Guest posting is a prevalent SEO practice that has been around for a long time. But despite how widespread it is, you might’ve heard that some people consider paid guest posting to be bad practice. You’ll be surprised to hear that it’s quite controversial despite being a legitimate brand-building method. Upon hearing this, you might be hesitant if you were already planning on your next guest posting campaign.
So, is it a bad practice to pay for guest posts? Keep on reading to find out.
Paying for Guest Posts – Is It a Bad Practice?
Guest posts are among the most commonly used techniques for link-building and growing your brand. They’re a significant part of SEO, and when done right, they can bring incredible advantages. Still, those who paid for guest posts for all the wrong reasons have affected their reputation over the years.
Many people have previously abused the practice of guest posting, going overboard without even providing value. Many companies, influencers, and blogs that paid for guest posts did it purely for money. Meanwhile, the content was lacking in quality or plagiarized by another source.
Paying for guest posts in itself is not a problem. It all comes down to why and, more importantly, how you do it. There’s nothing wrong with paying a big publication to post your content as long as you pay attention to the topic, provide valuable advice, follow the guidelines, and do your best to attract more readers. However, it’s bad practice to pay for guest posts only as a way to promote your own site without offering anything relevant to the readers, organizing your content, adding quality links, or caring about the instructions or the content’s flow.
Also, if you’re a platform that accepts paid guest posts and you don’t pay attention to who is paying you for guest posts, you may end up getting penalized by Google. The content might be spammy, not to mention copied, which can reduce the reliability and authority of your own website.
How to Do Guest Posting Right?
You don’t have to run away from guest posting. In the end, using this practice can provide some well-deserved benefits for your platform. If you do it, you must do it properly. Here are a few methods to make sure you don’t ruin this for everyone involved:
Write Good Content
This should be already obvious, but you need to be very careful with the quality of your content when it comes to paid guest posting. A good site with a lot of trust and authority online will not accept your articles on the spot. They won’t hesitate to reject you if they notice anything out of place.
Statistics show that in 2023, backlinks, search intent, and quality content were the most important ranking factors. Before starting your guest post, research the site you want the article published on to make sure you use the same tone of voice, structure, and niche. Also, make your posts valuable for the readers by providing new information that can help solve their problems.
Think About Why You Post
Why do you want to have the guest posts you write published? If it’s for money, you can simply think of yourself as a paid writer. However, this can affect the quality of your guest posts, as you only want to get paid without caring what happens to your text afterward. But if you post for recognition, links, and traffic, you’ll pay more attention to the content quality and enjoy higher chances of accepting your posts.
Set a Price as a Filter
If you’re a site that accepts guest posts for a price, you’ll probably get a lot of bad submissions. It’s hard to go through so many of them, especially when many writers are desperate to publish their posts. However, you can filter them out with the help of the price tag. Once you set a reasonable price, there will be fewer low-quality submissions, as many writers will not want to pay or won’t afford your services.
You can even limit the submissions to people with a certain amount of traffic, those who are part of a course, and so on.
Final Thoughts
Guest posting isn’t a bad practice as long as you do it right and for the right reasons. If you do it as a way to help your readers, bring traffic to your website, and build your authority and rankings, there won’t be issues. However, doing it for money can actually backfire, causing more harm than good. Make sure to determine why you post, write good content, and filter out bad submissions with a good price.
Published by: Annie P.
