To many writers, blogging is the job of the century. It all started in the 1990s when the first blogs were created, and it quickly became a lucrative occupation many would like to pursue. However, there is more to blogging than just writing skills.
The blogosphere has its own rules, especially if it is done for the purpose of SEO, i.e. search engine optimization – so many fresh writers need to learn these rules first if they plan to remain in this field. If you have already started a blog, have a clear publishing schedule, but no time to do the writing by yourself, you can introduce guest blogging, that is, invite other bloggers to write guest posts for you.
And this task requires completely different skills than mere blog writing. It demands organization, a time schedule, as well as editing skills.
Since guest posting is used as a part of a link building strategy, it brings a lot of benefits, such as quality traffic, building domain authority and influence, developing your authority on a certain topic, increasing your blog exposure, building brand awareness, but also it can help build your portfolio, credibility and improve your writing and editing skills.
So, if you are planning to sail this way, you need to formulate some ground rules.
3 Rules For Successful Guest Posts On Your Blog
1. Set writing rules
First off, if you are inviting guest bloggers to help you out, you should establish the following writing rules:
- Original content. Since quality content is one of Google ranking signals, you have to be clear about this. Writing original texts will only be good for your blog and you will avoid the chance of getting Google penalty, i.e. deindexing your pages and having them marked as low-quality. Therefore, accept only authentic texts and make sure to run them through a plagiarism checker tool (such as Grammarly, Small SEO Tools or Copyscape). Highlight this rule and make it a routine.
- Relevant content. This rule of thumb is one of the prerequisites. If you accept stale posts about things which are no longer relevant, the odds of having your blog rank for the newest topics will be really low. Always make sure to accept posts which are in line with the latest technology development.
- Readable content. Readability is vital, so if the text does not meet this requirement, it will not be good for your blog either. Good structure, short but eloquent sentences, logical/coherent and short paragraphs are the features of an easy-to-read text. Of course, having only one H1 heading, and a hierarchy of subheadings (H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6) will make the guest post readable for the spiders as well.
- Magnetic headlines. When you agree on topics with your guest writer, think of the people who are going to read that text. Optimize them, check spelling mistakes, and write only headlines people are going to click on (but not clickbait).
- Meta-tags. Every blog post needs to have meta-tags, so you should ask your writer to provide you with a suitable meta-description – not shorter than 130 characters (so they show well on mobile search) and not longer than 156 characters, so search engines do not cut them off. Also, do not forget to optimize images and add alternative text.
2. Set backlinking rules
If you are planning to allow backlinks in your blog posts, you need to abide by Google’s guidelines which prohibit unnatural links from your site.
Spammy links are a big no-no, as well as irrelevant or PBN links. Make sure to stay away from hiding links in CSS and JavaScript, as well as from backlinks coming from foreign language websites. Also, it is recommended not to link to sites which have a lower authority than yours.
If you want to send a clear signal to Google that you do not want to give away your SEO juice (i.e. authority), you can add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to all external links.
3. Create a Guest Blogger profile
If you have a WordPress blog, we recommend not to publish all guest posts under your name. It would also be a bad idea to add tons of new profiles. Instead, it is recommended to create a Guest Blogger profile, literally saying those two words.
This way, you can invite more people and give them credits under the article, clearly stating that you are not the author of all those articles.
And the last, but not the least, is promotion. If you want to let other bloggers know you are accepting guest posts, you should write an article about it, clearly stating the above rules and giving them a contact email they can write to. After that, promote that article on social networks to get higher exposure and you will surely benefit from it very soon.
If you are interested in professional blog writing services, contact us now.
