Site owners widely use free guest posting to save money on sponsored articles. Some sites post content only on a paid basis, but there are also plenty of sites that do this free of charge.

Search engines treat guest articles well, even if they are posted for money. The main thing is to mark links with sponsored and nofollow attributes. Then, algorithms will have no objections, and you can safely build links.

1. TOP Free Guest Posting Sites to Pitch Your Ideas

On the Internet, databases of sites for free guest posting constantly appear. Data in them quickly become outdated because the terms of posting can change every day. Therefore, it is important to check the performance of donor sites and update the list.

Building relationships with sites that publish guest posts is based on content approval. Webmasters will need quality content to get editor approval and count on maintaining backlinks. 

Free guest posting sites are a great opportunity for link building. Many backlinks will be closed with the nofollow attribute, but it is now perceived by Google as a hint, and link juice can be passed to the recipient.

2. What Is Free Guest Posting

Free guest posting is publishing articles on reputable sites that accept content from third-party authors. This link-building method allows getting backlinks from authoritative projects at the expense of quality content. 

There are many resources that work with guest posts. Free posting has enough advantages compared to paid posting, but there are also drawbacks. For example, the site may not approve links with the necessary anchors, or the audience will react negatively to the content. 

The main disadvantage is the lack of a guarantee for the retention of backlinks. With sponsored posts, an optimizer and the site owner fix agreements in email correspondence, and with free posting, guarantees are absent. 

Some reputable sites with user-generated content periodically remove content that violates the terms or is invaluable. It is very easy to lose links; so, you need to follow the guidelines for guest posts. 

A ready-made list of sites for free guest posting helps save time on searching for sites, but each site has its own terms for posting content. It is worth carefully analyzing all potential donors and choosing the most relevant sites from the catalog. 

3. Benefits of Blogging on Free Guest Posting Sites

Some sites offer to not only post a guest article but also create a blog and regularly post materials on it, which may be of interest to your target audience. This allows getting new backlinks on a regular basis. 

Platforms with the possibility of guest blogging are a great opportunity for link building and increasing brand awareness. If the link-building method is used correctly, the link mass graph will grow steadily. 

Interaction with guest posting sites requires certain skills. A webmaster will have to communicate with representatives of several sites at a time and get everyone interested. The problem can be solved with quality content that focuses on the needs of the target audience.

Benefits of guest posting:

• development of a new site into a recognizable niche leader;
• increasing the audience by attracting traffic from targeted sites;
• improving positions in SERPs for relevant requests; 
• unlimited opportunities for getting quality backlinks;
• no need to pay for posts;
• the possibility of getting ads on social media pages of sites. 

In 2020, the team of the Aira digital agency together with SEO experts released a study of the popularity of link-building methods, and guest posting was ranked third. 

The first place was taken by content marketing, which acts as the core of guest posting. You can use quality content to access all sites that don’t post sponsored backlinks.  

4. General Process to Go Through

To get a free guest post on a reputable resource, you need to follow several steps. Each of them affects the final result; so, it’s worth paying attention to all the tasks. 

Guest posts offer unlimited opportunities in terms of link building and increasing referral traffic. However, it’s important to choose the right sites and topics that site representatives will find interesting and won’t delete as spam. 

4.1. Determine the goals

The first step toward successful guest posting is setting goals. The site owner needs to determine the goals that will be achieved through guest posting. 

If articles are posted only to get backlinks, they are unlikely to bring targeted traffic. Once such materials are published, you will just need to monitor the performance of links.

The goal should definitely be measurable so that you can determine the benefits of free guest blogging. It can be traffic from other resources or the growth of a loyal audience.

4.2. Find blogs accepting guest authors

Searching for and checking the quality of guest posting sites can take a long time. That’s why you can use guest posting site lists at the initial stages. 

If articles are published with the aim of getting backlinks, it’s important to make them part of the content. Backlinks should not look like blatant advertising. Then, users will click on them, and links will be more useful.  

4.3. Read the terms of submission

Sites that regularly accept guest posts usually have terms for such content. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the editorial policy before agreeing to post or negotiating non-standard content. 

Attention should be paid to:

• article volume;
• the maximum number of backlinks;
• the approach to posting backlinks;
• article verification period.

Sites for free guest posts can become part of an SEO strategy and even bring leads for a business. However, if you don’t follow the site’s terms and conditions, the material will be removed before it’s posted, and the audience won’t see it. 

4.4. Come up with a catchy headline

The title of the article should be interesting so that site users would want to read it. You should not use clickbait, but you can include statistics or an interesting fact in the headline. 

When 10-20 articles appear in the feed daily, users pay attention to the title of the article first of all. If the title seems boring to them, they won’t click on it, and the content will be left without attention. 

4.5. Pitch your idea to the webmaster

For a guest post to attract targeted traffic to the promoted resource, it should not be like the others. High-quality content can outrank other materials in the rating and get the Editor’s Choice mark.

If the terms of posting materials are detailed and no questions arise, you can proceed to the preparation of the article. This is relevant for sites that allow posting content immediately after registration. If the article is posted by an editor, you need to contact the latter in advance and discuss the topic.

4.6. Give the task to a copywriter

Content preparation should be assigned to an author who is versed in the topic. If the company is talking about email marketing automation, you’ll need expert comments and relevant media content. 

Free guest posts should not look like blatant advertising. They are posted free of charge; so, any post that the site representatives do not like may be deleted. 

4.7. Proofread, edit, and send the article

If pre-moderation is implemented on the site, editors can make changes to the publication or add comments. It’s important to respond to them promptly and make the necessary corrections so that the material can be seen by users as soon as possible.

For an article to pass moderation at the first attempt, you just need to follow the terms and create articles that will be of interest to the target audience. Then, there will be no problems with posting them. 

