In this post, I will quickly cover a few methods I use to find sites that accept guest posts (paid or free) by scraping Google and other various public and private database sources.
In a previous post on Guest Posting, I wrote mostly about how you can find sellers and resellers for finding paid guest post links (mainly on marketplaces like Fiverr.
Scraping Google SERPs With Scrapebox
One of my favourite methods to find these sites is scraping Google using a tool like Scrapebox.
To do this method quickly and in large numbers, you will need a tool like Scrapebox. Its only $49 for a lifetime license with updates supported for life and if you’re doing any work in online marketing this is one must have tool! I’m sure you have heard of it and if you are involved in marketing you probably use it already.
Scrapebox can be used for a ton of different things related to scraping, data sorting, extracting etc etc. I won’t go into details as it is a Swiss army knife doing hundreds of different things!
This is how you would use Scrapebox for finding niche based guest post sites and the specific URLs within each site where they have forms or contact information to submit your guest post.
As a very first step you will need to – select any one primary keyword in your niche.
If you have multiple primary keywords then you simply pick one to begin with and then go through the steps outlined here. Then rinse and repeat and come back and do the whole loop again with each new keyword.
By repeating the steps over and again with multiple primary keywords you will find you more sites.
Now that we have our primary keyword we need to combine it with other search phrases that result in finding specific pages on these mobile development sites that tell us that these sites accept guest posts and specifically return the exact URLs back to us where we can submit our interest to guest post on the site.
Here is the list to query Google and find these sites in the SERPs…
- Keyword + “guest blog”
- Keyword + “guest blogger”
- Keyword + “guest Column”
- Keyword + “guest article”
- Keyword + guest post
- Keyword + guest author
- Keyword + “write for us”
- Keyword + “write for me”
- Keyword + “become a contributor”
- Keyword + “contribute to this site”
- Keyword + inurl:category/guest
- Keyword + inurl:contributors
- Keyword + “guest blog” + inanchor:contact
- Keyword + “guest blogger” + inanchor:contact
- Keyword + “guest Column” + inanchor:contact
- Keyword + “guest article” + inanchor:contact
- Keyword + “write for us” + inanchor:contact
- Keyword + “write for me” + inanchor:contact
- Keyword + “become a contributor” + inanchor:contact
- Keyword + “contribute to this site” + inanchor:contact
Note, that I have combined the query with the (Primary) Keyword we have chosen above.
Also, when you run the queries you will need to use your primary keyword in quotes if it consists of multiple words. This will give a more targeted list back to me.
As a next step, you will need to fire up Scrapebox and enter the primary keyword once in the area as shown in the screenshot below and then all the other combination keywords as shown.
If you know the basics of Scrapebox – this will be familiar to you and takes a couple of minutes to do.
As always its best to have your own semi-dedicated proxies ($1 per month per proxy) to do this. Just buy around 4 to 5 of them and fire up the queries!
If you don’t have Scrapebox and cannot invest in it then you can simply run each row of the query one by one in Google and then use a chrome extension to scrape the SERPs. I won’t go into the details here, and you can read this awesome post on Extracting URLs from Google SERPs.
Once you collect all your results from Scrapebox or your manual method – you simply filter out any URLs that contain .edu (will be impossible to get a guest post on) – and then you can run a command to only keep unique domain URLs (removing all duplicates).
Getting Domain Metrics
As a next step, I use Scrapebox to trim to root URL and extract out only the websites for each URL.
I do this because as a next step, I need to get “website specific” data that will tell me if the site is worth getting a guest post (and backlink on).
Make sure that when you trim to the root URL, you trim to root website and not root domain.
Trimming to root domain will trim the entire list to just the domain name – and if sites have used www for their website URL then you will get incorrect metrics as a site that is located on www.xyz.com and not on just xyz.com will have metrics for the www very different than for without the www and just xyz.com
So, make sure that you maintain the root URL of where the site is located in your list when you do the trimming.
Once you have the root URL list, you can insert it into a new column in your spreadsheet where you found the full guest post URLs.
Now, you need to take your root URLs and get metrics for the website like DR (Domain Rating in AHrefs) and TF & CF (Trust Flow and Citation Flow in Majestic) and monthly site traffic.
Unfortunately, to do this step and get these metrics – there is no “free tool” available in the market – as these metrics are proprietary and therefore have limited number of free queries you can do.
A couple of popular paid tools that I recommend to bulk check metrics are…
You can use a tool like URL Profiler (although you will have to get APIs from AHrefs to do this.
You could also use a service like – Site Profiler.
Alternately, if you just need DR and Monthly Traffic levels – you can get an AHrefs account for $7 for 7 days (they usually have this deal going on) and then just bulk query domain metrics inside AHrefs. If you only need the DR metric and some monthly traffic stats that should be just find for your analysis.
Alternately, you can get SERPworx and manually visit each site to get the metrics.
If you have no budget at all and need a free way to get metrics – then you can use the Mozbar to get the Moz.com DA metric (although not reliable this is the last resort to use if you can’t budget a paid tool in).
If you still want the TF metric without paying for it then you will have to use a web tool that checks this for each site individually and solve recpatchas to get this data one site at a time. There’s a ton of tools and you should simply Google for these free metrics checkers. This is one example site.
You can find DR checkers as well using this search, and Ahrefs also has their own Chrome bar as well.
Contacting Each Website
At this stage you now have a list of websites with their root URL metrics and the URL on which they have a contact form with details on submitting your guest post or an email address to write in to.
So, its pretty straightforward from here. You should sort your list with the sites with higher metrics on top so you can work your way down the list.
Each site will have their own terms and conditions…
- Do they take a fee?
- Do they want to see the entire guest post to decide legibility?
- Do you have to have an active blog?
- Do you have to have a certain number of social media followers?
- …etc etc.
Finding Niche Blogging Sites Using Online Database Lists
Here are some online guest posting databases –
- FeedSpot (free). Find top blogs in different niches by traffic and social metrics.
- BigGuestPosting – was free initially, now paid but quite inexpensive and has a massive list.
- GuestPostTracker – one time fee of $99 but the list is basic.
- Guest Post Sites Club – paid site with decent quantity of guest post sites
You can also search Fiverr for Niche Specific Lists – and you may find some sellers on Fiverr selling niche lists or with the ability to scrape niche guest post sites for you.
Finding Top Websites In Your Niche Who Accept Guest Posts
Another way is to find top websites of bloggers / influencers in your niche who accept guest posts on their website, and contacting them with a short pitch. There are a few high end web tools that you can use to find top niche websites in your niche whom you can then contact with a pitch.
I have used buzzsumo.com and NinjaOutreach.com to do my data analysis for this.
You need to be very careful how you approach them as they usually don’t have time to read lengthy email pitches. You can read my post on Cold Email Outreach here, where I cover some pitch tips as well.
When you are negotiating the deal with them, you can also ask them if they can include posting the guest post on their social profiles to get more visibility.
Closing Tip
If you run out of primary keywords or cant find just enough websites with the methods above, then you can try using keywords for the above methods that are from a broader or bigger niche that encompasses your niche (it is basically a level up).
So for example if your primary keyword is “online chat” and you find a bunch of sites but would like more than you can search with “SaaS tools” or “SaaS blogs” which is one level up in a sense.
You can still go a level higher and use “technology blogs” … but keep in mind the more general you go then the guest post will be from a more general niche layer and may give you more power but lesser “relevancy”.
Alternately, you can also look for cross-over niche searches… which are topics that are in other niches that have some overlap with yours.
That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this post and if you have questions, feel free to comment!