You can see my guest blogger bio information above. This blog places the guest blogger's information right at the beginning of the post. Some blogs place the “resource box” or guest blogger's “bio” at the end of the post.
Placement of the Guest Blogger bio
There are four parties to consider:
- The blog owner
- The guest blogger
- The readers
- The search engines
There are, of course, pros and cons to whatever placement you choose. Let's look at each one in turn.
Guest Blogger Bio At The Top
For the blog owner, having the bio at the top might seem a bit “in the way” – just another item above the fold, pushing the article further down on the page. If the blog has a hefty header banner and ads across the top, the actual content might already be quite low, and a guest author bio would just push it lower. This kind of sucks for the blog owner who may be concerned with their online reputation, and it also sucks for the reader.
An up-front bio also blocks the reader from jumping right into the post after the title. As I said earlier, it's a bit “in the way”.
On the other hand, the blog owner would not want a reader to assume that someone else's words were actually hers. And not everyone will read all the way to the bottom. Saying up front that the post was written by someone else makes it clear right away, so that the reader is not confused and the blog owner is not held responsible for someone else's views. It also gives the guest blogger much more visibility, as all readers will know right away the he wrote the post.
From an SEO perspective, the guest blogger should be happy that the links in his bio are at the top of the post rather than the end. Links closer to the top are generally assumed to be more important by the search engines.
Guest Blogger Bio At The Bottom
For the most part, this is the opposite of having the information at the top. It is out of the way, so that the blog post can start with a bang, higher up on the page. But readers do not know that the post was written by a guest until they reach the end (for those that do reach the end), which is not to the benefit of the blog owner, the reader or the guest blogger.
From an SEO perspective, a bio that is after the actual post is in the place where comments typically are found. The links, therefore, might be perceived by the search engines as comment links, which are assumed to be worth much less than links in the body of a blog post.
If you can make it work for your blog, putting the guest blogger bio information up front has a number of very compelling advantages.