POWR Guest Post Guidelines

Hello, and thank you for your interest in guest posting for POWR. We are excited you want to contribute to helping small businesses grow online!

Please read all the way to the bottom, where you'll find a link to the blog submission form.

UPDATED: 8/26/2023

Publishing Schedule Notes:

• Your article draft will be placed in our queue for editing, and will be reviewed in the order it was received.
• Not following these guidelines closely can delay publishing by up to 1 month or longer. The more complete your draft before submission, the sooner you can secure a publication date. 
• Should you require an expedited publication date, certain editorial fees may apply. Please let us know if you have this need in your submission, and we can discuss it further.
• Article editing takes place once per week on Sundays. 
• We normally have a one-month backlog of article submissions, so please allow 2-3 weeks for editing suggestions. Edits will be made as a comment in your article document.

Table of Contents:

1. Who are POWR readers?
2. Article Topics of Interest
3. Article Requirements and Structure
4. Backlink Insertions
5. Accuracy, Performance, Readability, and Plagiarism
6. Article Submission Procedure and Form
   
   

1. Who are POWR Readers?

The readers of our blog are normally solopreneurs and small business owners. Most are eCommerce store owners, but on occasion, we have some that also have brick-and-mortar locations.

We have a global audience, but our readers are predominantly from North America. They are people who:

• Run their physical business and manage their online presence themselves
• Sell physical products they make or source, both online and in-store
• Sell services like consulting or online courses
• Dropship products online
• Small web design agencies for SMBs

Ensure that your content speaks to these groups. You must select who you are writing for in the submission form.

Your content may benefit multiple categories; however, prioritize and list the top-level keyword you are writing for.

2. Article Topics of Interest

While there are several interesting article topics we would like, we work hard to provide the content our readers want from us. Our top-level topics of interest are:

• eCommerce
• Lead Generation
• Customer Loyalty
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Small Business Best Practices
• Social Media Marketing and Growth
• Website Optimization & Performance Improvement

• What our readers care about most

POWR Heroes run everything in their business, from inventory to sales and marketing to finance. There is a wide range of topics you could write about; however, to be accepted for the POWR blog, you must address a specific concern that most of our readers deal with every day. Such as:

• • Increasing website traffic
  • Generating new leads
  • Increasing conversion rates and sales
  • Supporting their customers
  • Technology innovations to maximize time (i.e., artificial intelligence or process automation)
  • Growing and scaling their business
  • Retaining current customers
  • Overall business management activities

First, choose an article topic, then correlate that topic with a 'why' from this list. We are most interested in article that are written from a people-first perspective.

For example, you may write about "Email Marketing Strategies to Increase Conversions" or "Email Marketing Strategies to Support Customers After the Sale."

3. Article Requirements and Structure

So many articles are written about the same things, so make yours unique and write from your point of view. Doing so will greatly improve the possibility of getting your article published on our blog.

Pay close attention to the article requirements and structure that follow. Failure to follow these guidelines can result in article rejection, a delay in publishing, or incur editorial fees of $12 per page.

• Article requirements

  • Minimum of 800 words and no more than 2,500
  • Contains an introductory paragraph and a conclusion/summary
  • Must have an H1 title, and proper H2s, H3s where appropriate
  • Credit sources properly when citing facts or statistics
  • Include no less than 4 relevant images (more details below)
  • Add relevant backlinks from sites with DR50+ or, if lower, provide evidence of recent growth
  • Use bullets and subject matter expert quotes (must cite source)

• Article structure

  • Each article can only contain a single H1 as the title. The H1 must be less than 70 characters.
  • Include a meta description that summarizes your article in less than 155 characters.
  • An H2 that is a question must have the answer to it as the first sentence in the paragraph.
  • An H2 that is numbered must have the numbered list following the header.

• Example articles:

7 Ways to Maximize Digital Marketing Analytics in 2023

Instagram Marketing for Service Businesses: A Complete Guide

• Image requirements

  • Include image source and backlink
  • The image must not have a pixel width greater than 801p
  • Include alt text if applicable
  • Include your image source link under the image

Example:

4. Backlink Insertions

A healthy backlink strategy can be the difference between a few people reading your article and thousands reading it every day. Follow these backlink instructions closely.

• Malicious links in a blog will result in current and all future blog post requests being immediately rejected. We cannot tolerate nor afford any malicious activity.
• Backlinks must be relevant to the article topic and embedded in anchor text that makes sense to the final destination page.
• Keyword stuffing is strictly forbidden
• You may include links to your own company, but they must be native to the story and not in an advertorial way.
• Links must be from a DR50+ site, or if below, please provide evidence of recent traffic growth
• Include 3-5 internal backlinks to past POWR articles and no less than 6-8 external backlinks that complement your article topic and content.
• All backlinks will be 'rel=dofollow' links unless otherwise instructed. Any paid link insertions will be designated as 'rel=sponsored' links.

5. Accuracy, Performance, Readability, and Plagiarism

The majority of our readers are English-speaking, and as such, we require articles to pass a certain level of performance and readability from free checkers like Grammarly. You will be required to upload screenshots of these upon submission.

Example:

Plagiarism and duplicate postings will be cause for immediate rejection. You will be required to upload a plagiarism check screenshot similar to:

We look forward to reading your work and working together to help small businesses grow and learn!

6. Article Submission Procedure and Form

• • Check our article library and ensure a similar article has not already been published in the last 12 months. There is a search bar in the top right corner.
  • Complete and submit the article submission form.
  • Articles you've published elsewhere will not be accepted, nor can you post the same article to your blog later.

We will be unable to respond to requests for guest posting that are left in the comments. Good luck, and we are glad you have chosen to apply! 

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