How to Find Guest Blogging Sites and Easy Keyword Targets with Content Explorer

Executive overview

Most SEOs hunt for guest post opportunities manually or rely on basic Google searches. Content Explorer — Ahrefs' searchable index of 870M+ pages — lets you filter thousands of relevant sites down to only those that have never linked to you, and surfaces high-traffic topics with zero backlinks pointing at them.

Finding link-free, high-traffic keyword targets takes seconds when you filter by referring domains and organic traffic simultaneously.

Finding guest blogging opportunities at scale

• Search a niche keyword (e.g. "video marketing") as a phrase match — returns ~77,000 results
• Apply one article per domain filter to collapse duplicates to unique sites (~19,000)
• Use highlight unlinked domains with your own domain to grey out sites already linking to you
• Export only the unlinked sites to a spreadsheet for outreach
• New to guest posting: cap domain rating at DR 30 to target sites less flooded with pitches

Finding guest sites by author

• Use the author: search operator (e.g. author:Christy Hines) to find prolific guest writers in your niche
• Apply the same filters: one article per domain + highlight unlinked domains
• Authors appearing across many blogs are proven guest contributors — no "Write for Us" page needed

Finding low-competition keywords with traffic

• Search a broad keyword (e.g. "gardening") in Content Explorer
• Set referring domains max = 0 to find pages with no backlinks
• Set organic traffic min = 1,000 monthly visitors
• Pages ranking well with zero links are targets you can likely outrank without a link campaign
• Example: "171 inspirational gardening quotes" — 1,400 organic visitors/month, ranking for terms with 4,500 searches/month, zero referring domains

Finding influencers for content promotion

• Search a topic (e.g. "link building") and open a high-share article
• Click Who tweeted to see everyone who shared that article on Twitter
• Sort by follower count or other columns to identify high-reach prospects
• Select multiple relevant articles and click Who tweeted selected articles for a larger combined prospect list