Guest Blogging Opportunities And 5 Ways to Find Them

April 6, 2011 by Daniel Sharkov|

The following article is a guest post by Dahlia Valentine. In the paragraphs below, she shares five great ways to find blogs, willing to publish your guest post.

Content is king only when you get it in front of your targeted audience over and over and over again. And one of the easiest ways to use your content to generate traffic, get subscribers to your blog and even collect a stable of Twitter followers, is to submit it to other people’s blogs.

The details are simple:

Write a stellar article (very important) and submit it to a blog that’s looking for guest authors. If accepted, your post will usually get published within a few days or weeks. Once your article makes the homepage you’ll immediately start reaping residual traffic when readers click on the link in your resource box.

The awesomeness of the technique is undeniable. But do you know where to find those golden guest blogging gigs? Here are five websites that’ll help you chart your course for guest blogging success:

1. Google Alerts

I’ve been receiving guest blogging opportunities through Google Alerts for a few months now. First and foremost I want to give a big, fat ‘thank you’ to Google for that now infamous Google Farmer update. (You know the one where Google cleared a lot of content farm websites from the top of the results.) After that algorithm change I started seeing a huge improvement in the quality of Google Alerts. Search strings that I previously avoided, like “submit your article,” are now returning much more valid results.

Google Alerts also rocks because you can see the results of a potential alert before you subscribe to it. Simply go to the Google Alerts page, type in your desired search string, and hit the “Preview Results” link. You’ll see all the matches that would be delivered to you on that particular day. Then you can opt to receive results as they happen, daily (which is what I choose), or weekly.

My 7 favorite Google Alert search strings are as follows:

“KEYWORD” “guest bloggers” “KEYWORD” “guest bloggers wanted” “KEYWORD” “submit guest post” “KEYWORD” “submit a guest post” “KEYWORD” “write for us” “KEYWORD” “become a guest writer” “KEYWORD” “become guest writer” “KEYWORD” “become a contributor”

So if you wanted to write for small business websites, you’d try:

“small business” “write for us,”

or,

“entrepreneur” “write for us”

or even,

“freelancing” “write for us”

Sometimes different Google Alerts will return the same sites, but you’ll invariably find some differences between each one. So it pays to maximize your keyword list because you never know where the golden egg is hiding.

2. Twitter Search

Twitter Search is like the realtime version of Google Alerts. You can use the exact same search strings as you would at Google Alerts, plus Twitter Search has their own advanced search features, enabling you to search tweets by hashtag, date, or geographic location.

Unlike Google Alerts, Twitter Search results won’t be e-mailed to you. Instead, subscribe to the RSS feeds for searches you perform on a regular basis, and that’ll eliminate the need to run the same searches every day.

3. My Blog Guest

Sign up for My Blog Guest and for $20 a month you’ll be able to upload your pre-written articles for bloggers to use. If you prefer to try before you buy, they also have a free-to-access forum where you can find various guest blogging gigs.

Keep in mind though, the benefit of paying for a membership is two-fold. You’re able to reach a wide, targeted audience in one shot, and because it’s fee-based some of your freebie competition is instantly eliminated. The owner of My Blog Guest (Ann Smarty) does a kick-butt job at promoting the site, so you already have a good base of blog owners who currently get their content from My Blog Guest.

4. Omgili

Yes, there are a few forum search engines out there (Boardreader.com, BoardTracker.com, etc). I’ve tried them all, and found that Omgili (Oh My God I Love It) delivers the best results so far.

You type in your search string, and Omgili returns a list of threads on discussion forums that include your query.

Although you may want experiment with your search strings, I’ve always had the best results with:

“KEYWORD” “bloggers wanted” “KEYWORD” “articles wanted” “KEYWORD” “write for us”5. Ready, Aim, CONTENT

This is a directory I’ve built and used over the past year for my ghostwriting clients. If you want to quickly see sites that are consistently open to guest posters, this is the place to go.

Blogs are separated by category (health, small business, SEO, etc) and each individual listing includes: The name of the blog, URL, a description of the site, article topics accepted and submission directions. You’ll also find the sites PageRank and Alexa rank. All you have to do is find blogs that match your criteria and start submitting.

Keep in mind before you submit…

Although each blog owner has their own set of do’s and taboo’s, it’s almost standard practice that your content submission be totally original. So whatever you submit shouldn’t have appeared anywhere else on the Internet.

Finally, always strive to submit the best quality work possible. Write as if a potential million dollar client is going to be reading your work, and you’ll up your chances of having your content accepted by the blog owner and appreciated by readers.

Dahlia Valentine is a guest blogging evangelist and the author of, “How to Become the Guest Blogger That Everyone Wants.” If you’re looking for guest blogging opportunities galore check out Ready, Aim, Content, an ever-growing directory of blogs that are looking for guest writers.

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