Guest Post Scams is a problem on the internet. There are many ways in which these scams operate, but they all have something in common: They attempt to take advantage of the vulnerability in an unsuspecting blogger’s psyche to make a buck.
Guest post scams may be a new idea for you, but once you start a blog on a personal domain with a few decent posts and a high enough DA (Domain Authority), you start getting emails.
What is guest posting?
Guest posting is where you write a post for another blogger to host on their own blog. If you’re writing about a topic you’ve previously written on your own blog, you’ll need to make sure the content is different and not copied word for word.
The true dangers of Guest Post Scams can be somewhat overstated, as most of the people involved in these scams are actually just beginners and have no knowledge of actually writing a blog post.
Most of these scammers don’t care about the quality of their content, so they post whatever comes to mind and often the content is regarded as “Thin Content” meaning it provides close to no value.
Most of the time, these scammers use a template, or use examples other “honest” bloggers who have been lured in.
Here are the most common red flags when posting or dealing with a fake guest post:
Paid Links Guest Post Scammers.
If you do this long enough, you will come across an offer of paid links. I won’t delve into the ethics of accepting paid links on your blog, but there’s nothing good about it. However, you have the right to determine where the links on your site lead to and whether or not you will be paid for them.
We don’t recommend using your blog or website to sell links and their are hundreds of different ways to make money from blogging without breaching search engine guidelines.
Guest blogging can be a very rewarding thing and can bring a lot of satisfaction to even the biggest of bloggers. However, it is also important to remember that like any other type of investment, it should be done carefully and responsibly.
Guest blogging requires one to not only make smart decisions, but also to be careful. Being safe will go along way in being effective. Do your research and follow the simple red flags that I have provided here, and you should be able to protect yourself from the scams and the bad apples that are part of the game theory in lululemon clothing.
How guest post scammers work
The guest post scammer usually starts with an email claiming to be another blogger. They may, or may not, give you a link to their blog for you to check out. They want to write a piece of content for your blog, which you might think sounds great…until you receive the guest post. Inside you find that actually, they’re linking to a brand, a product or a service. They’re not actually linking back to their own blog. You might find that they’re linking to something that doesn’t align with your brand values and probably has nothing to do with them either
Some people might not exactly call this a scam. But of course it is. When someone is trying to make money from your own websites domain authority and lying to you about providing the content for the purpose of their own website that’s a scam.
Basically, they are being paid to get a link from your website in exchange for a worthless blog article that’s generally been scraped and spun from other websites.
There are thousands of paid bloggers for brands trying to make money off other websites stating its for their personal website. They will tell you they are a professional blogger, writer or content creator. However, they are nothing of the sort!
Spotting a guest post scammer.
These guest post scammers are very easy to spot. They often email from a Gmail account with a fake picture of a very attractive woman or a businessman. Often the names are very similar, very common and not very creative. These are always paid bloggers for brands.
The most common alias guest post scammers name will contain the name “Smith”
The tricky ones to spot
Figuring out if a guest blogger has inserted a paid link can be tricky, but it’s generally a good idea to question any of the links that don’t lead directly to their website or social media accounts.
Affiliate links are sometimes easier to spot because of their appearance; with both of them, hover over the link and read where it should go, and then click on it and see where the link actually takes you.
You will also note the outreach email has come from a Gmail account yet the email signature has as company name at the bottom.
Three ways to spot a guest post scammer or blogging freelancer
1 – Check out their writing
You’ll have the initial email, and often, you’ll be presented with a few examples of their writing on other sites to show their ability and style. Have an email conversation with them and often you will find they don’t write in the same manner.
Look for:
- Email template link-builders are still sending out template emails in the hundreds (if not more) in the hope that someone will take the bait. They’ll usually quote your site address and one of your blog posts, and tell you how much they love it. They’ll even tell you how they’ll write for you for free, making out as though they’re doing you a favor.
- Grammar and spelling errors: even native English speakers get things wrong, but they’re usually the same kinds of things. You can often spot where someone’s geographically based on the mistakes they make!
- The authority of the sites they’ve written for: if the sites look spammy, low-quality looks like a PBN blog or look like they’re purely affiliate marketing driven, it should be a red flag.
2 – Check out their website
People pretending to be an established blogger generally wont have their own blog
- Date the posts were published: Check out the dates of posts the content you have been provided links to.
- Cultural style in continuity: – it’s hard to convincingly fake a real knowledge of a culture you haven’t spent a lot of time in. TV, Google and thesaurus will only get you so far.
