Over the years, blogging has recorded a great presence on the internet and increased interest from people around the globe. One of the features that comes with it is guest posting. A guest author submits a post with an author resource link(s) pointing back to his/her domiciled blog, so he/she can get the opportunity of referring the readers to check out the blog and the contents on it. This ordinarily, is the primary reason why people guest post on other blogs/websites. The issue now is that many guest authors have today turned from the truth; the opposite is what rules the blogosphere!
That said, I will like to bring to your attention one of the most important thing you should probably scrutinize when you receive a guest post. That would be to ask you the question- Do you scan Guest Author’s links before publishing them on you blog? I hope to read your answers in comments when you are done reading this article.
When it comes to working or staying actively engaged on the internet, links are considered as being very sensitive. One click on them can cause you a lifetime destruction on a longtime built effort. I have heard a case of a blogger who nearly lost half of his readers just because they clicked on a guest author’s resource link which was later discovered to be malicious.
Myself, I nearly ran into this mess earlier this year. After reading one of the guest posts submitted to me, I got carried away by the content that I didn’t even remember to visit or look up the author’s site to at least be sure it’s safe for my readers to view. It was after some minutes I published the article that one of my loyal readers brought to my attention that the guest author’s link redirected him to an online gambling and betting site. I was very mad at myself considering the fact that many of my readers had already read and probably checked out the site. In taking care of the situation, the first action I took was to scan the author’s link (which was the first thing I should have done before publishing the article), guess what I saw? The link was detected malicious and suspected of posing a threat to sites linking with it. That was it, I got the article deleted!
Now you may not be as lucky as I was which is why you should carefully read through till the end of this post. Link scanning is very important, in short, it is as important as you taking your time to read line by line a guest post submitted to you.
There are so many reasons why you should scan or look up a guest author’s link, some of them I will be sharing with you later in this post as we progress; but before that, I will like to add that link scanning does not exclude the links of your devoted contributors; it’s only a measure to be sure that the blogs/websites you know are still what you know them for.
Below are reasons why you should scan a Guest Author’s link before publishing his/her post:
1. It keeps your blog safe from interlinking with malicious blogs/websites.
2. It helps you detect authors who indirectly want to lure your readers into buying a product without your consent or talking about it on their post.
3. Helps you detect sites whose contents are capable of denting your reputation and that of your blog
4. Keeps your readers safe from being exposed to sites capable of picking up their private information
5. Helps you detect authors who indirectly write sponsored posts instead of normal guest post (at least you should be able to charge the author if it’s a sponsored post!)
That said, the question now is how can you scan a guest author’s link? It’s easy and I will be spelling them out right here on this post!
There are three (3) methods which you can use to make this count, they include:
1. Scanning with link scanner online tools
2. Installing link scanner plug-ins on your web browser
3. Manual study of the links
Scanning with Link Scanner Online Tools
Link scanner online tools are third party websites where you can submit links and scan them for malware or virus. Though you can get a handful of them when you search on Google, but I recommend using URLVoid and SecuriCheck. There are more on this list. I have actually been using the two, and so far they have been great.
A little Heads Up: URLVoid only scan direct and redirecting links like www.doncaprio.com and www.doncaprio.com/2012/07/how-to-write-a-killer-guest-post.html. SecuriCheck on the other hand scans direct, redirecting and shortened URLs like bitly (bit.ly/…), Google (gg.gg/…), TinyURL (tinyurl.com/…) and so on.
Installing Link Scanner Plug-ins On Your Web Browser
This method saves you more time and prevent you from visiting third party websites each time you want to scan a link. Again, I use the mywot link scanner plug-in. You should probably check it out. All you need do is read through and then install the plug-in on your browser.
Manual Study of Links
Yes! You can study a link manually if you want. Most guest authors submit their posts with their author resource link(s) hidden behind the target text, such that you only get to see the name assigned to the anchor link. For instance, you could have doncaprio’s guest post link appear in two forms say Write For Us and www.doncaprio.com/write-for-us. Now seeing the first link, it shows the anchor text of doncaprio’s guest post link with the actual URL hidden behind it while the second link shows the anchor link alone. When you see such links like the first one, hover on them to look up the URL. If you want to be more certain, you can proceed to scanning them automatically via any of the above mentioned methods.
That’s it! Be safe, always make sure you scan links in posts submitted to you by guest authors before publishing them, it’s worth doing! Let me know what you think in comments:)