In 2008-2009, when I start blogging, the term “guest post” wasn’t very famous and many people were reticent about. Nowadays, a guest post is something very common and very used by bloggers. As the name itself is saying, a guest post is the blog contribution of someone that does not own the respective blog or isn’t hired to write for. Usually, it’s a blogger that writes a post or more for a backlink/backlinks. It became a very fruitful activity and even the Google experts paid a closer attention to it. Well, right now we have an inflation of guest postings and it determined people to believe that it’s harmful. It was enough to wrongly interpret the statements of Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team. Definitely, he mentioned that there are two different kinds of guest blogging:
– The quality one – when good bloggers offer interesting and insightful articles and they get in exchange a backlink or any other advantage (money, recognition etc). The articles are highly appreciated by visitors and, in this context, everyone wins.
– The poor one – the bloggers write superficial and short articles just to get advantages. The contributions are irrelevant having no original idea…briefly, these doesn’t deserve the endeavour to be read.
Recently, I have read an article on Search Engine Journal, a respected blog that treats SEO and adjacent fields and it really made me to react. The author was expressing his opinion that guest posting is an activity that isn’t helping a blog. I consider that is wonderful this blogging climate, everyone is free to express his perspective and everyone is free to agree with or not. The single mandatory thing is to respectfully treat any person and any opinion. Well, I really respect the author opinion and I appreciate the synthetic exposure but I have many opposed ideas to his article.
I think that is highly recommended to carefully read his post to make a better idea about his approach about guest blogging.
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My opinion is that he and other “enemies” of guest blogging don’t make the clear distinction between the real guest blogging and a new kind of spamming. Quality guest blogging assures a variety of ideas and many times it is constituted from very interesting articles. Could it harm a blog? …according to my humble opinion, NOPE!
What really harms and it should be eradicated is spamming that looks like guest blogging. It is nothing more than short, lacking any useful information writing that is named blog post – in fact a cover to get backlinks. Yeah, it is shameful and detracts what guest posting really is.
Below are re-evaluated the reasons mentioned as being harmful for guest blogging in SEJ article.
Responsive Web Design: 7 Advantages on Why You Should Opt It For1. Guest blogging doesn’t hurt Page Rank
The main reason to avoid guest blogging is that having many backlinks means that a lot of “juice” is lost. Well, the truth is that indeed, much “juice” is lost but on the other hand, a new quantity of juice is formed. The idea is simple: inserting a backlink in the author bio automatically means that a small part of “website juice” is given to it. Having a quality guest post means that more readers will visit the blog to enjoy the post and it is equivalent that Google will reward you. The conclusion is simple: smart guest posting means that you give something and receive more; guest blogging is profitable!
2. Broken links may come from everywhere
Another reason against guest blogging is represented by the broken links. Google used to penalize the broken links and the website will suffer which isn’t a pinkish situation, isn’t it? This reason is false! I can’t fully deny that some backlinks in the guest posts or in the author bio won’t be broken across time but it is an exception and not a regular fact. Writing a guest post supposes wasting time and resources (more or less, depending on the quality of the post). There is no logic to invest energy – in this case to “fight” for backlinks and after a short period of time to abandon the project. Am I wrong?
On long time perspective, it’s possible to abandon a project and to give up to the resources invested in obtaining backlinks. Anyway, the cases are rare, posting guest posting becomes more and more difficult due to the competition and none gives up so easy!
3. Guest blogging doesn’t mean that the blog owner shouldn’t write
In the above mentioned article, a reason not to accept guest posting was the fact that having many foreign contributions is incompatible with maintaining a style specific to the respective blog. More exactly, a contribution can be 800 words length and is very formal while other article is 2700 words and it’s informal. The readers will be at sea and it’s a high change to quit visiting the blog.
In my opinion it is a serious reason but none says that a blog owner should accept any guest post. A wise blog owner should provide to anyone interested to contribute a very detailed list of requirements and any guest post should fully respect it. The contributions that are interesting and correspond to this list are accepted, the rest are rejected. Using this modality, the blog posts won’t differ too much and of course the blog owner should bring his personal contribution in order to please the readers because, quite probable, due to his style was formed a constant base of loyal readers.
4. Guest blogging is making stronger the blogosphere
The last reason invoked was that accepting/rejecting guest posts will dilute the cohesion of the blogosphere. Contrary, I consider that guest blogging will make stronger the connection between bloggers. Rejecting an article from other blog owner doesn’t mean that they will become enemies and will fight against each other. A real blogger will understand that sometimes an article might not be interesting for a person even if it is high qualitative. Each one has his own preferences.
In the end, I hope that I convinced you about the benefits of guest blogging. There are also many disadvantages, but the advantages are more important. The most important idea is that everyone should make the clear distinction between guest posting and spamming! Do you agree with me or do you have another idea? Please let me know your ideas via comment form, I am waiting for them!
