Guest posting is a strategy that you might have read about on some blogs or in other online spaces as a way to drive traffic to your website or blog. It can be, but I’m not one of those people who thinks it’s as good as having great content on your own site. Still, with the right type of guest post on the right blog in front of the right audience, it might not be a bad idea across the board.
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To guest post, you have to be willing to follow the rules of the site owner. I used to allow guest posts on my finance blog, Top Finance Blog, and when I did I had some rules. Unfortunately, so many people weren’t following the rules and I didn’t have time to keep up with what I was seeing that I had to stop taking them.
Anyway, here were the main rules: one, if someone requests a guest post, they had to put my name in the email so I know they saw the guest posting policy; two, the topic had to be financial; three, the post couldn’t be blatant advertising; four, I got to decide if the post would be free or had to be paid for based on my criteria; five, all guest posters must respond to comments within 2 weeks, otherwise any links in their posts would be deleted.
My rules were tough, but that blog made money for me and I set the standards for its use. I think every person allowing guest posts needs to have standards; otherwise, you end up with a lot of junk and a blog no one ever wants to visit.
You need to be ready to really give your all. A guest post isn’t a reason to write a throwaway post that you’d never put on your site If you’re hoping to drive people back to your site it needs to be top quality.
If you have someone else writing for you, that’s fine as long as you look at what they’re submitting in your name. If you trust your writer it’s all good. What I see happening most of the time is the person reaching out to a site to submit a guest post isn’t actually the writer but a marketer for a content company of some sort. They almost never read the posts either; if they did I’d never have to edit anything. Those guest posts are a reflection on your business so be careful.
If your website isn’t up to snuff, or your blog’s content is weak, then you’re just wasting your time linking back to it. I’ve seen some horrid sites that people want to link back to and sometimes I just said no without even allowing someone to send me an article.
If you have some standards, don’t accept anything you don’t agree with, even if the other party is willing to pay you. I disagree with the concept of payday loans, so anytime I received a pitch with that as the topic and it wasn’t a negative piece about the subject, I turned it down. I would also turn it down if the subject is fine and the article was well written but it linked back to one of those sites.
Guest posting to drive traffic isn’t a bad strategy but it comes with its own issues. If you have problems writing your own blog or web content, do you really want to spend the time boosting up someone else’s traffic with the hope of getting some residual traffic back? Pick your spots and it can work out; get it wrong and you’ll just be spinning your wheels.
Hey Mitch,
I’ve done a couple of guest posts but while they did drive some traffic I didn’t think it was enough for the effort I put into those posts. I’d much rather spend the time writing posts for my own blogs.
I also no longer accept guest posts on my blogs because I’ve had some bad experiences with guest posters who do not live up to their obligations.
You know that was my experience. I have to say it was pretty nice when I had all that content and my blog was highly ranked but then the quality of many posts coming in were lousy, those letters started coming in from people wanting me to remove their links and it just wasn’t worth the trouble anymore. Still, I’m not going to say that if someone gets their posts in the right places that it might not work for them.
Hi Mitch, I didn’t ecpect that you have Finance Blog :), but, I cant see you website, when I view your website, this error message is shown ” Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 4980736) (tried to allocate 19456 bytes) in /homepages/4/d161148011/htdocs/TopFinance/wp-includes/class-wp-theme.php on line 958 ” ..
Edward, I think that has to be on your side because I’ve tested it a few times and it’s working just fine. I tested it on 3 different browsers; thus, I got nothing. lol
Ow, its now working well Mitch :), I think its because of my internet connection, its just very slow yesterday.
Thx for these advices, i was just thinking about accepting guestblogging on my site, i already did a few try with friends i trust and it work well for the 2 parts. My criteria will be:
– No post under 700 words.
– 2 links maximums
– Following my website graphics like h2-h3 title colors etc…
– responding to comments within 2 days (stole this one from you).
– And dont use any blackhat seo method.
Sorry my english isn’t perfect, i wish you a lot of success 😉
Not bad rules Jeremy but if I might make a suggestion, I think it might be a bit much for most people to request the H2 & H3 tags because not a lot of content providers know what that stuff is. However, if you have a written policy and give a brief tutorial on how to do it then it might work. Frankly, I’ve never written posts in that style so I’d have failed. lol
Thx for the advice, i think about writing a PDF tutorial on how to 😉 Have a nice week-end 🙂
Actually Mitch, I don’t mind people asking me to remove those links as that’s supplying a nice little bit of extra income 😉
I only had a couple of people pay for it; can’t say it was worth the money lol
Wow, what an informative post! As a relatively new blogger I wasn’t too sure how the whole guest posting thing worked. At what point should I start thinking about pitching posts?
Don’t do it until you have some content on your site. If it’s a website make sure you’ve fleshed out everything you do on a few pages. If it’s a blog I wouldn’t do it until you had at least 10 articles on your own site. Prospects often visit the websites to see what they look like (I did) so you want to make it seem like you know what you’re doing and what you’re talking about.