Writing Guidelines For Elly McGuinness Holistic Health and Fitness
Thank you for your interest in writing a guest post for this holistic health and fitness website. Before you read on please know that this blog has very specific requirements. If you are looking for a quick link back to your site, then you’re best to look elsewhere.
We pride ourselves on producing high-quality articles that add a lot of value for the reader. Please respect our time and yours by reading the guidelines thoroughly before submitting your pitch.
Elly would love to publish your interesting and engaging health and fitness article. However, if it is poorly written or doesn’t follow the guidelines below, we will send it back to you and ask you to amend it before we publish it. We reserve the right to decline to publish your article if we feel it doesn’t fit with the guidelines below.
We regularly get bloggers submitting their ideas and posts in a hurry. Ideas are submitted without keywords, or they’re just really far from fitting with the philosophy and content of this site. Articles are submitted without a gravatar having been uploaded, without a bio, and without links to reputable sources.
Please…if you want to write for this health and fitness website, we would love to hear from you! Just ensure you’re not taking any shortcuts and follow the directions below for the best chance of being published.
Originality
We only accept guest posts that are original content and not published anywhere else on the Internet. Duplicate or plagiarized content will not be accepted.
Tone
Any submitted content should be in keeping with the rest of the website blog posts and reflect the philosophies and values introduced on our About page. Importantly, it should be positive, friendly, and authentic.
We are happy for you to include personal stories if they are relevant or to write a more scientific post if properly researched and referenced.
Content
We are looking for guest post submissions on the following topics:
- Diet-free Weight loss
- Health and fitness during pregnancy
- Mom fitness and health
- Health and Fitness goals and motivation
- Physical fitness and workouts
- Holistic health (stress, sleep, meditation, relationships, increasing energy, etc. Articles about non-pseudo-science alternative health modalities will also be considered)
- Healthy eating and recipes
If you are talking about a concept that is not widely accepted or understood, it must be properly referenced from a credible source. This could be a site like WebMD or a respected online medical journal.
Please do not include affiliate links, but YOU MUST link out to 2-3 other respected sites from within your article. One of these external links can be to a relevant article on your own site if it’s a natural fit. The other 1-2 external links should be to medical journals or respected authority sites on your chosen topic. The ultimate objective is that the article and any corresponding links provide great value for the reader.
Word count
We are looking for posts with a minimum of 1,200 words of original content. Please do not try to ‘compromise’ with us on this word count. We have chosen this (absolute minimum) word count for value-add purposes (for the reader) and for search engine purposes. The minimum required length will help us to get your post found in the search engine!
Most of our posts (and many posts) that rank on page one of Google are a minimum of 2000-3000 words. We are simply asking for a minimum of 1200 words to help both your site and ours.
Formatting and Grammar
Please use sub-headings as well as numbered and bullet-point lists as appropriate. The maximum number of words under any sub-heading should be 300. Keep paragraphs short and include plenty of short sentences to ensure the article is easy to read, especially on a mobile device.
Please do not format the post in any other way (avoid bold, underlining, font changes, font size changes, etc.). We will format it to be consistent with our website format.
Please do not double-space after periods or between paragraphs.
You MUST run your article through a tool such as Grammarly (it’s free). If English is not your first language, please ALSO ask a native English speaker to check that your article MAKES SENSE before you send it through. We cannot spend time trying to reword articles that were written by non-native speakers and just don’t quite make enough sense.
Keyword(s)
Each post needs to have at least one keyword chosen which is related to the article.
- Please select one primary keyword to be included in the article at least seven times. The primary keyword must appear in the first paragraph of the copy and in two subheadings within your article. Most importantly, it must look natural and read well.
- Keywords must be specific. A bad example of a keyword (key phrase) = “fitness”. A much better example = “bodyweight fitness workout”
- Average monthly searches for the keyword must exceed 200 searches a month on Google.
- Difficulty rating must be easy or easy-moderate. Where the difficulty rating is moderate, the search volume must exceed 1000 searches per month on Google.
