Hello and thank you for the interest you have shown in becoming a guest blogger on our website by visiting this page. We don’t want to restrict your creativity by burdening you with too many rules but if you follow these simple guest blogger guidelines it will help to ensure that all our posts are consistent in style and approach.
Length of posts
Although we don’t ask you to keep within a specific word count most search engines recommend a minimum of 300 words. Also note that longer posts do tend to get better Google rankings which means your post has the potential to be read and shared by more people.
Original content
We can only accept original content and so your blog should not have been published anywhere else – Google and other search engines don’t take kindly to duplicate content. For this reason we don’t allow you to re-publish your guest post on your own blog or website. However, do feel free to link to your guest post on our site from your own blog or website.
Author bio
To ensure that your post is properly credited make sure that you include your author bio (maximum of 40 words) at the end of your post. Note however, that you can only include links to your own blog or website.
Ready to publish
Although we proofread all posts before publishing to ensure that there are no spelling or grammar mistakes and that the content is appropriate for our website, we can’t do any major re-writing or re-structuring. So please make sure that you edit and check your posts as thoroughly as possible before submitting them.
Headings and paragraphs
Google and other search engines use headings to determine the content of a post. You should therefore use a relevant heading above each paragraph or above a series of paragraphs which cover the same or similar topics. Dividing your text into headings and paragraphs also benefits your readers by enabling them to skim through your post to see whether or not it is relevant and therefore whether they want to read it. To capture the interest of your readers make sure that your headings are relevant and engaging.
Keywords
Google and other search engines also use keywords to determine the content of a post. Keywords are the words or phrases which people use to do searches on the internet. This means that if you want your post to be found by search engines it is important to use keywords which are the most relevant for your content. Ideally you should choose one keyword or phrase and use it at least three or four times within your post. This will help to drive traffic to your post.
Photos and other images
Photos or other images make posts more engaging and visually appealing so if you can please include a relevant photo or image with each post you submit. If the photo is not your own and you choose to use an image you found online, do make sure that you have permission to use it.
There are some websites where you can source free images (i.e. free from copyright restrictions) and some where you pay a monthly subscription (or pay on demand) to get permission to use the images. StockSnap.io and pixabay both provide images released under the Creative Commons CCO license which means that you can download, copy, modify, distribute and use them royalty free for anything you like. If you find an image that is not royalty free, check carefully what permission you need before using it. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have the rights to use an image.
If you submit images/photos which are very large (this is calculated by file dimensions (i.e. width and height in pixels) and/or file size (i.e. Kilobytes KB or Megabytes MB)) we reserve the right to reduce the size before uploading them to our website.
How to submit your text and pictures
Please email your text and graphics (in separate files) to admin@beginnersguidetowriting.com.
For text files we recommend a .docx file for Windows or a Pages file on a Mac. Pictures should be in .jpg format and you should include an attribution where appropriate. If you have any problems with these file formats then contact us using the email address above.