Should You Accept Guest Writers on Your Blog?

There’s an ongoing online debate whether accepting guest writers is good for your blog. Some say it is, while others say it can do more harm than good. Below, we have enumerated the top advantages and disadvantages of guest posting, and included some guidelines to ensure quality guest posting.

Advantages of accepting guest posts on your blog

•  You get to offer your readers something different
  
  Having guest bloggers mean that you can offer your readers content from a different perspective. Sometimes, it’s just refreshing to read something other than what you’re usually reading. 
  
  Try to encourage guest bloggers to write something that you haven’t written yet or you can’t cover yourself.

• You get to access a larger audience
  
  Besides from having your own reader-ship, you now have new readers dropping by. This is because guest bloggers will try to promote the article written on your blog to their own readers or followers. If they share the guest post through their social media accounts, that’s instant social media exposure for your website!

• You get to avoid blogging burnout / more time to do other tasks
  
  Sometimes, when you’re doing daily entries for your blog, you get spent. It’s nice to have other contributors write content for your blog because you can do other tasks or just relax. 

• Free content for your blog
  
  Again you don’t have to worry about what to write next if you have guest bloggers. If they’re giving you good posts, then it’s definitely free content for your blog. 

• You get to build a relationship with other bloggers
  
  With their own set of established readers and audience, bloggers are considered to be online influencers. It is nice to have like-minded people in your network. 

Disadvantages of accepting guest posts on your blog

• You take the risk of losing regular readers
  
  Your regular readers keep coming back to your blog because they want to read something you’ve written. Your blog is your voice and your thoughts and loyal readers expect to see that every time they visit your blog. If you publish guest articles too often, this might just turn your readers off.

• You may get link penalties
  
  If  you don’t keep a tab on the allowable links that the guest blogger can add, the article may look too spammy. Which may lead to you losing your site’s authority. Also, too many outgoing links is like telling your readers: “Get away from my website, go visit these links instead”.

Criteria for guest posting 

Following are some guidelines to help ensure that you have quality guest posts:

• Make sure that the content is unique.
• Don’t allow text links in the body of the article. Outgoing links should only be in the author bio.
•  Only allow one link in the author bio.
• Guest posts should be at least a 500-word article.
• Make sure that guest posters have verified Google+ accounts

Now that we've outlined the pros and cons of accepting guest bloggers, you can now make your own decision as to whether you’ll allow it on your blog. 

Here at MACs Women, we've decided to accept guest bloggers. So, if you want to write something for our community, just send us an email to info@macswomen.com with your article proposal.