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PMA Contributor Guidelines

General Guidelines

Submit original content. We love content that you create especially for The PMA. In fact, we will not accept content that has been posted to your blog or anywhere else.

Be authentic and unique. It should always be clear that your content comes from YOU. Submit content on topics that you’re passionate, knowledgeable, and insightful about.

Be relevant, authoritative, factually correct and engaging. Make sure that each piece of content is written to thoroughly inform and/or delight its intended audience. Remember that you’re talking to peers.

Be succinct. The ideal article length is 400 to 700 words. (Too much to say? Break your topic into more-specific chunks that can each stand alone as useful articles.)

Proofread. We require correct grammar, structure, spelling, and punctuation.

Write strong, descriptive headlines. Tell readers why they should view your content and do so in 7 words or less. Please remember that only 65 characters of your headline will appear on most search engine results pages. Whenever possible, try and at least get a keyword into the title. For instance”Ten Secrets for Your Next Sin City Visit” isn’t as good as “Ten Things You Didn’t Know to Do in Las Vegas”. This means more traffic for your content. Avoid clever headlines that hint at a topic without explaining it. Humor can be a great asset, but it belongs in the body of the article. Do not use a title that has been previously used on the site.

Be accurate, and cite your sources. In the text, immediately attribute any specific facts and quotes to their source, and link to the specific page that verifies your assertion. At the end of your content, list any authoritative sources that informed your content as a whole, using a format that allows any reader to easily access each source.

Provide full disclosure. When you submit a review or commentary, you must disclose any special relationship or material connection to your subject. (If the business you’re talking about happens to be owned by your spouse, or if you have received compensation in any way; disclose it.) When in doubt, disclose.

Don’t:

  1. Rehash
  2. Keyword Stuff
  3. Over-link
  4. Over-Promote

 

Technical Posting Rules

Content Calendar
We will provide you with a submission deadline date based on evaluation of your schedule and our content calendar. You will upload your submission by that deadline. We will make every effort to edit and publish within 72 hours of your draft submission.

Choosing a Category
Please only post in the categories provided and choose ONE category for each post you do.

Post Tags
Three tags per post maximium.

The More Tag
PLEASE make sure to put the MORE tag after the second paragraph of your post. In the WordPress editor, simply put

<!–more–>

after the second paragraph. This cuts off the post so it doesn’t show on the homepage in full. This is very important for design AND SEO purposes.

Post Images
Insert an image by the 2nd paragraph of the post as this is important for the post to be visually interesting, as well as how it is displayed when syndicated to Facebook. Use images that are not under copyright protection. A good source is www.creativecommons.org. Image names must be descriptive and rich in keywords. The words in names must be separated with dashes (not underscores) and an alt-tag description must be used.

Subheading and Bullet Formatting
All subheadings should use the H2 tag and not anything else (such as H3, Bold, etc). Additionally, if you have a numbered list it should use the numbered list tags:

and if you have an un-numbered bulleted list, it should use the un-ordered list tags:

<ol><li></li></ol>

and if you have an un-numbered bulleted list, it should use the un-ordered list tags:

<ul><li></li></ul>

Cross Linking
If you mention a topic you’ve previously written about or noticed that another contributor has covered, please link to the prior article.

Other Style Guidelines

  • Do not use abbreviations or acronyms (with a few well-known exceptions such as SEO, PPC, ROI)
  • Do not use exclamation points.
  • Use keywords in links, not generic words like “Click Here”.
  • Two links per post maximum unless deemed to be relevant content
  • No spammy links or anchor text
  • One link is allowed to your business site or blog within your bio. Links with keyword anchor text are not.

Post Publication Follow-up
After your post is published, please try to respond to comments. Commenters appreciate the acknowledgement even if is as simple as “I agree” or “Thanks for your comment.”