Guest blogging is an effective method for earning inbound links to your website. However, it takes a lot of time, effort and work on your part. You have to locate the high-ranking, relevant websites and blogs that accept guest blog posts, as well as figure out how to pitch to them to get accepted. Then you have to write a high-quality article and hope that it is accepted. You could end up doing all that work for nothing if the article is not accepted. However, well-placed guest blog posts pay off many times over, so the work is worth it.
Thankfully there are some tools that can make the job easier.
Rapportive
This is a Mozilla Firefox add-on that helps you create better profiles which connect with your social networks as well as your email addresses that aren’t Google email addresses – thus combining many profiles into one. It’s easy to use and free. Rapportive will make it easier for you to be known by your business email and your Google account, which you probably use for many features like Google+ and Google Hangouts, etc.
What is really great about this tool is that when you guest post on a blog you can easily include your Google+ account. This will connect your readers with much more than just your author’s profile.
PageRank
This is another Firefox add-on that will allow you to see the Google PageRank of any webpage or blog that you are viewing. This will help you to know whether or not the places you want to guest blog are really worth it or not. At the very least you want a site to have the same or higher ranking than your site in order to spend your time guest blogging for them. This tool is great for double checking someone’s own stats.
Google Alerts and Google Search
Using Google Alerts to find places that are accepting guest blog posts is as easy as creating a search criteria for “business guest blog posts”. You can get as detailed as you want, or as general as you want, so that you can find more places to provide guest blog posts. You can also just do a search without an alert set anytime you want to in order to find websites and blogs accepting guest blog posts.
Blogger LinkUp
This is a free service that will connect you with others who are looking for and looking to provide guest blog posts. You can sign up and people will contact you to provide guests blog posts to them. Check out what they say to be sure it’s true before submitting a guest post. If they say they are ranking a 4, double check using the PageRank checker to determine if it’s true or not.
Put out a request on Twitter about what you want to write about, and what you’re offering. You can do this in a couple ways – by a simple tweet or by creating a “sales page” on your website and linking to that with a tweet. The sales page can consist of your offer to guest post on specific types of blogs with a specific ranking, offering a specific type of blog post. Include an “order now” or “apply now” button and you never know who might respond.