Does Your Blog Have a Guest Posting Policy?
Allowing guest posts on your blog offers a number of benefits. It drives new readers to your blog, helps you network with other bloggers, and gives you a break from having to come up with new content all the time.
But as you might imagine, not all guest posts are worth publishing. I contribute to a number of different blogs, and I get requests from guest bloggers on a pretty regular basis. Unfortunately, a lot of the pitches and posts guest bloggers submit just aren’t up to par. They’re not something I would want to share with my readers, because they could damage the reputation of my blog.
That’s where having a guest posting policy comes in handy. By placing a clear policy on your blog outlining what you expect from guest bloggers, you can weed out a lot of the low quality, link grabbing guest posts that are littering the blogosphere.
What should you include in your guest posting policy?
- Word count—I’ve never been a big fan of word counts, but when it comes to guest posting, I think having a minimum word count is a good idea. It helps to prevent people from cranking out short, generic guest posts just so they can get their links back to their website.
- Linking rules—Because guest posting has become such a popular method of link building, a lot of guest authors you host will want to have links back to their websites in their posts. You need to have set rules dictating the number of links allowed in each post as well as the type of links (e.g. in-content links or byline links).
- Subject matter—It should go without saying, but you’d be surprised at some of the irrelevant guest blogging pitches I’ve received. Make a basic list of acceptable topics guest authors can write about.
- Exclusivity and originality—Make sure guest authors only submit original content that hasn’t yet been published elsewhere and won’t be published elsewhere in the future.
What are some other things to include in a guest posting policy?
June 28th, 2011 at 8:30 am
The biggest problem I seem to have with guest posting is that many of the requests I have lately are nothing more than a quick link grab attempt and nothing more. Usually this is very easy to see.
So this is something I'm adding to my guest posting guidelines. Just simply say something like "If you post is nothing more than an obvious link grab attempt then it won't be published.
People writing these types of posts know who they are and they're very aware that their only interest is in link building. So my guess is this will keep most of these types of folks from even submitting their guest posts.
June 28th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Eric,
I have regular guest posters who post often on my blog. some even got PR3 straight from PR0. I allow them a link on their authir info appearing at the bottom of each of their posts. I also give a link to there facebook profiles. I just needed your advice that what if someone has written 20 posts at my blog and all 20 posts pointing to the guest author's homepage. Can that damage my own PR. I really need your detailed suggestion on this. Will highly appreciate the help.
Here is an example of a guest post at my blog : http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2011/06/9-facebook…