Best Blogs for Guest Post Blogging

Guest post blogging is todays most reliable way to gain high PR backlinks and exposure, if done on the correct blogs. A good guest post on a good blog can lead to the article itself to climb rankings, therefore generating good social media buzz and quality links to your website. This link building method is one of the most productive ones, both for the guest authors and blog owners. But how do you determine a guest post friendly blog to guest post on?

For example, you would want to know the reach of that the blog, whether it is search engine optimized for Authors and the quality of the blogs content itself. Here are some suggestions on what to look for before Guest Blogging:

Guest Blogs PageRank

Pay attention to the PageRank on a blog. Determine the PR of the homepage, then that of its sub-pages and most importantly, its posts. If the homepage has a high PR and it links to every new post, then you'll get the benefit of that. After some time (in this regard, our blog aims for less than one month), the blog post should start gaining search engine rankings and PR of its own.

For best results, you'd want the blog homepage to display your guest post on the first page and other feeds throughout the site with a 'follow' link. Personally, I use the Google Chrome SEO Plugin, PageRank Status, to quickly scan through sites.

Blog SEO & Author Rich Snippets

A few months ago this may have not been that crucial, but todays search engine optimized blogs have grown in numbers that almost any industry can find a well optimized blog to guest post on. Basically, an SEO'd blog should display its posts similar to this:

Author Search Optimized Posts

Guest Post in Search Results for Keyword: Social Media Restaurant Icons

This helps your exposure in search and social media, as well as increases the click-through rate to your website or author profile when posting a guest post.

Social Media & Blog Content Reach

Another factor to look into is a blogs reach, which includes its subscribers and overall social media exposure, which consists of:

Can readers easily share your post to their social networks?

Make sure that readers have the ability to easily share your guest post to their social network profiles.

Do the posts include a Tweet button that tweets your username?

Tweeting is currently the most popular method to share content. Having your twitter @username show up when people retweet your post is a great way to gain twitter followers.

How many social media followers and fans does the guest blog have?

If the target blog has a large fan-base the more exposure you will get, assuming that your blog will feature on those social media pages.

Do the guest posts get published at busy times?

If you are unable to schedule the post on your own, try to find out if the publishing times of the blog happen during peek hours. This usually corresponds to when the social media publishing of your blog happens and posting at the wrong times can ruin the buzz of your hard worked on guest post.

Does the blog have email and feed subscribers?

Another way to find out if a guest post is worth it, is by knowing the guest blogs reach in email subscriptions and RSS feed syndication.

It's unlikely for a website/webmaster to disclose web traffic or Google Analytics information for guest blogging purposes, but manually checking the above criteria will help find out whether or not the website.

High PR Links from Guest Posts

Lastly, you will want to find out the quality of the backlink(s) which, for some, is the main reason for guest blogging. This is because writing a guest post is one of the few methods to gain a high PR backlink that, alone, can give many sites a boost in ranking.

Avoid Blogs with Many Outbound Links

First, consider the amount of other links that may be pointing to other websites other than yours. Remember that when your blog post DOES increase in PageRank, that you will have to share that juice with the other outgoing links, unless they are set to 'nofollow'. On your guest posts page, you will want as little outbound links as possible in order to gain more share of the PageRank.

Link Location on Blog Post

Looking at article directories like EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com as an example, which essentially go by the same rules, you will find that Ezine allows outgoing links from the Author Resource Box, whereas GoArticles allows several links throughout the posts content and resource box. Every blog webmaster may handle this differently, but on this blog, guest authors are limited to one link, preferably somewhere within the content.

Anchor Text

Other than the link location and count, it's also important to use a descriptive keyword phrase, no longer than three words. This keyword should be linked to the page you intend to rank for that keyword, whether it's the index page of your website or a sub-page of it.

Websites for Guest Posting

Here are some websites that allow guest post blogging and match the above criteria.

YouMoz

YouMoz is a user/guest-author driven blog that accepts Online Marketing related guest posts for free. Its posts are manually reviewed and posted upon confirmation.

Social Media Today

Another popular internet marketing related blog, Social Media Today, is a popular blog that allows you to submit your RSS. After submission, they will review your content and hopefully post the ones that are not too technical and somewhat Social Media related.

Search Engine Journal

This popular search engine marketing blog also allows users to post after you submit a 'become a contributor' request. Search Engine Journal has a solid guideline of posting on their blog but still enables you to gain juice and exposure if you get accepted as a contributor.

Internet Marketing Blog

And for those that are more HTML savvy have the ability to post right no this blog via the author dashboard. We do the final SEO tweaks after you submit, unless you are that good and there is nothing to optimize and we do require that you Google Plus and Twitter so that you show up on the search engines nicely as well as get tweeted about.

Summary of Guest Post Blogging

There are a vast amount of great blogs that enable guest posting. If you know of a blog that allows guest posting or would have your own blog to share then feel free to share in the comments below.