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7 Ways Guest Posts Can Harm Your Site


Posted on by admin | in longhorn

In general, guest posts refer to the posts on your website that are created by other people. Good guest posts should relate to the niche that your website focuses on. Conversely, you can even post guest posts on other people’s blogs or websites. Although guest blogging has its advantages, most of the advantages associated with guest blogging are enjoyed by the guests themselves. If you accept guest posts on your site, then you need to be aware of the fact that these posts may end up hurting your site. Normally guest blogs are written by other bloggers to promote their own sites. In most cases, guest bloggers do not really care about getting your site penalized, as their main objective is to get more backlinks to their site(s).

The following list outlines some of the ways guest posts can harm your site:1. Copy Right InfringementsNot everything posted online is derived from original sources. Besides plagiarizing something on the Internet, some of the content can be copied from offline sources such as books, magazines and newspapers. As a result, using online tools to check for reproduced content may not detect the violations. This is probably one of the biggest pitfalls of relying on guest posts. You can get yourself into copyright violation lawsuits in the future, and your site may get penalized for plagiarizing content.

2. Quality Issues 

The major problem with guest posts is quality control. Under most circumstances, guest posts written by strangers are poor in quality. Since most guest bloggers post their guest posts on a pay-per-post basis, they do not care enough to tackle some common problems found in guest posts including content, grammar, spelling, style and overall flow of the post. These guest bloggers are simply out to make more money. Just a few years ago, quality was not as big of an issue as guest bloggers were more dedicated to the craft.

3. Loss of Readers or Customers 

Guest posts have backlinks linking to other sites, and these backlinks take visitors from your site to other sites. You might lose readers to competitors because of the use of guest posts. Instead of adding value to your site, the guest posts may end up driving some of your readers or customers away.

4. Blacklisted by Search Engines 

Guest posts may link to inappropriate sites, and search engines may put your sites on their blacklists as a result. In most cases, you do not have control over the links provided in guest blogs, and this can cause some irreversible damage. For instance, Google penalizes sites that link to bad sites. Although you have nothing to do with the violations, your site still suffers.

5. Loss of Trust 

When visiting your site, both the readers and customers want to be treated with integrity and respect. When you do your own writing, you can win the hearts and trust of your readers and customers on your own merits. If the content on your site is always provided by other people, this may cause some of your readers or customers to abandon your site. Readers and customers love to directly interact with the person who comes up with the ideas. For instance, when a new idea receives mixed reactions, the readers may want further clarifications. A guest blogger cannot always be around to follow up on the material.

6. Waste of Time

Depending on your luck, some guest bloggers are a pain to deal with. You might find yourself working more to appease the guest bloggers than on your site. For instance, a lot of bloggers want to regularly update their links they made on the guest posts to promote their sites. By having to answer their requests every time, this can consume a lot of the time you put aside for your site.

7. Control over Guest Posts 

Not every guest blogger is able to abide by your rules. If you receive many guest posts on a daily basis, you may find yourself accepting posts that are not in sync with the rest of your site, and this can harm your site in many ways.

Now, we are NOT recommending that you NEVER accept guest posts, but that you simply be particular on who you accept guest posts from and the subject matter of the guest posts.  If you simply use common sense, a good spell/grammar checker, and copyscape you should be in a lot better shape.  Bottom line, if you aren’t proud of the content and think it adds value to your site, just say no to the guest post.

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