4.8. Analyze the effectiveness of the blog post

If the webmaster hasn’t defined the goals at the first stage, it won’t be possible to track the effectiveness of a free guest blog post. The maximum that can be done is to view reports in Google Analytics to see the volume of traffic from a particular site. 

Key performance indicators for each project may vary. The list needs to be determined before sites are selected and content is posted. If guest posts will be shared to attract leads, you need to track the source of the order. 

5. Things to Do Before Offering Free Guest Posts

Creating and posting a guest post is not difficult if you follow the terms of the site and delegate the task to an experienced copywriter. But it is quite difficult to make sure that the material brings more than just a few links. 

Some sites don’t allow posting an article on your own; so, you’ll have to interact with webmasters. The approach to email marketing is similar to the strategy for outreach: a concise email subject, good pitch, and personalization.

5.1. Define site metrics

If the main goal of guest articles is to get links from authoritative resources, you need to choose donors with good metrics. Authority is a conditional value for Google, but you can check it with a number of metrics.

What to pay attention to:

• Domain Authority, Page Authority, Spam Score by Moz;
• Domain Rating Ahrefs;
• quality of backlinks in other articles;
• the donor site spam rate during manual checking.

The donor site can have good indicators, but the content analysis will reveal that the site contains only advertising materials. In this case, you should not expect referral traffic.  

5.2. Check whether the page has ads

If a free guest blog does not post sponsored articles, it can generate profit in other ways. In most cases, it is embedded advertising from contextual networks. 

There’s nothing wrong with ad blocks as long as they don’t impede interaction with content. Large reputable sites don’t use this method of getting profits, though. 

5.3. Find out whether search engines index the site

Sites with poor indexing can be considered as potential donors but only if they have good link metrics and lots of relevant traffic. 

You can speed up indexing by posting an ad on social media or using third-party services. The speed of adding a page to the Google database depends on a large number of factors, but links from other sites can affect it. 

6. Making Sure a Free Guest Post Will Be Effective

Representatives of sites that accept free guest bloggers are interested in posting engaging articles. Reputable sites don’t publish content for quantity but rather focus on quality. 

Various aspects influence the effectiveness of a guest article, but the strongest ones are the relevance of the donor site and the quality of content. If these parameters are sufficient, backlinks will bring benefits in the form of links and targeted traffic. 

6.1. Choose only relevant sites

Search engines perfectly identify sponsored posts. There’s nothing wrong with them, but dofollow links raise a lot of questions. That’s why it’s better to use relevant link attributes.

Sites that accept guest posts on any topic should be checked several times. Such resources may not have a regular audience; so, the effectiveness of posting articles will be minimal. 

6.2. Come up with engaging headlines

The headline should convey the essence of the publication in one sentence. If it is too long or does not correspond to the content, users may react negatively. 

An engaging headline should include a brief quote, relevant numbers, and a short explanation of why the article is interesting. If the lead paragraph is displayed along with the title in the feed, it needs to be attractive as well. 

6.3. Discuss all submission details in advance

If the site editor has to approve the topic of the article before posting, you need to ask all the questions to negotiate organizational aspects. For example, on some sites, you can insert no more than one link. It is better to check this before you prepare an article. 

It is important to make sure that there are no articles with similar content on the site. An editor who has access to the control panel can also help with this. A site search doesn’t always work correctly, and pages may disappear from search results for a while. 

6.4. Create quality content

Google algorithms carefully analyze page content, including user comments. Backlinks in an article may not get into the category of paid content if the article doesn’t look like blatant advertising and passes the check of the updated Panda algorithm. 

Quality content is key to attracting a target audience. When analyzing the list of sites for free guest posting, you should focus on sites with threads in comments.

6.5. Do not neglect proofreading

Authoritative sites are not interested in posting articles that look like advertising. The material can be published if it does not violate the terms, but it will be of little use. 

It is better to hire an experienced author for writing an article and increase the informational value by engaging experts. Such publications have better chances to attract organic views and the attention of editors.  

6.6. Use visual content

Some users quickly scroll through text and focus on visual content. Therefore, images and videos should be of good quality and complement the topic of the article. 

It is better to assign content creation to a professional designer. You can increase the value of the article by using infographics, a checklist, or downloadable files. Then, the name of the site can be better remembered by the audience. 

7. How to Find Free Guest Posting Sites

To get the most out of guest posts, you need to include as many relevant sites as possible in your list of potential donors. At the first stage, it is essential to use all sources that can provide information about relevant sites.

Methods to be used:

1. Search on social media.
2. Analysis of competitors’ link profiles.
3. Use of search operators. 
4. Analysis of ready-made site lists.

Search operators in Google allow finding sites by targeted requests on published pages. Competitors may not cover all sites that allow posting guest articles; so, you should use other site search strategies as well. 

The resources that can be found using search operators should be checked using donor quality analysis tools and manually. The possibility of posting an article should not be a key factor in decision-making; site quality should be a priority. 

Reputable projects do not always post articles for free; so, there is no point in completely discarding paid guest posting. The problem with finding donors can be solved with the help of the PRPosting exchange. 

The service offers more than 44,000 sites from various niches for effective link building. It is possible to get dofollow links even with a minimal budget if you set the right filters in the settings. 

8. Final Thoughts

Guest posting is an effective link-building method that helps increase brand authority, get links from relevant donors, and outrank competitors in SERPs. 

A list of sites for free guest posting can be easily found online, but each resource must be checked manually. Link metrics are not 100% proof of a project’s quality. 

Guest articles can be used to promote informational and commercial projects in almost any niche. You need to create a strategy for working with the sites, respond to user comments, and monitor the effectiveness of posting. 

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