When to accept guest posts on your blog?

I get 3-5 guest post requests per day and while they all sound very promising, I delete them without spending too much time and I will explain below why.

Guest posting is a good way to promote your work on other websites and gain recognition, traffic and exposure. Unfortunately like other good things on the web, it is over abused by spammers and ‘SEO consultants’ and it is used solely for link building purposes.

I have a clear view about guest posting and I had to learn the hard way that guest posting is not only for links but there are many more benefits from having your work published on other trusted websites.

To save you time and effort and to answer to a comment from Prat in this post, I will explain below the basic concepts behind guest posting (advantages, disadvantages, criteria for guest blogging on your blog and what to do before publishing a guest post) and also provide an answer as to whether you should accept guest posts on your blog or not.

What are the characteristics of a good guest post?

By a ‘good guest post’ we mean content that you can safely publish on your blog (if you choose to do so). Such a post should satisfy the criteria below:

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It is related to the content already published on the hosting website

It is unique both in title, text and meaning

It is written by a Google verified author

It is written by an expert in the particular field

It is written specifically (and will only be published) on the particular website

It is includes detail and accurate information

It does not include keyword in-text links

All links in the article carry the no-follow tag

Advantages of accepting guest posts on your blog

Are there any advantages for you as a publisher from hosting a guest post on your blog? Provided that the post meets ALL the above guidelines, by accepting guest posts you can benefit from the following advantages:

A different voice, opinion or different view about a subject – It’s a good opportunity to present a different opinion about your niche or introduce something new to your readers that you cannot cover yourself.

Free content for your blog – Although I don’t like this term, if it is a ‘good post’, then it’s free content for your blog.

More time to do other tasks – Publishing a guest post once in a while can free up some time to do other tasks or why not for pleasure!

More social media exposure – Normally the guest author will promote his/her article on social media and essentially your website will get promoted as well.

Disadvantages of accepting guest posts on your blog

On the other hand, by accepting guest posts on your blog it’s a great way to:

Lose readers – If your visitors are coming to read content publish by you because they consider you an expert and instead they continually get to see content published by others, then this is something that may drive them away.

Get link penalties – If you don’t have very strict guest post guidelines and you get carried away by ‘offering links for free content’ then either you will get a penalty and lose your rankings or lose the ‘trust’ of your website in the eyes of Google, which is worse.

Set strict criteria for quality guest posting

In addition to the above characteristics of a ‘good guest post’ and to make sure that you will benefit from the advantages and not suffer from the disadvantages, you need to set very strict criteria before accepting any guest post. For example, these are the criteria I am using:

Allow guest posting only from people who have a verified Google+ profile

Don’t allow text links within the body of the article

Don’t allow keyword stuffed links in the author bio

Allow for only one link in the author bio

Guest posts should be over 1500 words (post length does count for SEO)

Allow guest posts from authors who have strong social media profiles (at least on Google+, Facebook and Twitter)

You may be thinking that with all the above criteria, no one will be willing to contribute a post. Maybe this true but you don’t want to take any risks at all so better be strict and safe than lenient and risky.

What to do before publishing a guest post?

Assuming the all the above conditions are met and you decided to accept a guest post, you need to do the following before publishing it:

Check for uniqueness – Use a plagiarism detection tool (I use copyscape pro) to ensure that the content is 100% unique. In addition search the title on Google and read any similar articles to make sure that the meaning is also unique and not just the setup of the words. In other words check that it is not a rephrase of some other article.

Beautify the text, add images etc. – Don’t forget your SEO. Before publishing any piece of text you need to add correct headings (both H1 and H2), make small paragraphs, add relevant image(s) with ALT text, add a unique description etc.

Do some internal linking – Internal linking is good for SEO so try to add a couple of links to your existing articles (read SEO tips for beginners  – tip 4- for more information on best internal linking practices).

Bind post with the author’s Google+ profile – Don’t forget to bind the author bio at the end of the article with the Google+ profile of the author. Also ask the author to add your website to the ‘Contributor to’ section of his/hers Google+ profile. Use the rich snippets tool to make sure that everything is working ok.

Don’t call it a guest post – You don’t have to call it a guest post, there is no reason to do that. Even if you do, is not the end of the World but since you already have the author bio at the end of the post, you don’t need to add any extra unnecessary information and get the search engines confused without any valid reason.

Should you accept guest posts on your blog?

Now that you know all the pros and cons and the pre-requisites of a quality guest post, you can safely make your own decision without taking any un-necessary risks.

I personally do not even read guest post requests that are automated or based on some template because I know from advance that their purpose is to get a link back from my website and not offer any real value of my users.

The best way to approach someone and ask for publishing your post is not by sending a pre-defined email but by building connections on social media and pitching your idea when the time is right. I know it is hard and time consuming to do but the benefits in terms of traffic and recognition are far more important than a link in the author bio.

Finally, if you choose to accept guest posts on your blog, do not do it all the time. Make sure that guest posts are used to enrich your publishing strategy and not to overtake it. In other words you still need to publish your own content and in-between the publishing dates you can throw a guest article as well.