- We use https://www.keysearch.co/research to get this information. (The link is an affiliate link. If you choose to sign-up with Keysearch, please use the code ‘KSDISC’ to receive a 20% discount. We will also earn a small commission at no extra cost to you).
- Keyword idea, search volume, and difficulty rating (please give us the specific number) should be included when presenting your idea
- Any additional keywords can be added that are relevant to the article. Including more than one keyword will help your article rank higher on Google. All of Elly’s articles that rank on page one of Google include several “easy ranking” keywords. You certainly have the opportunity to get your article ranking on page one of Google by submitting a guest article for this site. You may have guessed that since you probably found this page via the google machine. You can’t even get to this page from other pages on this site. We removed it because we get too many (mostly low-quality) article submissions! For additional keywords you choose, aim to weave them in at least once naturally within the article.
- If you are new to keyword research, please ask for help. If you have a unique topic or angle, the chances are high that we can find great keywords to help the article rank. We are happy to help with this for unique angles on valuable topics for our readers.
Article Title
Your proposed article title(s) must be put through this headline analyzer and receive a score of 70 or above. Do this before sending us your pitch.
Sharing expectations
Once your guest post is published, we expect you to share it with your social community, and you can expect that we will do the same. Depending on the topic and content provided, we will share your post on various social and media platforms, with the following being an indicative (rather than exhaustive or specific) list; Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We will also place your post within a relevant email sequence or send it out as a broadcast to all of our active followers.
What’s in it for you?
Seeing as we do not compensate our guest writers, each accepted guest post will have an author bio containing 2-4 sentences about the author and one (1) dofollow link back to your homepage. You may also include one link to your own site inside the article if it is relevant, natural, and will help the reader. (Please do not include affiliate links).
You will get your name and work out to our quickly expanding audience of like-minded followers.
You can expect that your article and links will remain on this site permanently as long as this site is in existence. Please do not ask us to remove your article if you change your mind later. Removing a post from a website is like removing a wall from a house. We can, however, remove your name from your post if you decide you would prefer not to be associated with it at any point.
How to submit a guest post
Please email elly at ellymcguinness dot com with 2-4 proposed titles and keywords. Also, share the link to the website you want to link back to so we can check it is suitable. Elly will either accept one of your titles or ask you to resubmit new ideas. She may also provide additional keyword guidelines.
Once your idea is accepted, we can work together regarding a timeline for when you can finish the post, and we can publish it. You can then write it and submit it to us in Microsoft Word or Google Docs format. Do not write the article until your title and keywords have been approved.
When your article topic and keywords have been approved and you are ready to submit your article, please take note of the following:
Include a 2-4 sentence bio and your homepage link with your submission.
Gravatar and photos
Ensure that you have uploaded a globally recognized avatar (Gravatar). This holistic health and fitness site is ‘Gravatar Enabled’, which means that your photo will automatically show up with your bio when we add you as an ‘author’ on the site. It also means that your photo will show up whenever you comment on the blog post or on any other Gravatar-enabled sites. This will help you to create a consistent and recognized brand.
If you would like specific photo(s) included with your post, please ensure they are high resolution and sized to 800x450px. If you do not send photos, we will select suitable stock photos for the post.
Personal photos can really add to the authenticity of the article, so do send them through if they are relevant. This is mandatory if you are telling a personal story. Elly will review and make any changes, then run the final version by you before publishing.
We will add internal links, CTAs, and affiliate links where relevant
We may include links within your post if they naturally link to other posts on our site or other sites that we know about and respect. (The final version will be reviewed by you before publishing). We may include relevant CTA’s for the reader that takes them to other pages, products, or services.
Please let us know if you have an affiliate program relevant to your post. We will consider joining your affiliate program before adding any of our own affiliate links to the post, but we do reserve the right to add affiliate links of our own if they are relevant to the reader.
“Thank you in advance for your interest in wanting to write for ellymcguinness.com. I look forward to hearing from you soon”