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This is why your Guest Post request was rejected

Techtites has been open to guest posts on this blog for a long time now. When guest posting was at its peak, I made the mistake of accepting posts with content and links that are today frowned upon my Google. Since then I’ve cleaned up several posts and massively cut down on what I accept on this blog.

However, even today, I receive several emails offering to write a guest post. It only takes a few seconds to realise that most of these emails are just the result of a copy-paste exercise that so-called guest writers employ blindly on contact forms of most popular blogs including this one. As a result, they find their way into my Trash Bin almost instantly.

Every site owner wants his site to bring value to the readers and your email or guest post was rejected because they felt it probably wouldn’t do so!

So, here are a few suggestions to make sure that your guest post request gets accepted. Not following these five tips will almost instantly have the opposite effect. I’m sure most other website owners would look at this in a similar way.

1. Check the About page

Find out who runs the blog that you’re looking to write a post at. It’s the bit of research that should be first on your list of things and it is also something that is often overlooked. Sending an email with “Dear webmaster” or “Dear site owner” shows that you haven’t bothered to even find out who runs the site. Why would anyone bother reading your email? That’s why the cool little trash button on the screen of my Nexus 5 is so handy.

If you’re trying to get someone’s attention, it’s important that you read up on them and understand who they are and what they are up to. At the very least, get to know who runs the blog you’re targeting.

If you’re email starts with “Dear Ajay” or “Hi Ajay”, I’ll probably continue reading. Which brings me to the next point.

2. Write a strong opening paragraph

An opening paragraph that goes straight to the point is what busy people like to see. Tell the blog owner / editor what you’ve done in the past and what you’d like to write about. Even better, illustrate how this best fits into the typical content of the site?

The next few paragraphs should highlight some examples of your work. I always want to know who you’ve written for and what you like to write about. It helps me judge the level of your knowledge, size of your posts typically and your grasp of the language.

3. Make sure everything is grammatically correct

This blog is in English. If your email is full of spelling or grammatical mistakes, it’s definitely the worst first impression you can make. If you’re aiming to write for a non-English blog, make sure you write your email in the same language.

A badly worded email would also have the same effect. As a blog owner/editor, I want to make sure that all posts are perfect, especially, when it comes to language. If you’re email isn’t pleasant to read (and I mean not just grammatically), your guest post is likely to be of the same quality.

4. Use high-quality and copyright free images

If you source images for your post from Google, then you’re definitely looking in the wrong place. It could potentially open you or us up to a copyright infringement notice. There are several really good quality sources for CC0/royalty free stock images including picJumbo, unsplash, Gratisography, Splitshire, etc. that you can use in your blog posts.

Source: Splitshire
Source: Splitshire

If you’re writing a product review or a tutorial, then take some good quality screenshots and include these in your posts in relevant places to better illustrate the content.

We like images and so do our readers. Image rich posts usually have better views than ones without images.

5. No spam-like or non-contextual links

Google hates these links and so do we. If the sole purpose of writing a guest post is to create links back to one or more sites, then it’s very likely that your guest post will be rejected. More often than not, you’ll be asked to remove them.

However, that doesn’t mean your posts have to be hyperlink-free. If you believe that by adding a link to a different site, it will add value to the reader, then by all means go ahead and do this. However, remember, that any external links are always retained at the discretion of the site owner.

What’s even better is to add some relevant links to other blog posts on the site. It helps retain visitors!

Closing thoughts

The above five points are just a few tips that you should follow if you’d like to get your guest blog post on Techtites. As I mentioned at the start, I welcome guest posts focussed on technology. If you’re interested, read these guidelines and contact us.

You can also follow Techtites on Feedly. Facebook and Twitter. Or, even better, receive updates in your inbox.

One Comment

  1. Sometimes my guest post rejected by guest blog owner. I can not understand why my guest post rejected. You have mentioned very useful valid point here. These tips are very much needed for me. Thanks for post and keep posting.

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