In a rather catastrophic, post-panda scenario, when a number of internet marketing techniques seem to be falling like nine pins, guest blogging continues to be a win-win-win situation for all parties involved.

Please note that the third ‘win’ in the above preposition is not a typo, because there are actually more than two beneficiaries in this proposition.

A good quality guest post ensures that the blog owner gets good quality content added to their blog, whereas guest author gets considerable exposure, readers get to read some valuable advice, and search engines get some fresh, good quality material to show in their results, because a big majority of guest posts are quality content because there’s a hard-hitting human editor making sure no substandard post gets the chance to go on web.

So far, so good … but recently, a rather off-putting trend is taking place i.e. more and more bloggers are now starting to charge money for publishing guest posts. There can be many reasons, they might be looking to earn some money (that was a no brainer), or maybe they are trying to wade off spammers, but whatever the reason is, even though bloggers are entitled to accept money for whatever they do with their blogs, this paid publishing can be quite detrimental for all parties involved … let’s discuss just some of these downsides.

It will commercialize, hence corrupt the entire proposition:

To be bluntly honest, the money will eventually induce some favor in the minds of editors or blog owners, and there will be instances when they’d let in some mundane content on their blog, just because they are getting paid for publishing it, who knows, we might even see some bidding, just like those bidding directories.

Harsh on small guys:

Already, the big companies having the big bucks for marketing are starting to gain an upper hand in internet marketing, which was supposed to be a relatively level playing field. Now, if this trend spreads, and payment becomes a requisite on the majority of blogs, it will tilt the balance further in favor of big guys, who’ll be able to just pay their way to all sorts of rewards.

Will give a bad name to the practice:

No matter how good is this paid content, the involvement of money will give this practice a bad reputation, for all the right reasons. More people will jump in, trying to imitate the entire model. We will start seeing a plethora of blogs that publish nothing but paid posts. There are some blogs doing exactly that, already, but at least there are some quality blogs that good writers can resort to.

That might lead to a new Panda like update targeting blogs?

Ok, that’s the worst case scenario, but we have seen it happening in the past, some money-spinning model getting success, and lots of people jumping in to misuse it, for example, paid directories, article directories, MFA websites, content scrapping, and all that … and almost all of these models got thwacked by an algorithm tweak. So when the guest blogging starts getting abused, we will see search engines finding a way around.

Not only they will start discarding the value of back links from such posts but they’d also start discarding the entire website (Hint: Site wide penalty by Google panda update, instead of pages with thin content, the entire websites have to take the toll.

Natasha is an internet marketing expert by profession. When she’s not working, she likes to work out, read, and even draw (though she shares her paintings with very few people who can contain their laughter). Currently, she’s working for New England Lifestyle that makes quality White Bedroom tables

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Alina Sofia

Let’s imagine a typical day in your life (yes I have conveniently taken the authority to say your) since every blogger has pretty much the same time table, more or less. You wake up, check your mail on your blackberry, login to all your accounts and open at least ten browser windows to surf the net! You go to your favorite site, you see someone has made a guest post there.

Alright, you read it, move on to the next one, see the same person there and so on, after a week of surfing you see the same people all over the blogosphere! Be it their own blog or their guest posts on your other favorite blogs. You immediately Google and read up every article that leads to ‘benefits of guest blogging’ and with all those inspirational articles out there you feel all charged up and decide to make your own guest post on your favorite blog.

You are about to write the first word but wait…..

Guest Blogging Is not For you!

Oopss! that sounds harsh! But yes, after having read so many benefits of guest blogging you may already have loaded your shotgun to come and hunt me for providing this ‘misleading’ information! But wait, I never said guest blogging is bad for all of them out there, I said it’s just bad for you, if… :

1) You Treat It as a Link Building Strategy

First of all, let me tell you it is hardly a strategy and if you still think otherwise then you make yourself look like the caveman in the image above! while you may be impressed with the awesome PR and Alexa of your favorite blog you can’t beat these PR 6 and Alexa 97, yes that’s right, I didn’t forget any decimals, it’s 97! In layman’s terms, it is called ezinearticles.com! You might consider submitting to article directories if the prime reason of your guest post is link building and traffic.

Cons - this is more of an ethical point of view than the logic mentioned above. You will ultimately end up looking like the blogger mentioned at the beginning of the article who has written for different blogs but the content still means the same even without the spinning! Would you like to be abused by millions of bloggers early morning? I dont think so!

2) You Spin Articles

No matter how efficiently you spin and twist your words, it’s still counted as copied content. If you can’t invest some time in producing good content then you should not be blogging, leave alone thinking of guest blogging. Half-baked content not only dilutes the quality of the internet but also kills the hard work of the original blog writer.

Cons - DAll content, spun by any human or bot can be spotted by the search engines with respect to any synonyms used with closed (bot) eyes. So before you try to spin content, think again! It may look clean to the human eyes and pass copyscape but it’s all the same for the search engines!

3) Submit….Wait….. Submit

Honestly tell me, how many of you have thought of this? or rather how many have not!!

You think you will submit to one blog first, then when it is accepted then you can submit to another blog or article directories for more backlinks, or use it in your own blog.