- Comments and community: not every post will have comments these days, but look out for some sign of engagement from readers and other bloggers in that niche.
3 – Search for any profiles of other evidence of them online
Any legitimate freelancer will have their own website as a portfolio and will be visible on some social media platform or otherwise. After all, they want to be found!
Look for:
- Social media channels: what social media channels are linked to from the blog, and how legitimate do they look? Where is the audience based? I’ve found one supposedly midwestern mom who had no friends or family in her own town or country following her on Instagram, but plenty of young Thai followers.
- Stock photo or stolen photo used as their profile picture: right-click on the image and click, “search Google for image” if using Chrome. You can also drag-and-drop image search. You’d be amazed at how many people try to get away with using these to hide their identity.
- Look up the physical address provided: I’ve found out that the addresses provided by agencies have pointed to council houses in Glasgow. Not that you can’t work from home, but how many different agencies can you fit into one Scottish spare room?
Three examples of paid blogger outreach emails
Email One
Hello,
My name is Annie. I know you probably receive tons of emails every day, so I’ll keep it short.
I see that you publish quite nice articles there. I am writing a well-researched, data-driven, and in-depth blog post which might be a great addition to your blog.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Email Two
Hi,
This is Ron Johnson.
I have seen your blog it’s really well written & Informative. So I would like to contribute to your blog.
So, I have an Informative & Unique article on “Technology / Business / Housing / Customer Retention “.Shall I send it for review?
I will be waiting for your next update.
Regards, Ron
Email Three
Greetings,
I am Carl Torrence from Marketing Digest. I came across your website blog while researching for my upcoming post. You have curated some good content pieces!
I wanted to reach out to appreciate and express my desire to become a contributor on your website blog. I have a decent amount of experience in writing and editing content related to eCommerce, Retail, Marketing, and Technology.
I also believe that my writing style matches the tone of your website blog. If not, I can always turn it around. Here are some of the previously published pieces-
https://alltopstartups.com/2021/07/02/the-comprehensive-checklist-to-starting-up-an-ecommerce-business-step-by-step-in-2021/
https://www.anthonygaenzle.com/how-to-nail-the-game-of-content-marketing-for-your-ecommerce-blogs-in-2021/
https://invoice.ng/blog/6-ecommerce-business-strategies-learn-leading-ecommerce-tycoons/
https://www.yansmedia.com/blog/must-have-content-pieces-for-ecommerce-saas
Are you accepting new external contributors at the moment? If yes, then I’d love to further this conversation by sharing some topic ideas for your review.
Please let me know what you think.
Best,
Carl Torrence
The lines that almost every email will include
I’d love to contribute an article to your website as a guest blogger. I went through your website very carefully and I am sure that I will be able to deliver an article that will pique your interest. I would love the opportunity to write for you as per the theme of your website and other specifications that you may provide me with.
PS: I assure you that the article will be 100% exclusive to your website and it will be a great value addition to your website.
Statistical evidence based research findings.
We receive over 60 emails per day from guest post scammers attempting to cheat us by attempting to make money from the authority of our own website. The records and geographical origin of these guest post scam attempts indicate over 98% of these individuals come from India and Pakistan.
While some might say if you are not taking a financial hit from one of the fake guest bloggers it’s not actually a scam.
We tend to disagree and see the situation differently.
Let us explain. When a website owner has spent thousands of hours of hard, committed and honest work including spending up to several thousands of dollars of digital marketing efforts, when one of these so called guest bloggers attempt to take a slice of that away from you via means of deception. “That’s a scam”
They are still stealing from your pocket and taking something they haven’t worked work. Especially when the articles they send a normally never actually written by their own hand and sub standard.
Buying Links From Fake SEO Metrics Blogs
It’s common knowledge that buying links for the purpose of increasing your websites position is search engines is a breach of most search engine policy and guidelines and we highly recommend you don’t do this. However, many website owners still do it due to actual reality of acquiring links from top authority niche websites naturally is slim to none in a majority of cases.
This is why many website owners choose to buy content placements with their own website link inserted into an artcile. The problem with this is the “Fake SEO metrics scam”
Many website and blog owners operate a site for the single purpose of selling links. Websites with a higher domain authority score often represent a link that will give maximum benefit and search engine ranking impact to the site that receives it.
Often these link selling or “Private Blog Network” site owners will use a number of different methods which we won’t go into detail here to manipulate the domain authority metrics reporting tools.
