Guest Post: Write For Us!

Get Quality Backlinks With Guest posts on a DA40+ dofollow site

DA (Domain Authority) : 41

PA (Page Authority) : 47

Scan Backlinks Rank : 6

Alexa Rank : 1307604

What You’ll Get

  • Quality backlinks on a site with traffic
  • Marketing budget savings

Guest posting is a perfect alternative to common paid advertising. It is cheaper and has a long-lasting effect.


Rules for Guest Post

For the most part, I invite people to contribute to RocksForKids.com. 

RocksForKids.com accepts your guest post if you have interests and concerns about education, parenting, Montessori, the developpement of the child or any other educational content that might be relevant to be shared here.


Guest Post Must Be 100% Original to RocksForKids.com

Any columns accepted for publication must be exclusive to RocksForKids.com.

Guest Post must be 100% original. This means:

  • No plagiarism! I use CopyScape. If you’re caught once passing off someone else’s work as your own, you’ll get a warning. Do it again, and you’re gone and blacklisted.
  • No self-plagiarism: You can’t “borrow” sentences from your own prior published content, or from company blog posts (or other written materials). If you’re going to use someone else’s words/thoughts, it must be properly attributed.

Guest post


What to Write About

You are welcome to draw from your own experiences to come up with your own ideas and topics. 

Please discuss the idea with me to make sure nothing else similar is being worked on by another author.

Always try to go beyond the basics/obvious.

The most successful articles tend to be:

  • Lists (e.g., examples, tips, tools, tactics)
  • How-to articles/guides
  • Explainer posts (e.g., what is… / why x matters)
  • Expert roundups
  • Opinion posts/commentary/think-pieces

Always provide actionable tips and practical advice.

Share your own experiences. Don’t rely heavily on quoting influencers, experts, or authorities from other sites.

Be the expert!


Guest Posts Must Be Pitch Free

You aren’t writing to sell a product or recommend a particular product or service.

You’re writing to share your expertise, information,  insights, and ideas with our audience.

If you write about an experience involving a client or business partner, you must disclose the relationship in the article.


Disclosures

If you have a relationship with a company or someone mentioned in your guest post, you must disclose it. Some examples of disclosures:

  • Citing original data/research from your company: “(Disclosure: I work for [insert company name here])”
  • “My case study features the Cleveland Zoo, a client of mine.”
  • “My business partner, Grenevieve Focker, wrote the case study below.”

Guest Post Length

How long should your guest post be?

  • Guest Posts should be at least 1,000 words.
  • Most guest posts that appear on RocksForKids.com are between 1,500 and 2,000 words.
  • I do love longer guest posts, but our editorial team is small and limited for time. So if you want to write an in-depth guest post that is 3,000 words, 4,000 words, or even longer, please ask for approval from me first!

Note: Longer guest posts tend to get more pageviews, time on page, and social love. However, they also burn you out a lot quicker. Remember, you could probably turn that monster guest post into 3 or 4 more targeted guest posts instead!

The best guest posts are clear, concise and only as long as they need to be. After all, our readers are busy. Tell them what they need to know and get out.


Paragraphs

Try to be concise.

Always try to keep your paragraphs short.

One sentence is fine.

Two sentences is typically OK. But no more than three sentences. Please.

Short paragraphs are easier to understand and digest, help drive your point across, and encourage reading in this age of information overload and short attention spans.


SEO Best Practices

Let’s practice what I preach, folks.

Headline

Your headline should be interesting enough to entice people to click on it. It should be optimized for search and social media.

URL

You can edit your URLs (Permalink). Use this to highlight important keywords.

Images

  • A Caption is optional.
  • Always add Alternative Text. This can be the guest post title or a succinct description of the photo that fits the guest post’s topic.
  • Optimize your image file names. IMG_123454646572.png or screenshot3.png is bad.

Rank Math SEO

I love Rank Math SEO. It will highlight potential SEO and readability problems and areas for improvement.

What you need to worry about for your guest post:

  • SEO Title: Make sure this matches your headline.
  • Slug: This is the same as your URL/Permalink.
  • Meta Description: Optimize for search and give readers a reason to click in 1-2 concise sentences.
  • Focus keyword: What search query do you want to rank for?

WordPress Categories

Pick, at minimum, one WordPress category for your article.

You may pick up to two relevant categories (e.g., if your guest post covers both SEO and Content Marketing).


