If content marketing is one of the most important tools in an online marketer’s toolbox, then the guest blog is one of the most important tool attachments. Guest blogging is a powerful way for online marketing professionals to build links to their own or their clients’ sites. The tips below can help you find great blogging opportunities and avoid those that will have you wasting resources and time for little gain. Here are several things you should look for (or in some cases avoid) when looking for guest blogging opportunities.

Write for Blogs That Match Your Niche

Don’t just post your blog article willy-nilly. Just because a site offers guest blogging, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should contribute. Ask yourself, “Will my target audience visit this blog and be interested in what it offers?” If the answer is no, then pass on the opportunity. Only write guest posts for blogs that match your niche, at least to some degree. It need not have 100 per cent overlap, but the blog you write for should at least draw readers that would be interested in your message.  Posting about vitamin supplements on a blog devoted to pet training may create another link to your site, but it probably won’t drive any meaningful traffic your way.

Write for Highly-ranked or Authority Blogs

Don’t waste your time writing guest blogs for sites that are not respected. Use Page Rank or SEOmoz Domain Authority to determine the page rank of any blog to which you are considering submitting a guest post. Additionally, check the page authority of several of their other guest blog posts. Make sure the blog gets a reasonable amount of traffic; you can verify this by checking out how many comments and shares it draws. Investigate beyond just the home page of a successful website. Make sure that a large percentage of the pages are able to draw traffic and engage readers. Does the blog have a lot of activity on other social media sites, such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter? These are all things that let you know that both readers and search engines consider the site an authority.

Pinpoint Your Post to the Blog’s Keywords

You can piggyback on a blog’s authority by writing your post so that it utilises the keywords for which the blog ranks highest. In other words, if the blog site is well-known in the email marketing niche and ranks at the top of Google search results for the phrase “build your list”, then try to optimise your post for that keyword phrase. This will improve your chances of appearing at the top of any search results page and will give you greater exposure to readers and thereby draw more traffic. This approach can be tricky however as you must be able to add something to the conversation that has not already been said. You must be creative and find something new to talk about. At the very least, when guest blogging on such a site, you must find a new and interesting way to analyse a topic that has already been discussed at length.

Avoid Blogs That Provide a Poor User Experience

Don’t write for a blog that will reflect badly on you. For instance, don’t write for a blog that accepts any and all submissions, in hopes of building content quickly. You will be judged by the amateurish quality of the other submissions. Likewise, avoid blogs with too many ads. Excessive advertising makes it difficult to access or distinguish content and readers tend to avoid such sites like the plague. Also, sites with a poor layout or confusing user interface are not worth your time; instead, find blogs that provide their users with smooth, clean layout and simple interface.

Following one or more of the above tips should lead to great results with your link-building, content marketing strategy.

Ian Phillips is a writer who understands that guest blogging on your own and other people’s sites when done correctly, can be a very powerful tool to use. It can help you to increase traffic numbers to your site whilst also helping to market your business well.