Contributor Guidelines

If you are interested in contributing an article to Holistic Health & Living, whether it's to build your writing resume or drive more traffic to your own website/blog, there are a few simple guidelines you must follow if you want to be published:

1. The post must be original. We do not republish old blog posts unless they have undergone a complete makeover, including a new title. Frankly, it's less time-consuming to start from scratch.


2. Cite your sources. This is the most important guideline. Your sources should be added to the end of the article in a 'References'section. We prefer MLA citation format, and use a loose form of it (see image below), but APA citation format would also be appropriate.


3. Do not cite Wikipedia! Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information because anyone can create an article on Wikipedia as well as alter the information in other people's articles.


4. Do not fill the article with unnecessary links. Content links should be used to keep an article brief. If the information found at the link location would significantly lengthen an article, please, do use a link but tell the reader why they should click it.


5. You can and should link to relevant information on your own site or blog. But do not link to sales pages or affiliate partners. Such links will be deleted, and your article may be rejected altogether.


6. Articles must be at least 800 words, but we prefer 1000+ word pieces. However, the most important factor is thoroughness. Have you explained the topic in-depth? If you have, the article may be any length.


7. Complete the biography section of your account. This information will appear under your article in the About the Author box. You may include a link to your website/blog and social media accounts there as well.

Additional Suggestions

The following are not truly "guidelines", they're really just suggestions for those who want to use this opportunity to build an audience for their own work:

• If you offer readers the most important information upfront they will trust you enough to continue reading once they have the information they were looking for. This is called the Inverted Pyramid Style of writing and using it will help to ensure that readers finish your articles and even seek you out for more information in your niche.


• Use the keyword/topic in the post title, h1 title, and first paragraph of the post. It's good to sprinkle the topic/keyword throughout the post, but don't get carried away. Apparently, Google sees this as a form of keyword spamming.


• It is not necessary for you to provide images for your article; we're happy to do that for our contributors. However, if you have images you would prefer to use in your article, email them to the administrator and they will be added to the media library and the article for you. You should be aware that the feature image (the image that appears on the Home page) must be at least 600px wide and 400px high. The post page image may be any size over 300px width and height, but larger images are easier to resize and alter to fit the content.

If there is any part of our guidelines that you find unclear, do not hesitate to ask for clarification.

If you are a blogger, in a similar or complimentary niche, or a Health Writer interested in getting a byline on Holistic Health & Living, email your topic ideas to: getpublished@holistichealthliving.com