Contribution Guidelines

To make things easier and more useful for everyone, please follow the following guidelines when contributing to this site.

If you don’t, I will just refer you back to this page.

This section always applies. Please read and follow it carefully.

Prepare Before You Write

These guidelines will ensure that your post is approved:

1. Your post must be unique. If you have a post already written, please review it and make significant changes, which include the items listed below
2. Review the site’s categories and tags and choose a suitable topic and a positive/useful/generous message
3. Even if your aim is to promote something, write your post for the benefit of the reader
4. Pick a focus keyword for your post. Ideally, this is a 3-4 word phrase that is likely to attract web searches. Good example: active living ideas. Bad example: happiness (too broad)
5. Use American English

Also, along with your post:

1. Send me your author bio, which may contain a link
2. If you don’t have a gravatar, send me a nice photo of your head and shoulders

Write Your Post

These guidelines apply whether you write directly on the site or in some other word processor:

1. Include your focus keyword phrase in the title and first paragraph of the body
2. Make your title more compelling with the Headline Analyzer
3. Include your focus keyword at least 3 times in the body, as well as some variations of it
4. Split your post into sections
5. Give each section a heading and make it a proper Heading 2, NOT bolded text.
6. Remove blank lines (don’t use lines for spacing)
7. Check the post for spelling and grammar issues

Link Responsibly

Google is getting increasingly clever at detecting search engine manipulation through links. The last thing we want is to trigger “manual action” from Google.

1. If your author bio contains a link to a commercial site, please avoid linking to the same site again from the post
2. Don’t link to a sales page of any kind. If you want to promote another site, link to a publicly-available information page, such as a blog post
3. If you link to a site you want to promote, add at least 2 additional links to publicly-available information pages, such as related posts on this site, Wikipedia pages and related posts on other blogs
4. Do not include the post’s focus keyword in link anchor text

Find Good Images

1. Find free-to-use images that suit the topic and message of your post. You can find great free images on Pixabay, StockSnap, Unsplash and Flickr’s royalty free category.
2. Images should be in “landscape” orientation, with 3:2 aspect ratio being ideal
3. The width of the image should be at least 960 pixels

Once again, doing the above is important. You’re welcome to have your writing published, but please don’t make me work for it.

This section applies once you can add your own posts to the site.

Add Your Post to WordPress

1. If you have written your post off site, log into the site, choose Posts->Add New, enter the title and paste the content into the editor
2. If your content contains custom formatting, select all of the text and click the “eraser” button (highlighted in green) to remove it. If this button is not visible, click the button highlighted in red to show the second row of buttons
   
3. Pick the most suitable category for your post (just one)
4. Tag your post – click “Choose from the most used tags” and then click the most suitable 3-4 tags. If a great tag can be used, but isn’t already available, please add it

Add Images to the Post

1. Upload the images to the site
2. Give each image a meaningful title. Include the focus keyword if possible
3. Enter alternative text to each image, describing it to a vision-impaired person. Include the focus keyword if possible
4. Insert images into the post on separate paragraphs, using their full size, with alignment “none”
5. Add the first image before the post text, and then at equal intervals, or where they serve to illuminate your points
6. Click “Set featured image” and choose the first image in the post

Optimize Your Post

This is important to do, as it will give your post, and the site in general, more visibility.

If you have never used Yoast SEO to optimize a post, please go through this video tutorial first.

1. Enter your focus keyword in the Yoast SEO box
2. Click “Edit snippet” and write a meta description for the post that contains the focus keyword and invites potential visitors to click through to the post
3. Review the Yoast SEO analysis and attempt to get a “green light” for your keyword optimisation
4. Review the Readability analysis and attempt to get a “green light” for readability

Save/Publish Your Post

Once you’ve contributed a few posts according to the above guidelines, you will be able to publish your own posts. However, initially, you will only be able to save them as drafts.

1. Copy the top 2-3 paragraphs into the “Excerpt” box (below the Yoast SEO box). This is the “teaser” text that will appear on archive pages
2. Click “Preview” and check that everything looks good. If not, change and click “Preview” again until you’re happy
3. Click “Save Draft”
4. Email me to let me know you’ve added a post

Thank you for your contribution,
Gal