Cons - It will hurt your SEO very bad! Since the blogs, you submit to, has authority, their version gets indexed first and gains more visibility in the search engines automatically and if the same content is syndicated across a wide range of URLs with all of them pointing to your URL, then it will surely raise a red flag from the search engines for plagiarism and spam. In this case you will end up losing even the link juice you earned from the original article you wrote on the first blog!

Conclusion

Like all things on the Internet, there is an ethical and an otherwise way of doing it! Your guest post on someone else’s blog is your face on their blog, if caught indulging in these cheap tricks you would need a hell lot of soap to wash that face! You will lose trust, authority and any little respect you had in the bloggers’ community! The whole point of guest blogging is not for selfish gains. There are massive benefits of guest blogging but they should be your secondary concern.

The whole point of writing on someone else’s blog is to contribute to the information and that is what it is all about. Blogging is a community thing, and guest blogging gives you a chance to build relations that are more valuable to excel in blogging as opposed to just sustaining with those few links. And still if the search engines change the algorithm tomorrow and your links get devalued then what do you have to bank upon?

A web entrepreneur and a social media evangelist, Rohan is a blogger who loves to write about advanced link building and SEO tips business blog owners and pretty much everyone who blogs!

Remember the lessons you learned as a child about being a good guest? Mind your manners. Respect your host’s rules. Perhaps most importantly, don’t make life more difficult for the people who’ve offered you their hospitality.

These rules also apply to guest blogging. While we tend to focus on the ethical side of being a good guest in our discussions (link stuffing and other forms of blatant self-promotion), there are also a number of practical considerations that will make the experience much more pleasant for your publisher/host… and increase the likelihood that an editor will want to feature your content on his/her site again.

As someone who’s spent hours at times cleaning up otherwise well-written posts for publication, I can say with certainty that following the suggestions below will keep you in you host editors’ good graces… rather than making them grimace when they see your next post submission in their inbox.

Send clean code: While I’ve never actually measured it, I’m almost certain my blood pressure rises when I see code stuffed with <div>, <font>, and <span> tags. Perhaps I’m just not as tech savvy as others, but, so far, the way I’ve found to clean up these tags (which will otherwise destroy the format of the published post in my WordPress blog) is to edit them out of the code manually… which leads to the occasional hours of clean-up I mentioned earlier.

Want to make sure you’re sending “plug and play” code to your editors? Follow these tips:

1. Write the post in WordPress: From my experience, nothing produces cleaner code than WordPress. So, when I write a guest post for submission (and I’m doing this right now), I write it in the interface for my own WP blog, switch to the HTML view when I’m finished, and then copy and paste that code into a text document. An editor should be able to copy and paste that code into any blogging platform and get a clean post.
2. Avoid Google tools: I love Google applications, and use them for many things… but not for writing guest posts. Think you can use the HTML view in Google docs or Blogger instead of WP? Guess again… in most cases, it’s going to require heavy code-level editing.
3. If not WP, than Word: Most blogging platforms can convert Word documents to usable code with relative ease these days. Check with the editor first to make sure s/he can use it, and then only include your text in the Word document… not images (more on that in a second).
4. Avoid colored or unusual fonts: You may think that section in purple looks really cool… there’s a good chance your editor won’t, and will grumble about one more little thing to fix…

Send images as separate files: It’s so easy to just link to an image… but what if the host of that image takes it down, or puts something else in its place? Your host is left with either an ugly missing image space, or something inappropriate for the post. I’m always much happier when I see images attached to the email with the text. Sure, I have to download them and then upload them to my blog host, but that’s much easier than dealing with missing images later… or then copying them out of a Word doc into an image file, and then editing them, etc., etc.

Link to your sources: Remember how your English teacher taught you to cite your sources? This still matters in the blogosphere, and you definitely don’t want to give your host editor headaches by leaving it to him/her to find these sources, or to deal with complaints about unsubstantiated or uncredited information. You only need to link to your source… and no editor’s going to mind these links (unless, of course, you’re just citing information from your own sites).

Use (and credit) images and multimedia under alternative copyrights or public domain: Like the last point, your editor shouldn’t have to deal with intellectual property complaints about images and multimedia. Videos are usually simple: if it’s embeddable, it’s fair game. For images and other forms of media, stick to the following:

• material under Creative Commons or other forms of alternative copyright.
• material under public domain.
• material from company press pages and packets.

With alternative copyrights, make sure you’re following the specific license requirements for each piece of media, and make sure to attribute it to its creator (with appropriate links). Keep in mind that even with some media from government and other largely public domain sites, or from company media pages, you may still need to include some form of attribution. Remember that between Flickr’s Creative Commons collection (even just the “Attribution Only” section), and Wikimedia Commons, you’re likely to numerous high-quality images for your post.

Any guest poster who uses these suggestions when sending a post to me makes me a happy, happy editor… who’s probably going to want to feature more posts from that writer. If you’ve got other suggestions on making life easier for guest post editors, please share them…

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg is the founder and editor of sustainability blog and green product comparison engine sustainablog, which features a wide range of eco-friendly products such as Citizen Eco Drive watches.

