admin-plugins author calendar category facebook post rss search twitter star star-half star-empty

Tidy Repo

The best & most reliable WordPress plugins

Pros and Cons of Having Guest Posts on Your Blog

Pros and Cons of Having Guest Posts on Your Blog

Vallery Henings

June 30, 2020 (modified on April 12, 2021)

Blog

Guest posts have been around the block for a while now, and are still well known for helping blog owners gain exposure, credibility, new readers, and a better position on Google’s Search Results. However, not much is being said about accepting guest posts on your blog, so you might be wondering whether it is a good idea.

There is certainly a lot to consider before you create a “write-for-us” or “submit-a-post” page. That is why we’ll go over some of the details first so that you can make an informed decision.

Now, the benefits are plenty, but let’s just cover the most important ones.

Allowing yourself to be lazy now and then

Person relaxing on balcony

When you just start with your blog, your head is constantly overflowing with ideas for your next blog post. You want to cover every possibility your niche offers, and you see no problem with whipping up about ten ideas every time you think about your blog. However, once you already have around 50 blog posts – you will find yourself Googling the competition for some ideas or resorting to some of the great topic generators.

So once you do get a topic idea – how do you not repeat yourself?

Ultimately, you still need to take the time to craft a perfect blog post. When it comes to blogging, quality is always more important than quantity, and just publishing anything won’t do the trick. Your posts must be perfect so that your readers have a reason to stick with reading what you have to say instead of heading over to the competition.

If you allow guest posts on your site, you can let yourself take some time off. There are exceptional writers out there that are looking to promote their blogs, so this could lead to a win-win situation for both of you.

Establishing connections and making new friends

People laughing

Speaking of excellent bloggers, having them in your circle, and establishing communication with them is always a good idea. You will learn from them, pick their bones on new ideas, meet their audience, and much more!

You get some time off from writing, but you also get a space to promote your blog. It’s usually a quid-pro-quo situation: if you can help them, they can help you, which is always great.

Improving your blog’s credibility so that Google will like you better

Screen with analytics graph

“Write about what you know” is one of the first pieces of advice every blogger will get, which stands true for the authors behind those guest posts. Usually, they are, at least, very informed about your niche, or are experts on the subject that plenty of people trust, which is what your blog needs!

The important thing here is to allow them to add their biography that will stand next to their posts. This is a nice thing to do because you are letting the world know exactly what piece a specific author wrote, but it can also do wonders in terms of credibility.

Think of it this way: Would you rather read a blog post about a Tesla car from Elon Musk or a kindergartener who wants to get one when he grows up?

In a nutshell, author boxes are a must if you decide to allow guest-posting because you want your authors’ credentials to give credibility to the blog post you are publishing.

The easiest way to add those is by using the right plugin, and in this case, it’s the Simple Author Box plugin. Just install it, and you’ll find your way around it in no time.

With this plugin, you will be able to add links to the authors’ blogs in no time, and by doing that allow your visitors to check who is behind that particular piece of writing!

With expert authors, you will get visitors interested, and ultimately, Google will notice the spike in your traffic and give you credit for it!

Sounds too good to be true?

Keep in mind that while the benefits are enormous, there are a couple of things to pay attention to if you don’t want to regret allowing guest posts on your site.

Set up the Guidelines, and don’t accept anything less

Person writing something down

While everything above should be working in your favor of improving your credibility with your readers and Google, it can also work against you if you are not careful.

The first thing you need to do is to make sure you get the topic of the guest posts in advance. The articles must match your niche, so this is something to pay attention to. If you have a blog about web design, and the proposed topic is: “Ten ways to knit a sweater,” you will probably not like the end result.

You will also receive quite an amount of poorly written posts, with an embarrassingly small word-count, and with a number of typos that deem the article unreadable.

This is why you need to set up some guidelines and make a point of not accepting articles that don’t follow them. Make sure you underline what you are looking for and do check the article twice before publishing.

Not every author is an author.

Chess pieces

Plagiarism is one of the issues you will probably encounter once your blog is open for the public. Mind you – not everyone is willing to take the time to write something. They are frequently there for the backlink and will try to “sell” you stolen material.

If you publish the stolen material, you could face serious charges, ruin your reputation, and things could get even worse. Even if the situation isn’t so dire, Google will know, and will not look upon it favorably.

Luckily, there is an easy solution to this problem – just find a reliable plagiarism checker, such as Copyscape or Grammarly, and simply say no to plagiarised content.

However, those backlinks aren’t solved as easily. So you should go ahead and check each and every one of them too.

Why? Well, linking to spammy sites is probably not the best idea, considering that links to and from your website play a huge role in how Google perceives your blog.

Conclusion

In theory, allowing guest posts on your blog is an excellent idea! Provided that it is done correctly, that is. If you do decide to go with it, it will take some things off your plate, but you still need to put in the work.

In essence – be picky! Be picky about who is allowed to write for you, stay true to your niche and guidelines, and especially, make sure that the article you will publish on your blog is a high-quality one!