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How to promote your blog posts without taking any risks

It is important to have a blog post promotion strategy simply because without one your hardly produced content will not reach its full potential.

Promoting your new blog posts in any valid way you can is not something optional but is necessary for your web site’s success. Every time you publish new content, it’s a great opportunity to reach out and inform your existing audience but also gain new readers, followers or customers.

facebook-likesA mistake that many people make is that they publish new content and expect that it will be magically promoted on facebook or twitter and gain attraction or thousands of visitors on its own. This may be true for established web sites with a huge readership but for smaller web sites or blogs it’s your duty to go out and spread the word about your new blog post.

What you will read below is complementary to my existing post how to increase web site traffic – where I explained the most important web site promotion strategies you need to use. In this post I outline the 11 most popular ways to promote new content but I also emphasise how not to promote your posts if you want to stay out of trouble and minimize your risks of getting penalties from Google, Facebook or other search engines.

10+1 ways to promote your new blog posts

Add your new post on your web site’s Facebook page. This will get the message out to your fans. In order for this method to have a return i.e. traffic from facebook or likes to your new blog post you need to have A LOT of facebook fans (likes) on your business page. (I will be discussing this in a new post and once published I will update this part as well)

Share with your facebook friends (using your personal facebook account) the facebook post you have already posted above. In other words go to your personal timeline and like and share the post directly from your business page.

Repeat the same process with your Google+ business page and Google+ personal page i.e. Share the new post on your google+ business page and then share that post with your personal google+ circles.

Tweet about your new post. You can do different tests to find out which is the best time to tweet in order to have the best possible return. Actually you need to do the same with facebook and google+ and find out the particular timeframe that you have most of your fans/followers online. The easiest ways to do this is post or tweet in the morning, afternoon or night for a week and identify which time period gives you more likes, tweets, +1 etc.

Try to avoid automated posts on facebook or twitter. Instead of posting automatically on facebook or twitter do the postings manually and follow up any comments.

Use a catchy description with your social media postings. Sometimes the title is not enough to get readers attention so try to be creative but to the point (avoid long sentences or paragraphs).

Pin to your pinterest boards. Assuming that you always have an image associated with your posts (if you don’t it’s time to start using images for your most important posts – at least), pin that to your pinterest board.

Add to stumbleupon. Stumbleupon was online before facebook, google+ and twitter and it’s a great way to get traffic to your web site and spread the word about your new content. I like stumbleupon because it’s very easy to use; it works and gives you the opportunity to discover really cool web sites and blogs on the web you otherwise wouldn’t know about.

 Email newsletter. Many web sites allow users to register to their newsletters but they never actually send a newsletter out. If you have an email newsletter configured make sure that your new posts are emailed to your subscribers.

RSS feed. RSS is still one of the most effective ways to promote your web site and content. People who subscribe to your feed do it for one particular reason i.e. to get your updates so they are more likely to interact (share on their social media channels) with your posts as well.

Notification from your mobile native apps. This is one of my favourite methods. If you have a native mobile app (android, iPhone, Windows phone etc) for your web site, every time you publish a new post your users will be notified in their mobiles. It is a great way to promote your new post and get direct visits to your web site. Read my previous post mobile web site vs native app for more information (including a real case study with numbers).

LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit and other bookmarking sites

If you have read other articles on how to promote your blog posts you will see mentions to linkedin, digg, reddit and other bookmarking sites.  I don’t use these anymore (I did in the past) so I can’t say if they provide any traffic or not but you can try them out if you have some spare time.

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How NOT to promote your blog posts

The 11 methods explained above are in my opinion the best ways to promote your blog posts without losing too much time. While doing my research to write this article I came across a number of other suggestions that should be avoided if you want to minimize the risks of getting a penalty by Google or Facebook.

Adding your blog post link in the comments section of other blogs: I personally don’t approve comments that have links because in the majority of cases their purpose is not to provide a useful comment but to get a link from my web site. As I matter of fact I consider such technique spamming and I doubt if it worth’s your time.

Re-write the same post and submit as a guest post: This was a trick of the past. Re-writing the same post and publishing it on some other site for the sole purpose of getting a link back is a very bad idea. Guest posting is a valid way to build links if you do it the right way.

Join a blogging community and inform each other for new posts: Very bad idea as well. You should stay away from methods that involve exchanging links with other bloggers.

Adding your posts link as comments in facebook pages: Again, I consider this as spamming and if you do it consistently you will get banned or punished by facebook.

Syndicating your content: There some web sites like alltop.com, selfgrowth.com that group related RSS feeds from several web sites creating information portals. While this is a good way to get traffic to your site because these sites have many visitors it is not the best way to promote your new blog posts. The reason is that these sites have high Google trust and Google will index your blog post on those sites faster than on your site. As a result when you search for a title or a phrase from your post (using “ “) you will find out that Google will index the page on those sites and not yours. This is not always the case, there are exceptions to this rule but better avoid publishing your new blog posts, instead you can syndicate your older posts (that are already indexed on your site).

Certainly the above list is not 100% complete but is more than enough if you want to make efficient use of your time. Blog post promotion can be a time consuming process and you have to balance the effort vs return before deciding which methods to use.

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