Is Guest Posting Worth It? [The Good, The Bad, and The Truth]

First, let’s make it clear: this article is from the perspective of businesses receiving guest post inquiries. There’s a lot of content out there about how to do guest blogging yourself.

Now that that’s out of the way.

Chances are, if you’re a marketer, you’ve been contacted numerous times with requests about guest posting.

After all, guest posts are a tested method of outreach, and acquiring backlinks, so there are hundreds of digital marketers out there that are offering their services.

However, sometimes this tactic can be very spammy, especially when the people that are contacting you are offering low-quality content, and questionable backlinks.

Today, we’re going to review and summarize whether guest posting is worth it, how you can benefit from it, and when to avoid accepting it.

How Does Guest Posting Work?

First, let’s decipher the process of guest posting, and what it consists of. You’re running a business, and you have a blog on your website. You’re writing and publishing articles, and developing your online presence.

Eventually, you start receiving emails from different people with inquiries about guest posts. In a nutshell, such an email, usually, sounds like this:

“Hey, ‘X’

I’m ‘Y’. I’m offering guest post services. Check these samples of articles I’ve written:

[a few article links]

Let me know if you’re willing to collaborate.”

Of course, some outreach specialists are very creative with their propositions and emails, but you get the point.

What happens after you receive the email? A.) You ignore the request and that’s it. B.) You reply to the email and start a discussion where you share your requirements.

In the second scenario, you will receive an article/guest post submission, which you need to then decide whether it’s okay to publish, or you want the author to revisit it.

Once it’s all set and done, you publish the guest post on your blog. In return, the guest blogger gets a backlink towards their website. It’s a win-win – you get high-quality content, the author acquires a link.

At least that’s how it is when the stars align and everything happens smoothly. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, you have to deal with issues like being spammed with low-quality content, and so on.

Which brings the question whether it’s worth it to go through all the fuss.

Is Guest Posting Worth It?

Needless to say, it depends on the type of content you’re being offered. Also, the phase of development of your website is important, since you’re more likely to need to boost authority via guest posts when you’re still in the early stages of link building, and enhancing your credibility.

But that’s not always the case, as well, as some renowned and well-developed websites still publish guest content on their sites, despite having established strong brand recognition, and trustworthiness.

Speaking of trust, as the saying goes, trust is easy to lose, and hard to regain. This emphasizes the importance of carefully reviewing guest post submissions, and establishing strict guidelines.

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Benefits of Posting Guest Articles

Publishing guest posts on your website does have some positives. If you invest your time in the process, here’s what you can get in return:

• Professional relationships. One never knows how life will turn out. You might end up building a strong work relationship or even a business partnership, starting with just a guest post.
• Helps SEO. This is a bit arguable, depending on whom you ask. Still, it’s widely considered that publishing guest articles help you boost your SEO.
• Content flow. For one reason or another, sometimes you cannot keep posting articles regularly. This could lead to prolonged periods of time without new articles. Publishing guest posts can come in handy in such situations, as it provides you with free content, and your audience will continue engaging with your website.

At the end of it all, it can be the key to carefully assessing your needs and the current situation of your website. Don’t just accept any offer you receive – better to be picky, and not risk compromising your reputation.

Drawbacks of Posting Guest Articles

It’s an interesting fact that 32% of surveyed marketers say they do not accept guest posts at all. Here’s why it could be so:

• It’s time-consuming. One of the main reasons why marketers totally ignore guest post requests is because it is quite time-consuming. In reality, you can spend your time on much more important tasks, instead of investing hours in sending back-and-forth emails, in order to obtain a good article for your website.
• Quality issues. Very often, guest article proposals are of questionable quality, to put it mildly. And as mentioned above, you often need to waste a lot of time to get to the desired end result.
• Too much spam. We’ve all been there – loads of emails cluttering your inbox with guest blogging proposals. It’s just annoying, especially if you’ve already decided you will not accept guest posts altogether.

You need to invest your time and attention, in order to fully take advantage of guest texts. Given all the spam, and effort to separate the good proposals from the tons of unwanted ones… So, yeah, it’s no wonder a lot of marketing specialists are wondering: does guest posting still work?

Why Guest Blogging Is Kind Of Iffy

Publishing guest posts comes with a couple of issues. First, it’s hard to say if they’re paid posts unless you’ve specifically labeled them as sponsored. Second, they can be over-optimized.

Although there’s no official statement from Google, publishing a guest post without a ‘no follow’ tag could lead to problems. The goal is to clear search results from artificial articles.

Overall, Google does not penalize guest posts for the sake of it, but it’s obvious they’ve been leading a campaign in recent years to lower their amount and reduce their role in link building.

How to Decide When to Accept a Guest Post

In guest blogging, SEO plays a major role. Thus, there are certain aspects you have to consider when deciding whether to accept a guest post or not.

To begin with, you need to establish some standards and criteria. The first, and most critical, rule is to always accept only high-quality, original content.

After that, you need to make sure that the guest article resonates with your audience, and the topic is relevant to your niche.

Here are our very own article submission guidelines at DevriX.

How to evaluate guest post submissions:

• Is it high-quality content? Accept nothing less than the best. In case the submitted article is not good enough for your standards, ask the author to rework it.
• Is it original material? Plagiarized content can hurt your credibility and SEO.
• Is it relevant to your niche? Publishing a post on “How to get rid of weeds” will do you no good, if your website is about office ergonomics. On the contrary, it may be harmful to your reputation, as readers might be wondering why you are publishing articles on completely different topics.
• Professional background. You wouldn’t want a professional NASCAR driver writing about B2B eCommerce strategies. A guest post is only helpful and relevant to your audience when it’s written by an industry expert. This way you also build your expertise and trustworthiness.

Bottom Line

So, what’s the final verdict: is guest posting worth it? It depends, of course. Think about your business and the state of your website – are you thin on content, do you have the time to deal with guest post requests, is it more credibility you’re looking for?

If any of the above is a “yes”, then you might want to consider dealing with guest blogging requests. Still, there are other suitable options out there you can look into.

What has been your experience with guest blogging? We would love to hear it.