Following on from our recent post: Guest Posting – the Good, the Bad and Ugly related to the recent comments from Matt Cutts about guest blogging becoming a spammy practice. This post outlines some important rules for guest blogging. If you have not heard, search engines might start penalising websites that accept guest posts made by specific authors because a lot of junk content is being guest posted on the web. Even high authoritative blogs are allowing guest posts and many of those posts are filled with mediocre content and spammy links.
Now what Matt Cutts says doesn’t mean you should not allow guest posts on your blog or stop guest blogging. Rather, it means that you need to be wiser. Don’t just accept guest posts because you think it will increase your traffic. Accept them because the content will benefit your readers.
Here are some rules you should follow if you plan on guest blogging activities:
Rules for businesses looking for guest posts
- Understand your goals –blogging for SEO purposes might be a thing of the past, but it still has many other benefits that we shouldn’t forget.
- Get the balance right – make sure to keep a healthy balance of guest posts versus your own. There are so many reasons for this, let alone avoiding making your blog look spammy.
- Know your bloggers – don’t accept blog posts from people you don’t know. Remember, spammy bloggers can have a detrimental impact on SEO.
- Use “nofollow” links – any links embedded in your posts should have the “nofollow” tag on them. For those of you who aren’t sure what this is, it’s pretty simple. Here’s what the HTML link will look like – <a href=”www.website.co.uk” rel=”nofollow”>Anchor text</a>.
- Keep your content useful and engaging – it’s not all about Google. Do bear in mind that your blog is for humans, not robots. Good, engaging, insightful content is what will keep people coming back for more.
Rules for bloggers
- Set yourself clear goals and blog for the right reasons – what exactly are you trying to achieve? If it’s SEO then blogging isn’t for you. If it’s to boost traffic or reputation, then keep doing it.
- Be careful who you blog for – try to avoid writing for blogs that are populated entirely with guest blogs and choose a blog based on traffic levels and relevance of their audience.
- Avoid putting links in the main body of your blog – there’s no SEO juice in embedding links in your post and carefully choosing your anchor text based on the keywords you would like to rank for. You may as well avoid it entirely – you want people to read your content, not abandon the post part way through.
- Promote yourself with a bio – ask the blog owner to pop a small bio at the top and/or bottom of any posts you write for them. This is your online elevator pitch, your chance to shine. Make sure you include your photo, name, Twitter handle and a link to your website.
MarketingMavens thinks this change will be for the good and hopefully the spammers will give up and the good bloggers will stick at it.
Do you have rules for guest blogging? Let me know below.
