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How to accept guest posts on your site without losing quality

Updated · First published · 3 min read

Opening a site to guest posts is easy. Keeping the quality up is the real work, and most of it happens before anyone submits anything. This guide opens a site, writes the rules that filter for you, and takes one submission to a verified live page.

Step 1: Turn guest posts on

  1. Open Settings in the sidebar, and under Guest posts turn on Accept guest posts.
  2. Check Taking submissions is on too, then press Save changes in the bar at the bottom.
  3. Read the line under Public link for writers. It says whether writers can use your link yet, and what is missing if not, such as verifying the site.
The Guest posts section of a site's Settings: Accept guest posts, Taking submissions, Public link for writers and Rules for writers
One switch to accept guest posts, one to pause them, and the line under the link that says whether writers can reach you.
The Guest posts and Backlink exchanges sections of a website's Settings
Everything writers and partners need from you is on the site's Settings.

Step 2: Write rules that do the filtering

  1. On your site's Settings, open Rules for writers and apply the Balanced preset.
  2. Fill in Topics you never accept. Every topic you name is a pitch that never arrives.
  3. Be specific under Links, in Link text. If you won't accept exact-match anchors, say exactly that.
  4. Set review and publication times you can actually keep, then publish.
The three presets above the rules form
Start from a preset, then spend your twenty minutes on the two fields that matter.

Writers who already submitted keep the rules they were shown, so you can tighten them at any time.

Under Public link for writers, press Copy. Put it where writers look: a write-for-us page, your footer, your outreach replies. It shows your name and rules and keeps a writer's place through signup.

Step 4: Triage the queue

Submissions arrive as notifications and land in Review guest post submissions.

The review queue with submitted articles
The link count and the number of external domains are often enough to triage without opening anything.

Step 5: Review and decide

  1. Open the submission. It's a fixed snapshot, so it can't change while you read.
  2. Switch to review mode, then select text or click an image to attach a comment to it.
  3. Keep general comments for things about the whole piece, like the wrong reader or a weak structure.
  4. Approve, request changes, or reject.
The decision controls with the note field
A change request needs a real note. An article sent back with no explanation comes back unchanged.

Tip

Two rounds of changes is normal. Three usually means your rules were unclear, and the fix is the rules rather than the writer.

Step 6: Add a final review, if you want one

Assign final reviewers sends approved articles to someone with the Approver role for a last read. Skip it on a one-person site.

The assignment queue with approved articles waiting
Useful once the person deciding what to publish isn't the person judging quality.

Step 7: Publish and submit the live address

Publish in your own CMS, then submit the live address the same day. Rankbench checks the page can be reached, is indexable, matches what was approved, and has the agreed links.

The publish section with the live URL field
A pass marks it verified live and tells the author. The page stays under watch after that.

When you're behind, pause instead of closing: turn off Taking submissions. Guest posts stay on, your rules and your link stay as they were, and no new articles arrive until you turn it back on.

What to do next

Still stuck?

Open Rankbench and the page this article describes — most screens explain themselves as you go.