16 Guest Blogging Mistakes You Ought To Avoid

As a guest blogger, do you feel the shed of rejection?

Or as a blog owner, guest blog pitches are annoying you?

So, how to make this transaction smoother? How to do perfect guest blogging? There are typical guest blogging mistakes to avoid for perfect guest blogging. In this article, let’s talk about those.

Guest Blogging: Every people will have a different opinion about guest blogging. Some experts would define it as the straightforward strategy to build relationships, attract a new set of audience, and even more. Few, treat it as a technique to gain a natural backlink from authoritative sites. On the other hand of the sphere, few might think that it claims huge efforts for little rewards.

Of course, guest blogging is not as easy as pie. Still, it is not something unlikely achievable.

Guest blogging is nothing but the exchange of ideas, expertise via content for some possible SEO benefits. Guest posting can help you do wonders in boosting your online visibility and driving traffic to your page.  Make a note, only if you do it strategically. Getting your guest post approved and published on another site is not a simple feat.

At least to reduce the chances of rejection, you must avoid these common guest blogging mistakes. Let’s get into it.

Crucial Guest Blogging Mistakes to Avoid

For easy understanding, I am categorizing the mistakes concerning the different stages of a guest blogging strategy. It includes getting started, pitching, writing and after publishing.

Mistakes in Guest Blogging Strategy

1. No Goal setting

Any SEO technique needs a strategic approach. Being a powerful line of SEO, the same is applicable to Guest blogging as well. Most of the guest bloggers will be lacking to craft a proper guest blogging strategy. This involves research in setting your guest blogging goal. If you are unclear about the purpose of guest posting, you cannot execute it.

Indeed, you will have to define your goal before getting started guest posting campaigns. Poorly crafting your guest blogging strategy will result in prospecting wrong blogs for guest blogging.

2. Targeting inappropriate blogs

Guest blogging is powerful in offering plenty of awesome benefits. Also, you will have to target the right blog to contribute guest posts. If not, you cannot reap the real benefits what you desire. Finding guest blog accepting sites, sorting it and prospecting the right opportunities is more significant.

Most importantly, you must not target 1,000 of blogs randomly. Single-out a very few but prospective blogs with proper groundwork.

If you are aiming to improve a specific page ranking, then you must approach sites that are relevant to the particular topic. And, your content must be around the topic with relevant keywords.

If your goal is to attract a new audience base, then research on topics that are trending. In this case, you will have to target a blog that has a great readership.

3. Not having records

A single excel sheet can help you streamline your guest blogging strategy. You will be outreaching plenty of bloggers requesting guest posting opportunities. Maintaining the records of that outreach, communications, progress in the pitch, etc. can help you prevent making further mistakes.

If you do so, you won’t outreach the same blogger twice, or sending wrong articles, and so on. You can be updated with the status of communication like approved, not interested, or anything.

Mistakes in Pitching Guest Posts

4. Non-personalized Outreach Emails

Addressing your outreach emails as ‘team’ or ‘blog owner’ or ‘blog manager’ never works. Those non-personalized emails even I receive, I don’t take it or respond. To make your email noticed or personalized, you will have put some efforts. Navigate through the ‘contact us’ or ‘about us’ page of the blog to know more details about the corresponding person.

Pitching your email to the right person mentioning the actual name would deserve to get more attention.

5. Approaching As A Stranger

No blogger will have leisure time to do favors for strangers. They have got enough work promoting their blogs. Since you will have build relationships with your target blogger before pitching. Otherwise, leverage your blogging connections to get introduced to your target blogger. Your email will be one among the hundreds and thousands of email they receive every day. If you are approaching as a known person, then your request will be considered.

6. Plain Emails not pitching Post Ideas

Don’t ever send emails (expecting to accept your guest post request), with no mention about your post ideas. How will anyone be interested in not knowing what you will be offering, exactly? Hence, provide an overview of any topic that you are about to contribute to. And, explain how it can add value to the blog and its readers? If you do so, the webmaster might admire your ideas and accept.

7. Suggesting Topics with No Research

If you are randomly suggesting topics to the bloggers for guest posting, then please stop such practices. Your topics suggestions must be specific for each prospect you approach. You have to perform in-depth research on the topics that your target blog uncovers. What sort of content it has? What kind of audience it has? I mean that the blog targets beginners, or intermediates, or experts.

