Guest Blogging in 2024-2025
Preface
I get a lot of offers of guest posts for Ackadia and decided to re-examine the market.
Ackadia is old, ancient in Internet terms, so does tend to attract a certain amount of interest. It used to have a pagerank of 7+ (~ DA70) but I let it slide. Still, it has value and regularly attracts offers of ‘guest posts’. For years – decades! – I’ve just ignored them.
Gold farmers wanting a banner on a games section that’s page 1 on Google. Pass, thanks.
Gambling articles with questionable links. Pass.
Contact details with throwaway emails (Bob176ef42@…) that sign off ~ “I look forward to your reply. Regards Rachel”. Pass.
You get the idea.
Anyway, recently, probably due to Google’s latest core update, I started getting a lot more requests and thought, "OK, I’ll bite", added an appropriate ‘guest posts with us‘ section to my site, replied – as requested – with T&C and waited for the money to roll in.
And waited.
And still waiting.
Funny how they aren’t so keen when you put in conditions like ‘spam not welcome here’, eh.
Then they got to ‘Oh yes, and money up front’ and they were in the wind!
Anyway, I asked a friend to do a guest post for Ackadia – on guests posts 
Is guest posting still deemed a win-win?
Yes, I personally would. It is still a highly powerful tool and we will touch on this later on in this post. It is heavily used by digital marketers and branding both personal and corporate.
When people contribute to other people’s / businesses blogs they can offer a new set of eyes and increase their own visibility within the niche they are writing about. There are other ways a business or person could benefit and I will list these now:
1: Fresh content – coming into the topic of discussion with a fresh pair of eyes can offer a new insight into a discussion that the people on the blog were already having.
2: SEO advantages – the guest can introduce themselves as backlinks into your own blog and drive more traffic to you. They can also use the SEO tricks they learned along the way to help improve your own traffic.
3: Audience growth – if people like the style and flow of the guest writer they are likely to follow them, this works both ways so it helps to keep everybody entertained.
With all these things in mind we will be discussing the advantages of it and if you are a writer, we will give you hints on how to create your own content and how to make it stand out.
So why is guest blogging important?
OK, so there are 5 ways this makes it a viable tool for people and we will look into them more in depth.
1: Growing your audience – as I mentioned above you could find people that would never have normally found you organically but by guesting you allow yourself to be found by a new audience. If you resonate with them, they are more than likely going to follow your work.
2: Networking and relationships – guest blogging can actually help you build a network of people within your niche who may want to work with you. All you have to do is make sure your interests align with theirs. It is a great door opener.
3: Building your own authority and credibility – this could be seen as one of the main reasons for doing guest blogging in the first place. It can help set you up as a knowledgeable person in your niche and build your authority. If you write content that is insightful and valuable people might follow you to see what you write next.
4: Fresh content for your own blog – this happens to everyone when you lack inspiration or want to give your audience something fresh to read from a different point of view. As well as bringing new ideas and thoughts to the table.
5: Improving SEO – Backlinking is seen as the ultimate key to SEO growth, having guest bloggers can help you build exceptionally high-quality backlinks. When you write include in your bio or author box a link to your own blog so people can follow you if they enjoy the content.
So how do you go about finding opportunities?
To do this successfully you need to look around your niche and see if the blogs that you like the look of align with you. That could be anything from audience, values and niche (you are going to grow tired of that word trust me). Once you have settled you can go about finding opportunities by following some or all of these steps.
1: Reach out professionally – OK, so this isn’t the time to crack open chat GPT and generate a generic email message. You use this time to mention what value and knowledge you can bring to the blog with your guest post and their audience. This is a pitch you use to sell yourself – remember you only get one chance to do this so do it right.
2: Check the authority on the domain – using sites like ahrefs allows you to see how strong the authority is on the site. Writing for a lower quality site might not get you the results that you are sorely after.
3: Searching for blogs within your niche – Google again excels at this using search queries like ‘write for us +"your topic here"‘ or ‘guest blogging opportunities +keyword‘
It is ultimately the best way to do it and make sure that you have the right audience for your writing.
4: Spend time reading the blog where you want to guest on – This allows you to learn the style of writing and audience you could be writing for. It also allows you to figure out if you are going to be a good fit for the post or not. Questions you could ask yourself while doing this are, are the posts already on there well received by the audience?
.
Doing this early on will save yourself time.
Now you have the spot, how do you write compelling content?
This is one I struggle with when writing for myself. When I do guest and that is rare. I use some very simple yet effective tips. These are some of them:
1: Create a strong bio/author box – this is the way you sell yourself to the new audience and possibly the only place where you can sell your blog. If you make it engaging enough people will be intrigued to go over there and read your own stuff.
2: Include any real-life examples – this can make the post more relatable for people, and draw them into reading more. Using data, real life stories and personal experiences as well will help people feel engaged.
3: Follow the blogging guidelines – most sites have these guidelines and most of them cover basic things for instance some might have formatting and word count. Always stick to them as it will make it easier and simpler for the post to be approved and published.
4: Tailor the content to the audience – when you are writing make sure that this is done. They are the key to your growth and the hosts growth. This is a partnership between all 3 people and all 3 need to be made welcome.
5: Give the audience a call to arms – basically by this I mean just give them something to walk away thinking about. Something that can alter their way of thinking and possibly implement into their way of life. Who knows if it works for them, they might recommend the post.
So in the end?
Guesting will always be a valuable digital marketing tool. By reaching the right people you will grow and be asked to do more.
Just go with it and enjoy yourself
~ S
Sketchbook background for feature image adapted from a note book, by user Worldfly on Pixabay. Font used is freestle script.
