Have you ever wondered what would happen if you just wrote two or three guest blogs and then used only those posts for say a twenty stop blog tour, or even a ten stop one? Well, let me tell you, this is not something you want to do. While it may seem easier to just use articles you’ve written over and over and over again for your blog tours, they can cause you huge problems later on down the road. The reason is that Google hates duplicate content and in fact goes around searching online for it. If you use the exact same article over and over again, Google will find it and will take duplicate content out of the search engine results. So, one instance of your article, and so one stop on your blog tour will show up in the search results, but the other three or four will not. This can be the kiss of death for an author who is trying to get the word out about their book.

Why is it the kiss of death? Well, for a couple of reasons, here’s mainly why though. For one readers are only going to read that article once, if they go to one of your next tour spots and see the same article, they are going to leave immediately. If they see the same article during another blog tour later on, they may stop attending your blog tour events all together. That’s just one reason, and it’s a big one. You don’t want readers clicking away because of duplicate content. Another reason is that it gives readers the idea that you don’t care enough as an author about your readers to write new content for them. And finally, it kills you in the search engines and possibly with any new readers who may stumble on one of your guest blogs when they do a search, and discover that when they go to one of the next stops you’ve used the same content yet again.

Smart authors plan their blog tours well in advance, giving themselves enough time to write new content for each stop. Or if they really want to plan well, they’ll figure out how many stops they want for their blog tour, and then write those articles before they even schedule the tour. Then all that’s left is to send the guest post and other material to your blog tour company or if you’re doing it yourself the blog owner a few days or a week before your guest blog is to be posted. That way you don’t run the risk of angering readers, and killing yourself in the search engines because you’re being penalized for duplicate content.