Image credit: Happy Bushra at Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license

This is a guest post by Warner Carter who wrote a book Guest Blogging for

Profits that advocates our “quality” approach to guest blogging.

People are the way they are and in society sometimes certain conventions are agreed upon by the participants. So it is in our world, the so called blogesphere, regarding Guest Blogging.

Feel free to rebel, experiment, and try new things but if nobody wants your posts, after reading this, it won’t be because you were ignorant about what is expected for your behavior and manors. Just that you choose to ignore them, and, for whatever reason, that is a choice you are free to make.

You’ll probably win the lottery before you ever see me in a suit, but if some situation really made it important, like I would get something I wanted, I do have one and probably can find it.

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to have fun, get noticed, bring traffic, and build some dang nice links. I am pretty sure this blog here gets more traffic than mine and there is one good reason to guest post.

Frame of Mind

To get yourself in the right frame of mind consider the blog is someone else’s. The blog you will be posting to is as important to someone else as yours is to you.  It is generally understood you will provide only 100% original content and you will not re-post or spin it all over the net afterwards either.

The first thing to do after you have been invited is ask them if they want you to provide the post in a particular format or style. They may like every post to have an image or expect sub headers for each main section. They may let you have anchor links in the body or only in your author bio box. It is generally accepted that you will get a link back to your blog.

You will want to write in to their audience and the best way to get that picture is reading comments as well as posts on the blog you will be writing for. Is the blog serious and technical or light and humorous? Every blog and writer has a style and a mood and you will want to try to get a sense of it. Is the writer a smart aleck?  Provocative, or introspective? It can be fun to phrase your writing in the context of a different state of mind.

Be there to reply to any comments that are made from your post. Don’t get into a flame war with a knuckleheaded nincompoop even if they deserve it.

For Greater Success

Write the best post you ever wrote, or at least try to. This post represents you and the blog you are writing on, forever. The timeworn phrase “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” is worth dragging out an dusting off for this occasion. The better your writing the more likely it is you will be invited back, and the more likely it is other blogs will welcome you in the future.  Heck, some people may even hunt you down to come write for them.

Show gratitude, before and after you make the post. Anywhere you go and in anything you ever do people will be much happier to help you when you show them you appreciate any effort they make on your behalf.

Promoting your post is also promoting your host’s blog. When you can bookmark, make a note about, talk about on Facebook and Twitter you will be doing yourself and your host a nice added benefit for you having been there. Maybe you can even ask some Digg or Sphinn buddies to give it a shout. Stumble it. All these little mentions and links add up over time like cumulous clouds accumulating raindrops.

Get There Ready

Have your post with any anchor links all set up in HTML code. Have your bio in hand, all formatted to be placed where your Host wants it. Have any images you want to use in your flickr account or somewhere you can just provide a link (and not a hot link to someone else’s account or site) If you want to be extra nice make up 2 or 3 headlines in advance and let your Host or Hostess select the one they feel would be best.

You are ready, and if you want to leverage for maximum results get Guest Blogging for Profits to position yourself with the resources that will give you unprecedented insight. I’m giving up every tricky trick and secret I could dig up in this.

Warner Carter writes the Page One Business SEO Consultation blog and the occasional book.

Post image by margaretshear

I’ve mentioned quite a few times how guest posting may help your business grow. I also shared why in my opinion this is the ideal marketing strategy – where quality matters and everyone wins.

Unfortunately, not everyone can get this right. So are three things guest blogging is NOT:

1. Guest blogging is NOT link building in the first place

I know I have emphasized link building benefits of guest posting quite a few times: but if link building aspect is the first in your list of reasons why you start guest blogging, you are getting it WRONG from the very start.

This way you have good chances to sacrifice on the quality of your content (and the strategy overall) by attempting to get as much link love as you can. Don’t think about building links at all (they will come naturally). Think about other (much more important!) aims you are going to achieve: brand awareness, fans and supporters, reputation, etc!

If you only need link, don’t even start guest blogging. Period

2. Guest blogging is NOT article distribution!

Fellow marketers, I know you feel tempted to find a leak here: “Why would I spend 2 or more hours creating a great article and then post it to only one blog? Why not publish it on several blogs?”

Now, here’s my advice: DON’T do it. You’ll just screw the relationships with powerful bloggers and influencers in your niche and achieve nothing.

Try playing by the rules and you will be amazed how much more effective it is!

3. A guest post is NOT the same as product/tool review

I’ve seen enough of that. Plenty of guest posts I’ve seen focus on the by-line: just a couple of paragraphs of mediocre content and then dozen of sentences describing who the author is, what he does and how awesome his product is.

Before submitting this useless stuff, try to imagine why would a blogger want to publish it. Remember a blogger doesn’t require anything in return for linking to your site. All he needs is some good content his readers would appreciate.

Don’t waste your time doing blogger outreach if you have nothing of value to offer.

Now, to conclude, I am a marketer myself and I’ve dealt with many people who need fast, cheap results. If you are one of them, just don’t try guest blogging. This tactic is only effective if you do it right. Just don’t waste your time.

Img by Lars Plougmann