Four Things Blog Owners Should Avoid Doing With Guest Authors

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Guest posting is one of the very few remaining ways of building one way quality links for your website. No wonder, more and more websites are now turning towards this method, which is a good nevertheless. Blog owners are quite choosy when it comes to publishing content on their blogs, which means only the above average content can pass, unlike the poor quality, spun content often seen on article directories and content farms.

Any good blog that accepts guest contributions get dozens of articles on monthly basis, and even though majority of them are spam, there are many which are good enough to keep their blog going even if they aren’t contributing anything on their own. People are running entire networks of blogs, powered solely by the content coming from guest authors (free blogging), and there’s nothing wrong in it as long as they are maintaining strict quality standards.

It’s true that allowing others to contribute a post on your blog is a kind of favor; however some blog owners get a little puffed-up and end up ruining the experience for guest contributors. Given below are four distasteful experiences you might have faced as a guest blogger, and hope that blog owners will steer clear of such practices.

Changing the links in author’s Bio without permission:

You can devise any strategy for linking to guest blogger’s websites from the Author’s Bio, and reject any link that you don’t deem as appropriate. You can also ask the authors to cut down the number of links, change anchor texts, or even change the links altogether. What you cannot and shouldn’t do is to make these changes yourself without asking the authors for permission, and then publishing the article with the modified Bio.

Many a times, guest authors will have no issues with the kind of changes you were looking for, but still doing those changes without asking for their approval is unprofessional and must be avoided. In case the author is not happy with the changes, and you decide to remove the article after 1 – 2 days of publishing, they will be left with an article that no other blog is ready to take because Google has already indexed the article and it might be considered duplicate content.

Rejecting the article without notifying:

You wouldn’t like to use some of those posts for many reasons, it might be low quality, not unique, out dated, recently covered at your blog, or simply off topic. In fact you can reject a post without giving any reason for all you like, but one thing you must do is to inform the contributor. Just let them know as soon as you’ve gone through the article and you don’t find it a good fit for your blog, don’t make them wait for weeks, and send half a dozen follow up emails before giving them the news.

Publishing the post without notifying:

At times, it happens that you send a guest post to a blog, and the owner doesn’t respond for weeks, even when you’ve sent a couple of follow up emails, and you decide to offer it to another blog. Only to get the answer that the post is already published elsewhere, after searching at Google, you find it live on the blog you’ve first offered, because blog owner was on vacations or simply not able to go through your article earlier. Again, that’s quite understandable, except that you must confirm from the authors if you are about to publish the article after weeks.

Publishing on another one of your blog:

Many blog owners have more than one blogs and often they’ll deem an article to be more suitable for another blog instead of the one where guest author is looking to get it published. It’s fine if you get back to them with your decision to use it on another blog, and ask for their permission. Just because they’ve sent you an article for a particular blog, doesn’t mean you’re free to use it on any other website, especially if the second blog is lesser than the original one in one way or another.

Author’s Bio:
[note]Arba HanaArba is an SEO expert, and writes on topics related to Internet Marketing.[/note]

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24 thoughts on “Four Things Blog Owners Should Avoid Doing With Guest Authors”

  • Great article here Arba. I’m one of those bloggers that publishes guest content almost exclusively (I wrote the first 200 or so articles, and after that got so bogged down, that now I am mostly a guest blogger portal). At PR4 I am always receiving tons of submissions. I keep my quality guidelines strict, and have a few expectations for guest authors, but I lay them out very clearly, and do my best to provide a good experience and valuable backlinks both in content and in an author-bio. Great tips you provide, and I’m happy to say I don’t make any of those mistakes!

    • Yes, there are many blogs running exclusively on guest posts, which is great, but some of them get a little too arrogant while dealing with guest authors, which is a big turn off.

      • This is very true. You guys can try to guest blog at our site too. 🙂

  • I always contact my guest authors if there are any issues, I think it’s just down right rude to reject a blog post and tell the author why!

    As for letting them know about when the article is to be posted I have a handy plugin that sends an email to the authir telling them the date and time that their article will be going live.

  • Thankt should have read “I think it’s just down right rude to reject a blog post and DON’T tell the author why!!

    • I agree, the guest author still have the right to know why and how his/her article is rejected, in that way, he/she may do something to his/her content that could merit the approval of the blog owner.

  • Right on point Arba.

