Guest Post Blurb at Top or Bottom? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Interesting topic as we've been doing guest posts a lot lately, and hosting them too.

We prefer to put the intro UP FRONT.  We don't post the post under an author of "Guest" so we want the readers to be aware of the fact it is a guest post.  We do not want to put "Guest Post" in the title due to real estate issues in our writing column. We feel this is the best solution.  Mentioning the GP at the end doesn't seem to make sense.

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff said:

Hi again everybody!

What do you think – should the "The following is a guest post from…" be listed before or after the guest post?  I've always thought it was good to put it first so people knew who they were reading to start with, but I notice that a few sites seem to put it last so that readers don't automatically leave when they see it's a guest post.

What do you think?

Side note – If anybody is interested, I have a guest spot open for the last week of January at BFS and all of February.  :-)

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Ok, here are my thoughts:

At the top:

Good – The readers know right away to prepare for someone else's voice.

Bad – From the little that I have read about SEO, you want the first paragraph to contain your keyword at least once, along with a relavant link. No one will want to click through to the author's site until after reading the post and liking it – they may not want to, or remember to scroll back to the top for the link.

At the bottom:

Good – You are able to maximize SEO. By putting the bio and author links at the end, people are more inclined to click on them to find out more about the writer – providing that the guest post was good! Also, you can publish under either "guest", or you can use the name of the author (but it would still be you publishing it). That way they still know right away.

Bad – If you publish under "guest" or the author's name, I don't see anything bad.

I prefer the top myself.

Thanks everyone!  Sounds like it's okay for me to keep going as I have been with the intro at the top.  Cool beans!  Thanks again!

I use the bottom.  As Khaleef mentioned, I think the SEO benefits are better at the end so that your real forst paragraph shows up first.  I think some search engines will use the first few sentences or so instead of metadata so what you get is a description if the author rather then the article itself in the SE listings.  You also miss out on your keyword showing towards the beginning.

Is this still the case (or ever the case) for search engines?  I'm not sure.  But if it is then the benefits of the bio at the end outweigh any benefits of the bio in the beginning.

Craig – Free From Broke said:

I use the bottom.  As Khaleef mentioned, I think the SEO benefits are better at the end so that your real forst paragraph shows up first.  I think some search engines will use the first few sentences or so instead of metadata so what you get is a description if the author rather then the article itself in the SE listings.  You also miss out on your keyword showing towards the beginning.

Is this still the case (or ever the case) for search engines?  I'm not sure.  But if it is then the benefits of the bio at the end outweigh any benefits of the bio in the beginning.

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Good question!  Anybody know about how the SEO works in this case?

Another vote for the top. Although I also think it's nice if there's a slightly different version of the blurb at the bottom too. That way if I want to click over to their blog I don't have to scroll up.

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff said:

Craig – Free From Broke said:

I use the bottom.  As Khaleef mentioned, I think the SEO benefits are better at the end so that your real forst paragraph shows up first.  I think some search engines will use the first few sentences or so instead of metadata so what you get is a description if the author rather then the article itself in the SE listings.  You also miss out on your keyword showing towards the beginning.

Is this still the case (or ever the case) for search engines?  I'm not sure.  But if it is then the benefits of the bio at the end outweigh any benefits of the bio in the beginning.

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Good question!  Anybody know about how the SEO works in this case?
 

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If you use Scribe SEO, your article will actually get a lower SEO score if you do not include the keyword in your first paragraph (along with a link). So at least in their minds it is still true. I think using a "guest" author and keeping the bio at the bottom is fine – I always look at the author name whenever I read a post, anyway.

I know that for me, if I reach the end of a guest post that I enjoyed reading, I'm more inclined to click on the link in the bio if it is sitting right there at the bottom. I may forget to scroll back up to the top after leaving a comment.

Jackie said:

Another vote for the top. Although I also think it's nice if there's a slightly different version of the blurb at the bottom too. That way if I want to click over to their blog I don't have to scroll up.

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Search engines are starting to care less and less about what we put in the description tag. 

I prefer the top as a guest poster because I will get a lot more traffic.  The same goes for when I host a guest post.  Much better promotion for the other blogger.