Posting content on someone else’s website can be a great way to put your brand in front of a new audience. Guest posts are an excellent way to leverage someone else’s expertise or generate a wave of traffic to your blog. However, you don’t want to waste time posting on sites that aren’t worth the effort, while a mismatch could hurt your brand. Let’s look at how you could determine whether a website is a good fit for your guest post.

Look at the Numbers

Before you offer to guest post on someone’s blog, look at the actual numbers for the blogs you’re considering writing for. Verify how many unique visits they have per day and number of social media followers they currently have. The total views are irrelevant, since that could have piled up over the years.

In some cases, you may choose to guest post on multiple smaller blogs in order to pump up your numbers and generate backlinks. However, it would be better to write five guest posts for sites with modest traffic than 50 that have very few views.

Compare Audiences

The best guest blogging opportunities are those where they’re putting your content and product in front of a whole new audience that represents your ideal customer base. A blog where the audience somewhat overlaps with your own is acceptable, since repetition can increase brand awareness and trust. Just don’t end up preaching to the choir.

The quality of the audience and how well it overlaps with those who’d like or appreciate the content matters more than the numbers, though if the numbers are too low, you’d be better off posting somewhere else.

Look at Their Publishing Rate

A blog that puts out too many articles may have a decent reputation and traffic today, but that rarely suits the needs of the guest blogger. A blog that puts out several articles a day isn’t giving each guest post very much exposure. The rapid flow of content can also confuse the search engines as to the focus of the blog, undermining the SEO benefit of posting an article on a blog that is aimed at a particular industry or audience.

Pay attention to how active the blogger is. If they’re seeking guest posts to free up their schedule, that’s fine. However, you don’t want to have your post sit on their page for six months and get downgraded because the blog is seen as stale.

Study Their SEO Strategy

The best guest blogging sites will leverage social media sites that you’re not on and promote your post in front of audiences that otherwise would never hear about you. The worst sites rely on comment spam, article directories and black hat SEO strategies to promote themselves – and you. Search engines let “trust” flow through backlinks to the end destination. If you post your website link on a blog with a black mark on it, it actually hurts you. Make sure they’re using ethical methods. Note that this is a two-way street. You’re expected to promote each new guest post on your social media accounts as well.

Quality and fit matters more than quantity. It is better to write a few guest posts on several blogs that are front and centre in front of an audience that is a decent match with your target consumers than churning out guest posts that are rarely ever seen.