A website may only have a true domain authority score of just 2. But these guest post link scammers will use a number a different methods to make SEO metrics reporting tools show that a particular website has a domain authority score of 54 for example.
So you might be handing over your money for what you think you are paying for in respect to a link that boasts a domain authority score of 54 however, the link within the content placement you paid for only has a true real life value of 2 and will provide you zero return on your investment. It does take a professional eye to spot fake domain and SEO metrics scores and their is a number of ways the scores can be faked and manipulated so we highly recommend you have a trained eye to check these things out before you buy.
We reiterate that buying links is highly not recommend. It’s a breach of most search engine polices and could actually harm you in the long run.
The high traffic guest post scam
Many link selling blog owners actually truly believe that traffic is a ranking factor. The truth is it’s not. In a simple sense traffic has nothing to do with how well a website ranks in search engine or how powerful a link might be from a high traffic site. On the other hand other link selling or PBN blog owners actually do know traffic is not a ranking factor however they will tell you it is. The reason why they tell you this cock and bull story is because traffic is the only thing they can actually fake.
You can’t fake rankings so these guest post scammers use traffic bots generally located in datacentres to create fake hits on their websites resulting in measurement tools showing a very high traffic value. Google is smart. Real smart! They know the difference between organic traffic and bots. It’s their own system so of course they know however, as with fake manipulated domain authority metrics these 3rd party SEO tools seem to also pick up the bot traffic and can’t determine the difference.
Furthermore these fake traffic story guest post scammers have no clue about the digital marketing and search engine optimisation would and are totally unaware the traffic bots they are sending to their blogs and website is actually increasing the bounce rate which results is a reduction of search engine placement and visibility.
These scammers often don’t care about the quality or rank of their websites. The only interest here is to scam people for link money.
Traffic Facts (In General)
- Traffic is a result of rank
- Rank is not a result of traffic
- Traffic is not a ranking factor in SERP
Guest Post Reseller Scam.
In this scam. A guest post reseller will offer place your article with your website link in it on a high authority site for a very cheap price. Your post goes live on the site and you send the reseller your money. It’s all fine at this point until you notice your article has been deleted. The reseller has taken your money but has not paid the site the owner hence why your article was deleted. These are the worst kind of guest post scammers in our opinion.
I will offer you $5
You will be cold emailed from an self proclaimed professional blogger. You will be offered an amount of $5 sometimes slightly more depending on how desperate they are for an artcile placement with a link in it. The link will generally point to a well established website, not owned or operated by the “so called” blogger.
Alternatively these self proclaimed professional bloggers may might say “I don’t have any budget but I will give you a quality artcile”
In this case what they regard as a “Quality Artcile’ is nothing more than a re-spun or an abbreviated version of the artcile that the links point to.
While you have been offered a whopping total of $5, this “so called” professional blogger would have made close to $100 from the placement. The artcile is also often rubbish and not written by hand. Never allow anyone to profit from your own hard work and website domain authority. These little buggers are basically trying to snatch money from your own pocket and benefit from your own success.
These are what I personally refer to as “The bottom feeders of the blogging and content marketing profession”
Paid outreach bloggers and the silent SEO agency
98% of all the outreach emails you will receive are generally from hired or paid freelancers working for an SEO or link building agency in India.
The outreach worker will be paid approximately $5USD to acquire links or guest post placements on your website by a dodgy SEO agency in who remains silent to you throughout this content transaction.
The website or company within the links are paying the SEO agency up to $200 for the link placement. The freelance outreach worker is paid approximately $5 by SEO agency to land the link on your website.
All you end up with here with nothing more than some scrapped, spun content that’s been spoken of thousands of times before on the internet and will provide zero traffic, interest or actual benefit to your online publication.
The freelance outreach worker walks away with $5. The SEO agency makes up to $200 and the person within the link of the content has no idea how bad they got ripped off buy this SEO agency they paid.
Someone (The SEO agency) has just made $200 from your own website! Yourself and the person in the link just got scammed big time also!
What happens when you allow this content on your website.
The SEO agency $200
The apparent “professional blogger” that approached you $5 to $10
You. Your website domain authority is practically stolen and you end up with road kill content.
How and why do these scams take place so easily?
Answers.
1. Little to no regulation in the digital marketing industry
2. Freelance and SEO scams on the rise
3. Uneducated and unaware website owners
Summing up
Not every guest post request you receive is going to be underhanded, of course. Plenty of up-front bloggers with link-building on their minds are going to approach you, and that’s ok, if you think it’ll be mutually beneficial.
