I recently reduced the number of guest posts I accepted on my blog – almost to the point where I stopped accepting guest posts entirely. Guest posts have turned into an issue recently after Matt Cutts began taking action against sites that accepted guest posts. The guest posting situation has caused me to review my guest post situation for Technically Easy – should I continue to accept guest posts, or should I stop altogether.
After some thought I have decided to continue to accept guest posts, but have modified Technically Easy’s guest posting guidelines to eliminate some of the guest posts that I don’t believe are high-quality.
Changing My Guest Post Strategy
I have had guest post guidelines for Technically Easy for almost three years, and have modified the guidelines over those three years. Unfortunately, I haven’t been following the guidelines as closely as I would have liked, which has allowed some posts to be published that I shouldn’t have published.
Much like technology, accepting guest posts is an evolving experience. I had very basic guidelines in the past – such as number of links and length of guest posts, and as I received more guest posts those guidelines expanded to include such things as commenting, formatting, and spelling and grammar. Each time I found an issue with a number of guests posts, I would update the guidelines to manage the issue.
With Google’s latest stance on guest posting, I realized it was time for me to once again change my guest posting guidelines to account for the changes.
You may wonder why I am bending to Google? Simple. Google still makes up a good bulk of my traffic, and will always be a part of my traffic strategy. For blogs/sites like mine that have a lot of “how-to” articles, search engines are usually quite popular for visitors to find these types of sites. I usually search Google for information on how to do something, and my visitors do the same.
There are two changes that I have made to the guest post guidelines. The first change was a result of the Google penalty experienced by Technically Easy. The second change will hopefully increase the quality of the posts that I receive.
All Links Will Be NoFollow
Technically Easy was penalized by Google for having too many external links that were not “nofollow” links. This was because of the many guest posts that I had accepted. In order to remove the action taken by Google against Technically Easy I had to do one of two things:
- Remove the external links. With number of guest posts, this option was going to take weeks to complete.
- Change the external links to “nofollow”. This was done with a plugin so it took seconds to complete.
After changing all the external links to “nofollow”, Google removed the penalty against Technically Easy. Going forward, all external links in guest posts will be nofollow automatically.
Over the past few years that I have published guest posts, I have noticed that most authors only published their posts on my blog because of the “dofollow” link back to a site – it may not have even been their site. This proves that the author didn’t care about the blog that was publishing their guest post, just as long as there was a “dofollow” link.
Guest posting should be about attracting new readers – not getting a link back to your site. A reader doesn’t care about “dofollow” or “nofollow” links, just the content of the post, and the content of the site being linked. Guest posting was a way to “game the search engines” – nothing more.
These days I am being contacted by site owners to remove links from my blog that were created by guest posts. Such sites tried to take the easy way gaining links, and are now being penalized by Google. For many sites, all their years of gaining traction in search engines is all for not.
Minimum Post Length of 1,000 Words
The one aspect of guest posting that I didn’t like was that the guest posts weren’t very detailed. If they post talked about a product, the post didn’t go beyond the specs of the product. Guest post authors wrote very short posts that lacked any thought or imagination.
It isn’t hard to write a 1,000 word post – most of the posts that I write on Technically Easy easily go beyond 1,000 words. I actually have trouble writing about a product without going a 1,000 words, so when I see a guest post that is 400 words about a product I am very skeptical about the quality of the guest post.
There has been much debate online about the length of a post. Some argue 1,000 words may be too long, while others may say 2,000 is an ideal post length. If a reader is interested in your post, then they will probably read the whole thing, or skim through most of it. I have read posts that were easily beyond 2.000 words when the post is interesting.
Most guest posts that are under 500 words are not really good quality – at least from what I have seen sent to me. In order to get higher quality guest posts, I have now raised the minimum word count from 500 words to 1,000 words. By raising the minimum, I am hoping to avoid the quickly written post and hoping to get posts that someone has spent some time on writing.
While the above are only two changes to my guest post guidelines, they are part of a more overall guest post strategy that I have been employing on my blog.
What Are Your Thoughts on Guest Posting?
The above two points were changed in response to not only the Google penalty, but also in the quality of guest posts that I have received through the years. The other guest posting guidelines haven’t changed, but I will be more vigilant in enforcing the guidelines. If you are serious about submitting a guest post to Technically Easy, you should ensure you have read and understand the guest posting guidelines.
How do you feel about accepting or writing guest posts? Have you thought about a guest post strategy for your blog? Do you think that my guideline changes are a good or bad thing?