Your topics must be more relevant to the niche. At the same time, make sure the topic you suggest hasn’t discussed on the blog, in the past. At least, the blog hasn’t covered your topic to a specific angle. To put it simply, your topic suggestions must be unique.

8. Not Mentioning your Sample Write-ups

If nobody from your personal network introduces you, then you will have to sell yourself. Justify blogger, why he/she has to accept a guest post from you? How will you write it? Do you write for the audiences? Do you have an expansive social influence? Mention these statistics to make them understand that your guest post contribution will be worth accepting.

Do share some of your sample write-ups or previous guest post submissions. Those posts might inspire and make them examine your request seriously.

9. Meaningless Follow-ups

If your pitch is not accepted or no response received, send follow-ups to the maximum of 3 times. If nothing turned out, move on to the next. Put your time and efforts into another prospect instead of trying the same over and over.

By the way, make sure you have done proper groundwork before pitching. Even after it is denied, then it’s better to put off and move on.

Mistakes while writing Guest Post Content

10. No Attention towards Guest Post Guidelines

Your guest post contribution must be flawless. So, the blog owners will find it easy to review and process it soon. For which, you will have to adhere to the specific blog’s guest post guidelines. Getting your pitch approved is itself mind-breaking. So, don’t waste the opportunity by not perfecting your write-ups.

In case of not finding the guidelines in the site, refer to the previous guest post publications. Carefully, run through to examine the content length, structure, formatting, inbound links, etc.

11. Not writing for Target Blog’s Audience

Every writer will have a unique writing style. But aligning your writing to your target’s blog audience is more significant. And, you can adapt instantly. You have done proper research on the blog reader’s behavior, to understand their needs and curiosity. Blog comment section could help you on this. Go through it to understand if any specific topic the blog readers are interested in.

Based on the audience expertise level, you have to prepare your content. If the blog audiences are beginners, then your content must be simple covering from basics.

12. Writing thin/low-quality posts

It doesn’t mean that you don’t care about the quality of the content as you won’t publish it on your blog. You must pay extra attention when you are writing for external blogs. Your content must impress the webmaster to publish. Meanwhile, it must attract those audiences. Hence, you can drive them to your site.

Invest extra time and efforts in writing guest articles. Prefer to create long-form of content. Include necessary images, screenshots, or any media formats wherever required.

13. Improper Inbound Linking

Not having your post easy to publish is the big blunder every guest blogger would commit. Your job is not done once your pitch is accepted and written content. You have to make your content cooked – ready to publish. Placing no or irrelevant or too many inbound links is also a bad practice.

Any expert blog owner can understand the intention or trade-off behind your free guest post pitch. Hence, make use of it. Place one or two inbound links of the pages for which you need to drive traffic. Design your inbound links with proper anchor text, i.e., non-commercial keywords. You may also refer to the previous guest posts or guidelines to understand how many inbound links the blog allows.

14. Failing to Draft Perfect Author Bio

Don’t forget to draft your perfect author bio. What do you want those audiences to know about you or your business? Write about it. It must be appealing to the blog audience to click on it. Make it short and sweet with 2 or 3 sentences. Have a link to your website to know more about you. Include your social media details – like Twitter or Facebook. Have your professional profile photo with a smiley.

Mistakes After Your Guest Blog Published

15. Forgetting Once done

It’s too bad forgetting the guest posts, once it comes live. You must thank the blog owner for their efforts in reviewing and publishing your guest post. You should throw a comment to the readers to get connected with you for any clarifications.

Above all, you have to share it across your social profiles and request the blog owner to do so. Content promotion is more significant than creating content. Share the guest post article on blogging communities to let others know about it.

16. Not responding to the Comments

Most importantly, you are responsible for responding to the comments by the readers. Blog owners will expect the same from you. You are the master on that specific topic. Hence, you must visit the page often and reply to the commenters.

Final Words

Do you practice a guest blogging strategy? Do you believe in the term ‘guest blogging is dead’? Search engines want its users to benefit from the content over the web. No matter who contributes it? Hence, write articles that are informative to the readers. Guest blogging is always alive if you do it perfectly.

How it helps you in driving organic traffic to your page? What makes your guest posts getting accepted and published? Do you commit any of the above guest blogging mistakes? What other mistakes guest bloggers make? I am glad to hear from you.