find a writer that fits my niche, what is your opinion on adding the writer as a contributing author and letting them fill out a biographical section on my site?

Never failed to be impressed by the way your content keeps raising the bar in terms of subject matter, formatting and visuals. You are propelling content to higher levels in industries beyond SEO as well. Insane to think how much online content has evolved in just the past 5 years. Keep up the great work man!

This is quite a well-written piece of content and I am truly content after reading it. Now I know how to approach the websites I wish to.
The email draft totally helped me have a clear idea about how to ignite or start a conversation with the bloggers.
I really like writing and want to see my written content on good blogs someday — with this — the day might just come sooner than I think.
Thank you!

Brian your posts are all ridiculously well laid-out and researched. Thanks for so many actionable tips. I know that this post is about guest posting, but really it’s also such a great example of how ANY valuable blog post should be presented too.

Sometimes I get to the bottom of a post and only then is there one useful tidbit of information for me to act upon… however, this post stopped me in my tracks on Step #1 with all of the different techniques to try out.

Keep doing what you’re doing, I’m sure I’ll land my first guest post because of this guide!

Hi Brian,
Thanks for this guide, I have a follow-up question to your article. Does Google ding the author from posting on their own site as well? And if not, should both be published at the same time or should you wait and post some time later? Thanks!

Another great one, Brian! I watch your Youtube tutorials while I’m at the gym running. No time to lose, hehe! I’m relatively new to blogging and I’ve really put effort into guest blogging to improve my DA. It is really time-consuming, nevertheless, I have noticed that it has started paying off. I’m bookmarking this and most definitely will get back to the post for many times to come. Cheers!

Great post Brian. I just started out and was seriously looking for some sites to guest post. Tried on couple of them and didn’t work well. But this blog post has hell lot of valuable information about guest posting. And thanks a ton for that list of websites that accept guest posts.

Hi Brian,
You always provide us with the “Body” of the email but What about the subject?
I was using one of your technique of yours (I have a similar article, blah blah, Would you like to read it <– This one) and I was trying to figure out the subject.
I did a little research and found out that "Emails with no subject all together were opened 8% more than those with a subject line" (https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/subject-line-stats-open-rates-slideshare).
Thus, I went with this technique. I sent 4 emails with subject & 4 without. I got a "Sure" reply from two of them and both were from No subject emails.
What's your take on this?

Great article! If a guest post opportunity arises where there’s no limit to the number of links I can include, is there any disadvantage (from a link strength perspective), of including lots of links? (Assuming they’re all relevant and not just anchor text links).

The thing about guest posting is that very few of them generate enough traffic to your blog to be worth the effort (except maybe as a backlink which can post your search rankings). Even on guest posts that generated a lot of views, I still got very few people clicking over to my blog. There are exceptions though and some guest posts did generate quite a good amount of quality traffic which engaged with my content. My lesson is that often you need to weight the pros and cons of posting on a specific blog, since not all of them will generate you traffic.

Hi Brian,
Thanks a lot for the great tips always! I just wanted to ask your opinion on one thing. Some websites I reached out to for submitting a guest post, said that they will publish one if I pay a fee. I got a similar response for my link-building emails too (like with the Skyscraper technique). They will link if I pay.

All these are absolute no-gos, right? I don’t feel good about doing them anyways, because then seems like my content has no value. But would be great to have your thoughts too.

Great post Brian, do you use or know of any software that can help manage guest posting when you have multiple sites to SEO, manage the relationships with outreach etc ? I’ve seen a few but at the moment we’re old schooling it with excel sheets and reminders.

Hi Brian,
This is one of the best guides on guest blogging. Thank you for sharing & providing valuable stuff.
One of my questions is how many internal links we should add in a guest post, is there any limit?
My second question is like your Author Bio example in above post – The links which you placed will be allowed by authorities sites, like free video one & backlinko?

Thanks for brilliant article. I got a lot of new ideas on how to get high-quality blogs to approve my guest posts. Twitter strategy and reverse google images search sounds like the best options to get highest quality blogs.
I also had no idea that Matt Cutts said that Google probably ignores backlinks in Author Bio section. Will keep that in mind and will aim for contextual backlinks.

Cool website but I have a small problem… Is hard for someone like me to buy guest posting (usually 30$ to submit an article and another 20-30$ to pay a good writer to write the article) So is a little expensive even more because I need many backlinks to make a difference. I really can`t find any some good places where to do guest posting for free (if they are free usually they have a big spam score or low page rank). I really appreciate any tips you can give me. Thank you in advance