Thanks for your interest in contributing a guest post on smileprep.com! We appreciate the diverse set of experiences and perspectives that our guest posters bring. If you’re someone who cares about helping our readers achieve their smile goals, we’d love to hear from you.
This article breaks down the process for selecting a suitable guest post topic, writing an article that fits our editorial standards, how to submit your post, and what to expect after submitting.
Table of Contents
Selecting a Topic for Your Guest Post
Not all topics are a good fit for smileprep.com. Here are some tips for identifying a suitable post topic.
1. Keep in mind Smile Prep’s target audience.
Smile Prep’s has a fairly specific audience of readers: young and middle aged adults who wish to improve or feel more self-confident about their smile. Please focus on topics that our audience would find helpful and interesting.
2. Stay within your area of expertise.
We will reject a guest submission if, in our judgement, the author does not have the appropriate experience/expertise to credibly and accurately cover the topic.
3. Find a unique angle.
Once you have a subject in mind, it can be helpful to search our site for related articles. That way, you can see what’s been previously covered and identify a fresh approach. Please keep in mind that we won’t publish content that is too similar to one or more articles already on our site.
Although smileprep.com does not have a dedicated search feature, you can find most of our content by searching as follows on google: “site:smileprep.com [your search keyword]”
4. Consider narrowing your focus.
When brainstorming for a topic, it’s common to start out big and broad: “Why You Should Consider Invisalign”, say, or “5 Things To Know About Teeth Whitening.” We don’t recommend such broad and open ended topics. Our most successful articles have a narrower focused, which makes it easier to offer specific, tangible advice.
5. Check with us in advance.
Before preparing an article, we recommend that you reach out to us at admin@smileprep.com to pitch your idea. We can let you know if your topic is a good fit for smileprep.com, and may be able to offer suggestions for narrowing / focusing your topic
Writing Your Guest Post
Ready to start writing? Here are some important guidelines to keep in mind.
1. Cover your topic thoroughly.
Your article should be of sufficient length to cover your topic thoroughly and with adequate detail to ensure it is helpful to our readers. It’s better to provide an extra example or over-explain a concept than to risk not getting your idea across fully.
Most articles should fall in the 1,000 – 2,000 word range. If you submit an article that our editing staff considers insufficiently detailed or incomplete, we may request that you add additional content before we consider your post for publication.
2. Break up your content and include subheadings.
In general, paragraphs should be no be longer than 4-5 sentences. In addition, please include at least two subheadings in your articles.
Suggestion: bulleted lists help break up dense areas of text, and are strongly encouraged.
3. Use simple language and sentence structure.
The best copy is simple and clear. Avoid a complex sentence structure, when a simple one works just as well. Try to avoid run-on sentences.
In addition, please use plain language or terminology. Where possible, avoid industry jargon and uncommon words or expressions. If you must use a term or expression that may be unfamiliar to some readers, be sure to provide an explanation.
4. Only include relevant, authoritative links.
When including links, please adhere to the following guidelines:
- Do not link to websites which are reputable and authoritative . If you are referencing a quote or a fact, please link to the original source.
- You may link to your own website or blog a maximum of one time in the body of your post, however the link must be relevant and must not feel overly promotional.
- Only use a few words of anchor text (as opposed to a whole phrase, which can be distracting to the reading experience).
Please be aware that we reserve editorial discretion to remove any link that feels overly self-promotional, insufficiently authoritative, or which otherwise does not feel relevant to the article.
5. Abide by important content restrictions.
- We cannot accept articles that were previously published, even if you’ve made some changes to them. We only accept 100% new and original pieces of writing.
- We will not accept content that is offensive or inaccurate, overly promotional, or overly critical of individuals or companies.
- We cannot publish images that we do not have rights to use. Please do not include any photos or artwork in your post unless you are the exclusive owner.
Submitting Your Guest Post
When your article is complete, please send it to admin@smileprep.com with the following email header: “Guest Post Pitch: [Proposed Title of Post]”
Along with a draft of your article, please also include a short author bio (under 50 words), a headshot, a link to your personal website or your organization, and (optionally) links to your personal twitter and linkedin account.
Note: All guest posts must be attributed to a real individual. If in doubt, we may require verification that the author is a real individual, and has consented to authorial attribution.
What to Expect After You Submit
If your article meets editorial standards and aligns with our content strategy, we will inform you that your article will be published. It typically takes between one and two weeks to review your submission, and may take up to an additional one to two weeks to publish your submission if it is approved.
For stories we do choose to publish, please be aware our policies for guest submissions.
- We reserve the right to edit and adapt your post for style, tone or substance, and to update it in the future for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
- Headlines and subheads are subject to change.
- Images may be added to support the content or to improve the aesthetic quality of the article.
- When your stories are published, we will typically add 2-3 “related’ links to other Smile Prep content in your article. Additional external links may also be added for context. We also reserve the right to include calls-to-action to other Smile Prep content, or that of our partners.
- Links may be removed for any reason. Some reasons we may remove a link include: it’s offensive, it’s not relevant, it’s overly promotional.
- If we accept and publish your post, please do not republish your guest post to your own blog, or to any 3rd party website, as this would undermine the SEO performance of smielprep.com. We will likely remove any post if we find that it has been reposed.
- Articles may or may not be promoted on Smile Prep’s home page, blog page, in our newsletters, and via our social feeds.
- In rare cases, contributed posts may be removed from smileprep.com.
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