Guest posts

Keystatic treats guest posts as their own collection so an editor can add them the way they would in WordPress: title, permalink, Markdoc body, FAQs, related links. The public template labels the page as a guest post. That is deliberate. Readers should know when a URL exists because of historic backlinks rather than because we commissioned a guide.

Historic guest URLs we kept

These paths existed on the WordPress site and still collect links. They now host rewritten education, not the original advertorial.

• Preparing a rural homestead for inspection (old carpet-cleaning guest URL)
• Rural roofs and sheds: what to check

We kept the paths because the skill for this rebuild is explicit: every URL with backlinks gets real content, and messy commercial copy is rewritten rather than left as a 404. We did not keep the original claims, prices or reviews.

What we will publish

Educational pieces about buying, selling, inspecting, financing or succeeding to rural land in Australia, with primary citations. Practical homestead, shed, water-infrastructure or biosecurity explainers are in scope if they help a buyer or seller ask better questions.

What we will not publish

Invented listings, invented prices, anonymous testimonials, casino or crypto copy, medical advice, and anything that treats a trademarked product as an unnamed generic without saying so. Colorbond, for example, remains a trademark of its owner; we use the word only to identify a product type a rural inspector actually sees.

Pitch new pieces via contact. Read the editorial policy first.

House style for guest writers

Write in Australian English. Cite .gov.au pages. Do not mention a sale price unless it is in a cited official notice, which on this site it almost never will be. Do not invent a customer. Do not disguise a contractor pitch as a guide. Trademarked products may be named to identify a thing on a farm (for example a cladding type) and must not be pretended to be this publisher’s product.

Keystatic fields to fill: title, permalink, description, hero, kind (guest), FAQs, related links, body. The public template labels the kind. If you want a dated editorial instead, use the blog collection.

The two preserved URLs are enough of a museum. Future guests should prefer clean permalinks under guest-posts/ unless there is a documented backlink reason to keep an ugly path.

Why ugly URLs were kept

The skill for this rebuild requires every backlinked URL to keep resolving with real content. The carpet-cleaning and Colorbond paths were commercial guest posts. Deleting them would have thrown away inbound links; keeping the original advertorial would have violated the YMYL rule against invented reviews. Rewriting them as homestead and shed education, and labelling kind: guest, is the compromise.

Editors adding new guests should prefer /guest-posts/your-topic/ unless there is a documented reason to occupy another historic path. Fill Keystatic the same way as blog posts, but in the Guest posts collection. The public kicker will say “Guest post”.

We still do not want casino, crypto, miracle-fertiliser or medical guest copy. Rural buyer and seller education only. Pitch with sources via contact.

Review checklist before a guest goes live

• Is every number cited to a primary source?
• Are trademarks named only to identify a product type?
• Is the permalink stable and, if ugly, justified by a backlink?
• Does the piece help a buyer or seller ask a better question?
• Is kind set to guest so the template labels it?
• Do related links point at evergreen guides, not at the guest’s commercial homepage?

If any answer is no, the piece waits. That is stricter than the WordPress era of this domain, on purpose. Rural property is YMYL. See about and copyright for the Rural Press non-affiliation language that also belongs in the footer of every page.

Relationship to property-services

One preserved guest URL lives under property services because that is where WordPress put it. The parent hub explains agencies and inspectors; the child page explains homestead presentation. The Colorbond URL lives at the site root because that is where WordPress put that one. We did not invent a new information architecture to flatter a contractor.

If you are an editor cleaning this collection later, do not 301 those paths without a documented backlink review. The rebuild rule is one 301 from messy to clean, not a chain, and not a deletion of link equity on a YMYL domain.

Guest writers may be named in the body. They may not hide a paid listing as education. If a piece needs a commercial disclosure, say so in the first paragraph or do not file it. Rural Property Guide would rather leave a historic URL as rewritten education than as a fresh advertorial. Pitch via contact with sources attached as links, not as PDFs of identity documents.