Guest blogging is a great way to build links to your website, boost your authority within your niche and help you to find new customers; but what about Accepting guest posts on your site?
We’ve talked about the benefits of accepting guest bloggers on your website, citing additional content, an engaged reader base, more free time, relationship-building and boosting SEO as reasons for accepting guest posts, but should you always accept them?
In this post, we’ve rounded up some examples of guest post requests you should always refuse.
People who can’t be bothered
One of the most common reasons for rejecting guest post requests is generic Email templates.
If an author can’t even be bothered to send you a personalised email and get to know you before they ask for a guest post placement, then you shouldn’t waste the time getting back to them.
If you’ve been running a blog for any period of time, you’ll no doubt get these same requests sent through to you every day of the week, and they all tend to follow the same format.
There’s a non-personalised introduction, a request for a guest post, and then a couple of examples of their previous work. Oh, and the subject is usually a dead giveaway that is a robot sending out these emails in bulk rather than a genuine writer wanting to pitch content to you.
Be strict with guest posts from authors that aren’t putting in the effort.
The chances are that they are sending out thousands of these emails to any blog that looks like yours, and that the quality of their work isn’t going to live up to your standards. Our advice? Don’t even bother replying!
This pitcher shows no interest in our website and is only looking for a link.
People with commercial interests
Another time when you might want to think twice before accepting a guest post is if there’s a conflict of interest.
If you run a recruitment agency, for example, and another recruitment agency asks for a guest post on your site, it might be a good idea to say no due to commercial interests.
Linking out to your competitor’s website from your blog will not only boost their ranks on search engine results pages, but it means that some of your loyal readers might check out one of your competitors instead, and you could lose out on a customer as a result.
Of course, you don’t need to worry about this if the company isn’t a direct competitor, or you don’t make money from your blog. In the marketing and blogging world, for example, guest posting is pretty common, even amongst digital marketing agencies who offer similar services.
People using Gmail addresses
Pitching for guest blogs can be tricky, as many bloggers don’t accept content or immediately assume that it’s spam.
Because of this, many bloggers and link builders pitch blogs through secondary email addresses that aren’t connected to their business to reduce the chances of being labelled as spam or having a guest post request associated with a particular business.
However, Gmail addresses can be created and destroyed in just a minute or two, and so requests from such accounts are much less accountable.
The chances are that the request has also been sent to a hundred other websites, and the pitcher is simply trying their luck.
Always find out who you’re talking to before accepting a guest post, and ask for any commercial interests to be declared, too. If a ‘passionate blogger’ is actually making money by posting on your website and adding a link to their clients’ site, you should be aware before you publish.
People who speak poor English
While guest blogging requests don’t have to win awards for their creativity, they should make sense and be grammatically correct.
If you receive a pitch in poor English, then simply refuse or don’t respond to the email.
After all, the person who sent the email will probably be the person to write the content for your website, and it’s important that you maintain standards on your blog.
People who can’t write
Just because you’ve accepted a guest blogger’s request and they’ve sent you a piece of content, that doesn’t mean you have to publish it on your website.
Make sure you read through the piece carefully and suggest edits before you post because it’ll be your reputation on the line if you post a dud or the content includes errors or mistakes that could have been avoided.
And if you receive a post that’s simply too bad to be edited and amended, let the guest author know.
A simple email explaining why you’re not accepting their content will suffice. Don’t worry that you wasted their time; they can publish the content on their own blog or elsewhere.
Wrapping up
The most important thing to remember before accepting guest content is that you own your blog; every piece of content you publish is connected to you, whether you wrote the piece or not.
Be sure to exercise caution when you work with any unsolicited guest blogging request and don’t be afraid to say no. Best of luck with your blogging!
The post Don’t accept guest post requests from these people appeared first on Muffin Marketing.
