Guest blogging works when you target sites your audience actually visits, not when you chase arbitrary DA scores on link roundup blogs. Start by identifying where your competitors and industry peers get cited—tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush show you their referring domains. Look for trade publications, niche blogs, local business journals, and community sites that rank for terms adjacent to yours. In Canada, that might be BetaKit for tech, Canadian SME for small business, or regional chambers of commerce if you serve local markets. Real traffic matters more than metrics. A site with 5,000 monthly visitors in your exact niche beats a DA 60 generic marketing blog with no commenting, no social shares, and a footer full of sponsored links. Check if the site publishes regularly, if articles get shared, and if the editorial standards are higher than "500 words and a dofollow link." If every post is labeled "sponsored" or "guest post" and the topics are all over the map, skip it. Avoid the guest post industrial complex. Sites that rank for "write for us + your keyword" and accept anything with payment are selling links, not building audiences. Google's spam updates specifically target this. We've seen clients get manual actions from overusing these placements. If the site has a "guest post $99" page or responds to every pitch with a price list, walk away. At Ottawa SEO, we build lists by reverse-engineering what already ranks. Find the top 20 results for your core terms, export their backlinks, and filter for guest posts or contributed articles on domains that still publish actively. Pitch those. Your goal is editorial placement on sites with leverage, not volume on sites that exist to rent you a link. Five strong placements on venues your customers trust will outperform fifty on link farms, and they won't age like milk when the next algorithm update rolls through.