Google’s algorithm change has negatively affected the rankings of a great number of sites. No sites have been more affected by this than article submission sites. In fact, many attorneys I know have been very gun-shy to submit any content to article submission sites recently. Leaving them with a glut of great content, and seemingly nowhere to put it.

I am here today to offer up a solution to this problem- Guest Blogging.

Blogs always need new quality content (believe me), and many of them accept content from guest bloggers or authors. The key is to find guest blogging opportunities on high-ranking, trusted sites on topics that align with your content. But first thing first, how does one find guest blogging opportunities? Fortunately, there are a lot of great resources out there on how to find guest blogging opportunities (go figure), and this is a topic that is touched on quite frequently. Izideo has a great list of guest blog opportunities that includes a legal category.

You can find additional guest blogging opportunities by searching for them online. Or should I say, knowing HOW to search for them online.

Here is a comprehensive list of every search query you will ever need to find new guest blogging opportunities:

“KEYWORD” “guest bloggers”
“KEYWORD” "guest bloggers wanted"
“KEYWORD” “submit an article”
“KEYWORD” “submit blog post”
“KEYWORD” "submit guest post”
“KEYWORD” "submit a guest post"
“KEYWORD” "write for us"
“KEYWORD” "become a guest writer"
“KEYWORD” "become guest writer"
“KEYWORD” "become a contributor"
“KEYWORD” “add blog post”
“KEYWORD” “send a guest post”
“KEYWORD” “write for us”
“KEYWORD” “become an author”
“KEYWORD” “contribute to our site”
“KEYWORD” “suggest a guest post”
“KEYWORD” “(Write for our) guest column”

Your success in finding these opportunities will come from trying out the right combination of KEYWORD and search string. Start with the basics like LAWYER, ATTORNEY, or LEGAL PROFESSIONAL. From there you can branch out into practice areas, or better yet, general topics that relate in your legal practice areas.

As long as you are submitting quality content, many non-legal sites would love to accept your submissions, in fact, many lawyers are paid handsomely for this. The goal is to have your content accepted by these sites, not to promote your legal services. If accepted, you will be able to provide a link to your website in the author area. I promise you, with these queries, you will find no shortage of guest blogging opportunities.

Which brings me to my second (and perhaps more important) point. You must, I repeat, you must vet the sites you are going to submit to before submitting any content. Google (especially post-Panda Google) really looks down on low-quality guest blogging and will penalize any site with excessive content duplication. This can hurt you in two different ways.

Firstly, any site that accepts duplicated or spun content will not be ranked highly by Google. So check out what content is listed, look for duplicates, and perform searches with the posted content to see if it appears elsewhere. If it does, do not submit content to that site. Secondly, if you submit your quality content to a low value you site, you will not be able to submit that content to a more trusted, authorities site later on. See, a quality site will discover that your submitted content is already posted elsewhere, and reject your submission; this is called opportunity cost in the business world.

The next red flag to look for is the quality of content. The blogs you are looking to guest on should cover topics you know a lot about.

So read through their other blog posts, and make sure the content is worth reading. If the content is crap, stay away!! Also, make sure that all the content is related. Good blogs focus on very specific topics, or at the very least have a unifying theme. While I spent a good portion of this post speaking to how to get approved for guest blogging, make sure that there IS an approval process. Avoid any blogs that appear to not carefully vet who posts on them. With these queries, you should be able to find guest blogging opportunities in any field you wish. It’s a post-Panda world and we’re all just living in it, or so the saying would go.

But there is another saying, and this one is a little better known: “Life goes on.” So let your content run free.

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