As the SEO industry continues to evolve, guest posting is standing out to be a great way to extend your reach and drive traffic to your blog. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been blogging since 2008 or just started yesterday – the benefits of guest posting can be reaped by anyone.

The best thing about guest posting is that you don’t need a reputation in most cases. You can make a guest post A-List websites like Problogger, BusinessInsider, International Reviews and others if you follow the modern laws of guest posting.

Can’t I just give them an excellent piece and few HDs? Off course you can, but you need to follow the trend as well. Most renowned websites are now looking for more than just quality contribution – they look at your awareness about the new laws.

Not aware of what the laws are? Here are few guidelines that’ll help you out:

1. Real value

As Rich Gorman puts it, the real purpose of guest blogging should be to add value to another business. You can write a great post that takes an in-depth view on a certain topic, but it won’t add much value to the blog accepting the guest post if it’s irrelevant to their industry, a similar topic has been covered in the past or you’re not talking about something new.

For example, a post about ‘tips to buy great office furniture’ won’t add much value to a marketing blog. The same post won’t add value to an office furniture blog either if they already include posts such as furniture buying dos and don’ts and top 5 furniture office furniture companies (readers already have an idea about great office furniture).

You should write about something new that adds value. You can use Google Trends, competitor blogs or simply ask the accepting blog itself about new ideas.

2. Internal and external links

External linking doesn’t mean that you should place a link back to your own blog, and you may not even be allowed to do so in some (dare I say most) cases. You should however link out to other posts that are relevant and helpful to your guest post topic.

If you’re writing a guest post on how to create great copy for your boss’s presentation, you can link out to other posts that teach about common mistakes of a presentation copy and attention-grabbing topic ideas for a presentation copy.

Internal linking has also gained importance over the past few years. It’s important that you link internally to relevant blog posts of the accepting publisher. This is also going to tell the publisher you have gone through his/her blog thoroughly and your aim is to add value.

3. Follow the guidelines

This is perhaps the most important modern law of guest posting. If the publisher says it should be between 800-1000 words, it SHOULD be between the given word count. If the publisher says attachments should be in HD, they should be in HD.

You also need to adapt to the writing style of the accepting blog. If the blog mostly uses formal, third person tone for their blog posts, you won’t be doing yourself or the publisher a favor by writing in casual, first person.

Guest posting isn’t going to die anytime soon, and if you adapt to its modern laws, you’ll keep reaping the benefits, extend your reach and drive traffic to your domain.