The most important thing I came to learn about finding guest post opportunities in the software development niche is that there is almost no industry that doesn’t realistically touch software or app development. 

From dentists to homeopaths and plumbers to corporate accountancy, pretty much every profession you can imagine will rely on software in some way. 

While that does open massive opportunities to cast a wide net in your guest post research, it, unfortunately, means that there are also a lot of scammers and dodgy websites that could harm your search rankings. 

What I want to show you in this guide is why the software niche is so unique and how to gain exposure only to the best quality sites. 

What Makes Software Guest Blogging Unique?

I’ve been doing SEO and guest posting as a solopreneur and with a full marketing team for over 10 years. 

And there are two things that have always stood out for me in the software and IT niche. 

1 - Relevant To Practically Every Industry

You might think that software development is a very specialized industry. As a software developer, I can certainly confirm it requires a lot of skill and study. 

But here’s the thing. 

Basically, every profession, industry, and niche is reliant on computer software or mobile apps. Whether you work for a charity for the homeless, run a coffee shop, or sell security cameras online, you need software to manage tons of different parts of every business. 

And that is a huge advantage for guest post research. 

If you have a software-related website, whether it’s custom or off-the-shelf apps, it makes sense to get links from blog posts in a very wide range of industries. 

That means bridging gaps across niches in a logical way is easy to achieve. 

Unfortunately, that also means there is no shortage of dodgy websites out there that simply try to game the system by being in some way related to software or programming. 

On the one hand, it’s easy to find guest post sites, but on the other hand, it’s more time-consuming to eliminate the low-quality crap.  

2 - Highly Active Niche For New Technology

Anyone who works in IT and software development can tell you that technology still moves at lightning speed. 

A brand new blog post about a programming language or new security features is going to be out of date in a matter of weeks. That rapidly evolving landscape means that there’s a huge demand for guest writers to keep up with technology. 

If you’re tech-savvy, that gives you a significant opportunity during your outreach efforts to lead with suggestions for articles ranging from security to programming languages and the latest app innovations to new gaming platforms. 

Technology and software development, in particular, have thousands of active bloggers and influencers, making it a lot easier to get into conversations with people in the niche. 

You just need to be smart enough to write interesting content on the topics or hire someone to do the guest post writing for you. 

It’s All About Quality Of Guest Posting Sites

Because there is such an abundance of guest post sites available, you have to be extremely proactive when it comes to only picking good quality ones. 

My experience has shown that these areas are where you need to focus most of your attention. 

Modern Web Design

One of the first things that set off alarm bells for me is crapy web design and images. I’m sorry to have to say this to all those lazy bloggers out there, but you can’t be a credible source on software development and have a website with no professional design input. 

I see this all the time. 

Bloggers install basic WordPress themes or templates and then just dump all their text in. 

Professional web design principles involve so much more, including ideal color selection, relevant images, content layout, subheading design, font choices, and much more. 

If a website looks like someone put in minimum to no effort at all, then it’s a red flag, and I would heavily discount what I’d pay for a guest post if I accepted the site at all. 

Strict Guest Posting Guidelines

One of the first things I ask for during guest post outreach is any guidelines and SOPs the owners have for guest contributors. 

The stricter these guidelines are and the more details they enforce, the higher the likelihood of the site having high-quality content. 

It should cover as much detail as possible about formal or conversational tone, proper attribution, number of outbound links, reading level score, and formatting. 

Some owners might even request that qualified software engineers write the content. 

Requests like that will drive up your guest post writing costs, but it can be worth it if you can verify that all existing content on the site is exceptionally high quality. 

Quality Backlinks And Anchor Text Profile

I already mentioned that a lot of people try to set up dubious guest-posting sites, often using duplicate content and a dodgy link building scheme. 

Their aim is to make a site look like it has great content and high domain authority (there are ways to increase it). 

So what do you need to do?

You’ll need a tool like Ahrefs, Moz, or SemRush to get a full list of the backlink URLs, their metrics, and anchor text. 

You then look at each backlink and check for things like link farms, dodgy gambling/pills/porn links, over-optimized anchor text, and anything else that just doesn’t make sense for the software niche. 

If the backlinks look natural and of good quality, then I’d be happy to pay extra for a guest post. 

Mixed Organic And Referral Traffic

The last thing you should request during your outreach is for details about the traffic sources. Ideally, this should be a verifiable or accessible Google Analytics report that highlights all the sources and locations. 

What you want to see is a broad mix of sources from multiple search engines, different social media channels, referrals from other sites, and direct traffic. 

Then there’s the location of the traffic. 

If you’re ranking a site in the US, then it doesn’t make much sense to have a load of guest post backlinks from Spanish-language sites in Argentina. 

And yet, you’ll find plenty of guest posting sites that try to game their traffic stats by reporting thousands of visitors a day without highlighting that they’re from countries you don’t want to prioritize. 

You can also validate traffic data in Ahrefs. Here’s what natural traffic data should look like. 

A good mix of traffic sources, with the majority of it coming from the same country you’re targeting, is a good sign of a quality guest post site and one you would happily pay extra for. 

Quality Is The Key To Successful Guest Blogging

Your number one priority as guest bloggers has to be the quality of the sites you’re reaching out to. Some of the above tips will help you weed out dodgy sites before you even send a message to the owner. 

For others, you’ll have to ask website owners the right questions to see if there are any red flags. 

Avoid cutting corners, or your guest post backlinks can come home to haunt you by penalizing your search rankings.