In-Article Links

Links to third-party authoritative sources tell the reader that you are incorporating third-party perspectives and evidence in support of your argument. Otherwise, all you’ve got is a theory without substantiation.

  • No links to people’s home pages for their companies for quotes or cited sources. Linking to sources’ Twitter handles, LinkedIn profile, or another type of bio page is OK.
  • No calls to action that are self-promotional (“Our new white paper covers this topic in detail. Click here to download!”).
  • I reserve the right to add rel=”nofollow” to any link or remove a link at any time, before or after an article is published.
  • No links to websites in these areas: pills/RX, porn, gambling, and payday loans.

Buying, trading, or selling links is strictly prohibited. If someone approaches you to buy links in your articles, I’d appreciate you tipping us off (anonymously) via my contact form.


Statistics

Use recent stats when possible. (Never use stats older than 5 years – it’s most likely outdated!)

Link to the original source only (i.e., study, survey, etc.). Stats roundup guest posts or third-party infographics don’t count as valid sources.

No unattributed stats. If you can’t find the original source, don’t use it.


Formatting & Grammar Tips

  • Use H2 headings for your subheadings.
  • Use H3 headings for sections within your subheadings. If you need to go another level deeper, it should be bold (not H4).
  • No span tags
  • No div tags
  • Avoid bolding within sentences.
  • No filler/font formatting that affects content appearance
  • Write out single numbers “one..nine”. 10 and up are written as digits. Percentages are written as digits.
  • Example URLs (e.g. http://example.com) need to be plain text (not hyperlinked).

Guest Post Images

PNGs only, please.

Featured Image

To use a Shutterstock stock photo, please email your chosen photo’s link to me : claire.teyras [at] gmail.com. I’ll download it for you. (Note: Follow the same process if you want to use Shutterstock for any in-post images.)

In-Post Images

  • All in-post photos must be center-aligned, unless they are aligned with text.
  • You can use images from sites that release all licenses (e.g. Death to Stock Photo, Unsplash, and Pixabay) only.
  • You can also use images that you created or photographs you took. Your own screenshots are great. (Just avoid including possibly copyrighted images in your screenshots!)
  • No promotional images: Images cannot have a company logo or brand.
  • No external links on images.
  • No memes and GIFs. 
  • Embedding stuff from Instagram? You need to get permission from the account holder first. Otherwise, I can’t include it. (No screenshots either to get around this due to copyright issues.)
  • I reserve the right to replace or remove images they deem irrelevant to the guest post or has negative connotation without prior notice.
  • All images must have proper attribution at the bottom of your guest post:

Image Credits

Featured Image: DepositPhotos.com

In-post Photo: Pixabay.com

Screenshot taken by author, May 2020


Editorial Review and Corrections

  • If I find out authors aren’t writing their own guest posts, I reserve the right to reject or delete the guest post, as well as prohibit the author from writing for RocksForKids.com going forward.
  • I may add a disclaimer at the end of any article to disclose any relationships (or lack thereof) that either RocksForKids.com or the author may have with organizations mentioned in the article.
  • In the instance of corrections to byline, facts, or updates to published articles, RocksForKids.com reserves the right to edit any guest post at any time. Guest Post changes may be noted with a note from the editor about the change and the reasoning for the update or change, if applicable.

Guest Post: My Publishing Process

So, what happens when you’ve finished an awesome guest post and pressed that blue WordPress button “Submit for Review”?

Guest Post Status: Submitted to Editor

When you’ve finished a guest post draft, you’ll press the big blue button. Your guest post will go through the first round of copyediting, link checking, and whether it passes my editorial rules above.

Guest Post Status: My Reviewing

This stage is whereI get out a red pen and corrects for:

  • Typos, grammar, content flow
  • Links. If the link is germane to the content, it stays. But include a link four times? Use keywords or calls-to-action? Too self-promotional? The red pen will spring into action.
  • Full disclosure. If you reference your company in the article, your connection as the author needs to be made clear. So instead of “ABC SEO published a case study…” it should read “My company, ABC SEO, published a case study…”.

Guest Post Status: Ready for Scheduling

Get on your mark! This guest post will be sanity checked one last time by me before it’s sent out on its way into the world.

Guest Post Status: Scheduled

It’s gonna go live!


Your Bio

Make sure to fill out your Biographical Info.

Upload a color Profile Photo – use a headshot so people can clearly see your face.

Add links to your personal Social Profiles:

  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook

Add your Company Details:

  • Your company
  • Your position
  • Your company’s URL

Questions?

Hit us up here.

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