Guest Posting in 2021: What You Need to Know About Creating SEO-Friendly Writing

Online publishers probably get at least one of these emails a day: “Hi! I love your blog. I’m a freelance writer and I just want to get my work out there into the world. Can I share an article on your website? I’ll even pay you for the trouble!” First, no writer in the history of ever has made a living by paying other people to publish their work—that alone sets off alarm bells. And if the offer is accepted, the product is likely to be a poorly written blog post with a very conspicuous link shoehorned into the text. You don’t want to be that person, so you might be afraid to reach out for guest posting opportunities. This is a mistake, because you’re not that person, and guest posting doesn’t have to feel like a sleazy gray-hat SEO tactic—when it’s done right. Here’s what you need to know about guest posting in 2021. Ask not what your guest post can do for you… What feels sleazy about those kinds of emails is the pretense that they’re doing the publisher a favor, when the actual benefit falls solely to the guest poster. It’s time to reframe guest posting—it’s not about what it does for you, your website or your SEO. Your guest posts should have some real value to the sites you’re offering them to. Share expertise, not fluff. Write for websites that make sense for your business, rather than anyone who will have you. These days, the primary goal of guest posting is demonstrating your expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-A-T), both to potential clients or customers and to Google. Everything else you get out of guest posting is gravy. How to find blogs that take guest posts Offering guest posts is a lot like throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. If you can find blogs that have a guest post policy—and that policy is, “Yes, we publish guest posts!”—then that’s the best case scenario. Otherwise, you’ll have to accept the fact that you’re going to get a lot of no's. Find blogs that: Publish content either in or related to your nicheAre known as authoritative sourcesHave engaged readersAre active on social media You can even search Google for the name of your industry plus the term “guest post” to see if you can find others in your niche who are guest posting; odds are, the sites they were published on will accept a guest post from you, too. What’s in a good guest post Let’s say a publication or blog accepts your offer of a guest post. How do you write one that will get you noticed? First, don’t focus on sales. Think brand awareness, not conversion. No one is going to read through a whole post once they realize your goal is to sell them something. Offer readers something of interest; something they didn’t know before that only you (or others with your level of expertise) can explain. Do a deep dive into other posts on the site you’re writing for. Try to format yours in a similar manner; you don’t have to match the voice of the site, but you should attempt to match the tone. To make sure your post stands the test of time, write about an evergreen topic that will generate long-term interest from readers. About those backlinks Building backlinks isn’t your main objective with guest posting, but it can be a nice bonus. More and more websites are designating links in guest posts as “nofollow,” but some may let you link to your homepage in your author bio. A big red flag for Google with regard to guest posts are links that are anchored with specific keywords and those that might be paid. If the links in your guest posts are natural, not sponsored, and relevant, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, especially if the site you’re guest posting on does a good job of filtering out the riff-raff and denying low quality blog posts pointing to low quality websites.