Guest Posts

Ken from Adgitize started a topic on the forum discussing whether guest posts should be allowed.  I commented on the thread but thought it would be a good topic to discuss in a bit more detail.  As an author of six blogs I get a fair number of requests to guest blog on them.  Over the course of the six years I've been blogging, I have written one guest post and allowed one guest post on one of my blogs.  Despite the idea that guest posting will build traffic to your blog and in theory it will, I am not a fan of guest posting.  One problem is the guest blogger may get their content from a content farm without your knowledge.  Another problem is the guest blogger may write the same article for more than one blog.  Both of these problems create duplicate content that is not a good thing in the eyes of Google.  If done often enough, you could end up being penalized by Google because of guest posts if they are from content farms or create duplicate content. 

My blogs really are about me - my ideas, information I want to share, my writing style and so on.  I prefer to control the content on my blogs, keeping it 'me'.  If I were to accept guest posts, I would of course determine if the content was appropriate and the backlink went to an acceptable blog.  This creates a couple of problems though.  I would feel bad turning down an article someone had taken the time to write for one of my blogs but would have no choice if the article did not meet the standards I've set for them.  Quite often those offering to write a guest post are inexperienced bloggers looking to establish backlinks.  The problem with this is two-fold.  Newer blogs usually don't have Page Rank and the average life of new blogs is three months.  Both of these create holes in your PR. 

In fairness, allowing guest posts can keep fresh content on your blog when you don't have the time to write your own blog posts.  I don't feel that this is a real benefit in that you still have to do the work of publishing the guest post.  Rather than allowing guest posts it may be better to form a writing team where each member has the ability to publish but beware as there are problems with that approach as well.
Garden Gnome
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