Contribute Articles to Home Tips for Women

Thanks for contacting us about contributing an article to our homeowner library, where we have more than 1,500 articles which started when I had a handyman business.

We're open to sharing articles written by others IF YOU FOLLOW THESE GUIDELINES. My priority is building a homeowner library with quality content for my community of women (men too) homeowners. I am not interested in giving (or selling) inbound links to other websites. So I've come up with the following options:

• Sponsored blog post bundles (paid) – My team will write/edit the articles to maintain quality, with one revision based on sponsor feedback. The sponsor will receive one (1) do-follow link to their business website and no more than 3 total links to sponsor website/social media profiles allowed.
• Home pro “get to know you” package (free) – For dedicated home professionals (or their ghost writers), we have an introductory program requiring a commitment of four (4) articles. Once the first two are submitted, we'll review and provide feedback. Once all four articles are completed, we'll edit and schedule for publication.
• Home pro “expert network” package (free) – For business owners who understand the importance of content marketing and want to build a long term relationship with Home Tips for Women. With a 12 month commitment, we'll publish one of your articles monthly with two (2) do-follow links. You'll be able to participate in SEO training and social media cross-promotion activities.

The challenge is how to handle the six to eight requests we get every week. There's a lot of work to review guest authors, target websites and editing contributions to fit our editorial standards. We also need to insure guest posts benefit our uses, and aren't penalized by the search engines. These articles have helped shape our guidelines for guest contributors.

• Neil Patel's article, Don't Accept Guest Posts Unless You Follow These 7 Rules.
• Search Engine Journal's article, Google Issues a Warning About Guest Posting to Build Links.
• Created/sold by Neil Patel, Kissmetric's, The Real Truth about Google and Guest Blogging.
• From Hubspot, Marketing Guest Blogging Guidelines.

Target Audience

Our target audience is women (over 60% today) who are homeowners, or planning to buy a house. The age breakdown is spread evenly across age groups with 35 to 44 the largest group. So when you're writing, focus on their needs:

• Women ages 25 to 64 – single women homeowners, moms with kids and/or empty nesters.
• Lack knowledge of housing terminology, so define or link to glossary entries for 150/growing terms (alert us to new terms that need definition).

Guest Post Guidelines

Guest posts must be consistent in quality and format to what's on the website, for a consistent user experience. Here are the content requirements to be considered for publication on HomeTipsforWomen:

• Search our site to avoid writing about a topic already covered. Your best approach is to niche down and write an article about round windows where I've written Custom Windows in Many Shapes.
• Guest posts need a minimum number of words and photos. 1,200 words and 4 photos are required for rich copy posts like Front Door Styles & First Impressions. Photo heavy articles like Front Door Handles: How Many Styles are There? with 10/more photos, need a minimum of 600 words.
• Articles must be exclusive and cannot be republished on other sites later (we'll run CopyScape). Avoid content that's too promotional or overly critical. Submit in Word, fully formatted for transfer to WordPress.
  • Use Hubspot's content usage guidelines to share your article via email and/or social media.
• Photos submitted must be your original photos or ones obtained legally for use on HT4W. You can source photos from royalty free websites that we pre-approve or select photos from BigStock.com or DepositPhoto.com where we have accounts. We also use photos from free sites Pixabay.com and Unsplash.com. All photos will be tagged and compressed for use on HT4W.
• The magical links are important for SEO, but not at the expense of the user experience. So here's the deal:
  • You get 2 do-follow links (one in the body of the post, the second in your bio) as long as …
  • You research and include at least 2 internal links, pointing to related articles on HT4W (hint: some might be your own guest posts as you contribute more articles).
  • You are also encouraged to include other no-follow links to supporting information from expert websites like EnergyStar and the National Home Builder Association (oops, still have to write this glossary post).

Guest Posting Process

There's a lot of work involved in guest posts, for both the author and the publisher. We're going to invest our time in guest authors who want a long term relationship. We therefore require new contributors to submit four (4) articles to make this investment worth our time.

1. With your initial guest request, include the following for review:
   • Guest author's name, website url where article will link and top 3 social media platforms.
   • Identify how you will promote articles once published, e.g. which platforms and how often.
   • Links to 3 sample articles on topics similar to what you'll contribute.
   • Pitch 4 to 6 headlines you would like to write about, include proposed title and meta descriptions.
2. We'll review requests within 1 week. We'll look at your author and home expert qualifications, the quality of your website where articles will link and the sample articles provided. If approved, we will review the proposed headlines, approve them and/or make suggestions. We'll also identify keywords for SEO optimization to increase the visibility of your articles when published.
3. When submitting the four articles, we will also need:
   • Article, keyword and meta descriptions for each article plus photo files to include with post (in addition to seeing your placement within Word.
   • (First time) A short bio that's 200 to 250 characters (roughly 35 words). Your bio may include one outbound link. We currently use gravatars to include the author head shot in our blog posts, so make sure to set yours up to work with the email we use for correspondence.
4. HomeTips reserves the right to edit your content, update in the future and include calls-to-action related to other site content and/or affiliate links.
5. By submitting your content for publication, you are assigning ownership to 4 Walls 1 Roof LLC (owns HomeTipsforWomen.com). This prevents the content from being published elsewhere. It also allows Home Tips to republish if requested by a journalist, book author, etc. Your authorship will always go with content you submit.
6. You are encouraged to share your article on social media. Once your first 4 articles are scheduled for publication, you will be invited to join our private Facebook group where we share links to promote each other's content.

PS If you'd like a little more insight into the writing style we use here at HomeTipsforWomen.com, here's a bit more detail … and of course, feedback always appreciate.