Guest Post Spam – What Is It and How To Stop It?
If you have a blog it’s possible that, like me, you wake up every morning to a minimum of ten new awkward email pitches from random people asking you to guest post on your blog. If you have a blog and this hasn’t happened yet, your time will come soon. But don’t be fooled.
How can you differentiate between legitimate guest post requests and spammy requests?
Link building is a powerful SEO tactic. If someone links to my blog, that’s a backlink. If the backlink comes from a highly reputable website, it helps me rank higher in search results. Guest post spammers want a backlink to their website or their client’s website to help increase their rankings.
A legitimate guest post blogger is also interested in link building but legitimate guest post bloggers also want to increase credibility and gain new subscribers. The way to differentiate between the guest post spammers and the legitimate guest post bloggers is relevance. I write about technology and marketing so any guest post offer that is completely unrelated is outright spam.
What Does Guest Post Spam Look Like?
While there are legitimate guest post requests (once again, remember that legitimate requests should at least be related to the topic of the blog post or aligned with the service and/or product you are selling), guest post spam tends to:
- represent a blog or website completely unrelated to yours
- sends a completely generic guest post request
- send email from a Yahoo or Gmail address
- Asks for a link but doesn’t include their URL
What Should You Do When You Get A Spammy Guest Post Request?
You have a few choices when you get guest post spam requests:
- Delete it – this is what I usually do.
- Respond – you could respond if you get multiple repeat requests from the same person. Either way, you should politely decline.
- Mark it as Junk or Spam – this is probably the best option.