    I have had some of these happen to me. I had someone changing my anchor text links and they told me the reason was because they are targeting the same keywords as well.

    I am like…. if thats the case, then mention these things in the guest post guidelines and also it would be nice to ask me hey what other anchor text you want to use, instead of picking whatever you feel like. Thanks Arba.

  • I would like to add that sometimes when I write a random guest post and contact several bloggers so if they are interested in it. After a long wait for response I usually gave my post to some blog and suddenly some bloggers came up screaming why did you give that post away. I think bloggers should response ASAP

  • These are really great tips for bloggers who accept guest posts. I think it’s really important to keep in touch with your guest authors to let them know the status of their posts. Iff you find yourself bogged down, there are some wordpress plugins for automatically notifying authors when their posts are published.

  • I’m glad to see this article here Arba, as one thing I notice some blog owners do is to put (a call for guest articles) on their site, yet have a list of requirements a mile long. Yes, it is your blog to do what you will and yes it is your blog to decided what you will and will not accept.

    However if you decide to take on guest bloggers and guest articles on your site, do not make me or someone else jump through hoops to satisfy some ridiculous set of rules that not even the NY Times sets.

    My BIGGEST pet peeves on guest blogging include:
    Late (or no reply) to a submitted guest article
    Asking for requirements that are not necessary such as a personal photo in Gravatar
    Telling me that my article will be published in two months (Lol – no, thank you!) Especially if the site is not that busy.
    Taking forever (a/k/a 2 weeks) to respond to a guest post query, then another 2 weeks to approve, then another week to publish (yes, this has happened to me)
    Telling me that I can’t work for myself and take on clients who come to me looking for my guest article services – because how dare I make an income with my writing? Buzz off.
    Putting a listing in My Blog Guest or Blogger Link Up then because of demand – charging for a guest post. I don’t think so.

    Cheers,
    Missy

  • The rejecting guest posts without notification and publishing them without notification are routinely done by certain bloggers. They think that their time is wasted by communicating with lesser mortals. So obviously the quality of guest posts they get is also worthy of their attitude!

  • Hi,

    Yes it’s very true Guest ” Authors ” will work for us in many ways but the thing is that we should choose only quality content which you mentioned in your blog post very well.

  • yes. I agree with you. Rejecting or publishing should be avoided for guest posting. Every blog owners should follow these steps which will mutually benefitted.

  • Arba, this is a very interesting post, and an accurate assessment of how blog owners can sometimes offend guest posters. Luckily, most bloggers I have come across so far have been very nice!

    Thanks.

  • Yes,all bloggers having guest posting mind the above four points.

  • I think that it’s great to collaborate with other authors and writers, giving each other an opportunity to practice guest posting. The only “but” is that they all should be written on a high level

  • This post reminds me of a problem I was having on my blog. I use SEO Smart Links on my site, and quite often it would modify a guest posters author bio by adding in a hyperlink (not something I wanted and I’m sure they would want even less!)

    If you are running into the same issue there is an easy fix.
    You can use the Ignore posts and pages setting and include either the post id, slug, or post name, and it will exclude that post from it’s linking system.

  • All blog masters should know these things if they want to earn respect from their blog readers and most especially from a lot of guest authors. Guest posting has its SEO advantages both to the blog owner and the guest poster so it’s very important to maintain rapport.

  • Hi Arba,
    The only one of these I am guilty of is publishing the article as soon as I approve it. I always keep an open communication with my guest bloggers. A good way to get good guest bloggers is to network with bloggers and clients that you trust. They are usually happy to send reputable bloggers your way.

  • You have provided some very useful advice here. I thought one of the ‘things’ would be “do not publish too many”. I think I do this, I’m not sure if it will hurt my blog in the long run though.

  • Love these reasons. I always inform the author why I am rejecting the post but I must say, the way they didn’t read the guidelines and the way they act like I have to publish their post doesn’t really deserve me to be so fair. But I guess I should be the nice one and just do it 😉

  • These tips are good ones; bloggers must realize they’re both writers and publishers, and nowhere is the Golden Rule more appropriate than when working both sides of the equation! 🙂

  • hello, love the tips on guest posting. I am a blogging newbie and posted my first guest post today. thanks for the valuable information.

  • Great article on guest posting. I thinks its so important to keep the communication open with who your working with & agreeing on changes on certain things if there is a need. Respect working both ways is vital to reputation.

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