How to Avoid Getting Spammed by Guest Blog Requests

Have you ever received guest blog spam? Recently I was rereading Randy Clark’s book, How to Stay Ahead of Your Business Blog Forever. In it, Randy explains how he gets many requests for guest blogs and he included one that was filled with terrible grammar. However, some requests are much tougher to discern as being possible spam.

Here are a few things I’ve noticed about these many guest blogging requests. Mostly, you can ignore these blogging requests.

They’re unsolicited.

If someone reaches out to you and you’ve never heard of them before, that’s a big clue that you’re dealing with spam. Read carefully if they say you’re the greatest, best, etc. Sometimes there may be a link to one of your blog posts, but often there isn’t. I’ve talked about spam before: Worst Social Media Practices (and how to avoid them)

There are no signature lines.

At the bottom of the email, where there should be a signature line, there’s no phone number, no website, no nothing. Who reaches out to someone with a business request and has no signature line? Spammers, that’s who!

Requests are filled with mistakes.

Does the request read like it was written by a third-grade student on a bad day? That’s another red flag. Do you want someone who doesn’t even edit their own work messing around with your website? NO!!! By the way, if you’ve never used an editor before, you might want to consider one yourself, at least for your important and/or lengthy articles. How a Good Editor Makes Your Writing Shine.

How to Avoid Guest Blog Spam Requests| Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Vet every request thoroughly.

As Randy says in his book, “Don’t let ego get in the way of common sense. It’s nice to be wanted, and some of these requests look impressive. Don’t bite without a complete search of the author and all links he or she represents.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

Check out any links the guest blogger wants to include.

I generally only have 4-6 links in a blog post maximum. Recently a guest blogger wanted to included upwards of 30 links in a short blog post (under 500 words). You might want to decide how many you want. If someone is creating many many links, that’s a clue. And check where those links are going.

Create a checklist for future guest bloggers.

If you really want to include guest bloggers as part of your strategy, make a list of what those guest bloggers need to do. What is the minimum and maximum word count? How many links in and out? Who provides the images and how many? And don’t forget which topics you’d like your guest blogger to write about. If you have an audience of technophobes, then having a guest blogger write about a technical subject isn’t going to appeal to your audience. What else do you have on your checklist? Leave me a comment!