Guest Post Strategy Works Best With Strict Rules

A guest post strategy is necessary for any website that accepts paid or unpaid articles from outside contributors.

A strategy defines the rules that determine what the contributor can write and how well it fits the site’s theme and brand. So rules of conduct are absolutely necessary.

This site has been contacted hundreds of times in its existence from potential contributors. They usually want credit for the article in the form of a dofollow backlink within the article.

Unfortunately, the great majority of these contacts come from people who don’t consider the site’s theme or most important tags and categories. In other words, their proposal doesn’t have a good fit on the site.

When they are told about a few simple rules that would give them the opportunity, they vanish for good.

Fortunately, some potential guest post contributors review the site before making a proposal. Even so, a few extra rules are a necessary part of a guest post strategy.

Rules for a Guest Post Strategy

As already stated, the first rule for guest posts is content that fits the site’s theme and brand. Then site publishers have a few more decisions to make:

1. Do they accept copies of articles published elsewhere or do they insist on original articles? Article copies don’t get any meaningful benefit from search engines that have indexed the article elsewhere. But a copy does offer benefit to a site’s visitors that are interested in the topic from an industry expert.
2. Does the article author need to have a respectable level of industry expertise? The bigger and more important sites often consider the expertise of the author before accepting an article. They just don’t take articles from anyone.
3. Are there any writing guidelines? For example, does the article require attribution? Does it have to be written in a particular point of view such as third person?
4. Should the article have accompanying graphics or will the publisher provide them?

Regardless of the rules, site publishers will find it helpful to write them down, publish them on the site and consistently distribute them to authors who pitch a guest post.