Every blogger understands the benefits of guest blogging. It is one of the best ways for search engine optimization (SEO), gaining traffic, building relationships with your fellow bloggers and proving yourself as an expert in your industry. Unfortunately, not all of your guest post submissions will be accepted. This is because every blog owner accepts the guest post submissions wisely.
You might have spent months on end to research blogs you want to guest post on, establish a relationship with the blog owners and come up with a guest post. After all that time and efforts you put in, what if your submissions get rejected? Wouldn’t that hurt you? Here are five great reasons for which your guest post gets rejected.
1. You ignore the blog owner’s guidelines
Many blog owners who regularly accept guest posts have information posted on their site that mentions set of guidelines for guest blogging.
This information will let you know certain things like the topics they accept, the length of the posts, how to format your article and what are the steps to be followed for posting. So, if you’ve submitted your article and have been rejected for ignoring the guidelines, then you’re at a great loss.
But don’t lose heart. Always study the guidelines of a new blog for which you want to guest post on before submitting.
2. You’re self promoting too much
Make sure the content of your guest post doesn’t promote your product, services or your own blog. Your content should not appear as an advertisement to the audience. Think about the audience your guest post is written for. Does it provide valuable information? If you create interesting content, you’ll have a better chance of it being published by the host blogger. Moreover, if you write something that is unique and shows your creativity, readers are likely to click through to find out what else you’ve got to offer on your own blog.
So you need to understand your target blog’s audience by reading through some of their recent publications. This gives you an idea of what level of readers they’re writing for. You don’t want to write something that’s too basic, or one that’s too difficult to understand. This will help you to tailor your post to suit the audience.
3. No engagement with the readers
One of the successful elements needed for a successful blog is engagement. No blog encourages readers without user interaction. Readers often expect guest writers to respond to comments they have on their posts.
It is important that you engage with your readers on your guest posts, reply to their comments, it will not only sound better for your account, but your audience are more likely to visit your blog to engage further.
4. Your post are not top notch and has already been covered or published
It is common for guest bloggers to make silly spelling and grammatical errors. You’re wasting blog admin’s time in editing them before publishing. Though your content is interesting or has valuable content, it is important for you to check for such errors or get a friend to proof read your work before you post it on your target blog. Put as much time and effort in to your guest blogs as you would into your own blog.
Sometimes, most guest bloggers have a lot of stuff they have composed and are simply looking for blogs where they can just post those articles to. Majority of guest writers do not have enough time to go through their target blog to find out if the article they are about to post has already been covered by someone else on your blog.
Also, you need to post original content on your target blogs. If your post content has already been published on your blog or elsewhere then the blog owners will be penalized for having duplicated copy on their site. Don’t try to post duplicate content by changing just a couple of sentences and thinking that will work. Blog owners are smart enough to detect if your posts are already published elsewhere.
5. Your post doesn’t fit the targeted blog’s niche
You should be able to convince your blog owner that your content is strictly related to their blog niche. You shouldn’t post a totally different niche article. For instance, don’t submit a sports blog to a tech site. The intended blogger would definitely deny publishing such an article on their blog if it is not related to their niche.
Freelance writing is not an easy job but if you avoid the above mistakes you will definitely enjoy it. If you are a genuine blogger, you should accept guest post rejections as a stepping stone to success. Try to realize what went wrong and the reason for rejection to avoid getting your next post rejected.
By Guest Author – This Post is written by Brianne Walter. She is a writer/blogger. She writes articles on Technology, social media, WordPress, Gamification, website development and online development etc. These days she contributes on seomorpheus.
