Allowing guest posts?

I bought ten of napsters authority sites, all PR3, aged domains. I hear from someone almost every day wanting to guest post on one of my sites. I have let a few do so. What is best practice on this? I could probably post a new article a week on each site if I just accepted those coming to me but would the OBL's start to hurt me?

Also I want people to leave the site via ad clicks, or following affiliate links, as opposed to going to a competitors site, but it is a good way to build content. Where's the balance? What would you do?

ok, how about if I give a PR3 guest post to the most detailed answer?

It is a great way to build content. But I'd guard against letting the sites become nothing more than a bunch of guest posts. I'd make sure most of the posts were non-guest posts.

Search engines are getting increasingly better at determining nature and quality of content.

This basically means that you should have a content calendar which balances out guest posts and your own. Would also recommend you flagging guest post content I.e above the post it should say "this is a guest post from x who is y"

About OBLs, if you feature a ton of guest posts from a lot of different verticals then yes it will be a problem. If you are focusing on a category and the majority if OBLs are at least useful to users then you are okay. Randomise the number of links between 0-3 and offer to link to social profiles instead at times (or social sharing from your own profiles).

Guest posts can also lead to a ton of spam. It all boils down to what your blog is about, target audience and what type of spam guards you have in place. We never allow guests to post. You can still gain traffic so long as you have quality content. Guest posts could help you build content but you will want to monitor it if you so allow it. Post above mentioned search engines and how they determine quality, good point to consider.

The benefits outweigh the potential pitfalls IMO. Guest bloggers are an excellent source of quality free content which generally costs quite a bit to produce en masse. Having several personalities can give audience a breathe of fresh air. Guest poster could be an ambassador to a brand, who is looking for links but may well be an expert in the category. I wouldn't completely refuse guest posts, but would of course have some guidelines setup to make sure content is structured according to yours and audience requirement and provides real value.

utterlyadrift25 said:

The benefits outweigh the potential pitfalls IMO. Guest bloggers are an excellent source of quality free content which generally costs quite a bit to produce en masse. Having several personalities can give audience a breathe of fresh air. Guest poster could be an ambassador to a brand, who is looking for links but may well be an expert in the category. I wouldn't completely refuse guest posts, but would of course have some guidelines setup to make sure content is structured according to yours and audience requirement and provides real value.

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Any examples of guidelines? Post those and I will PM you niches so you can take me up on my guest post offer above.

I just saw your reply so apologies for the untimely response. I'll write some guidelines and post here shortly!