Blog & Web Copy
MANDATORY FORMATTING GUIDELINES
I. STYLE/FORMATTING DIRECTIONS
1. Headline Guidelines:
Always start a blog with a full headline/topic. Capitalize all first letters. Bold it. Center it.
Example: write a 500 word article on keyword “banking in Austria.”
10 Tips for Maximize Your Experience While Banking in Austria
or
5 Tips for Finding The Best Solutions While Banking in Austria
Ideal Title Length: 5 Words Min/ 13 words max.
Use NUMBERS and how to lists. Do not be super general.
Use adjectives and be creative! Hubspot’s title examples:
 "10 B2B Companies With Brilliant Facebook Pages"
 "Think Facebook's Just for B2C? These 10 Companies Will Change Your Mind"
 "Facebook for B2B: 10 Companies That Could Teach You a Thing or Two"
BAD Header examples: “How To Clean Your Dog,” “Teaching A Canine Best Tricks,” etc.
2. One Space After Each Sentence.
3. Body Headers: Use An Opening Subheader, A Closing Subheader, and Numbered Lists
with Suheaders. Never have less than two subheaders in a blog. Blogs that do not have these
will be sent back for revision. Examples of correctly formatted body blogs:
 EW Blog: 20 SEO Experts & Resources You Should Be Following Today
 SocialMediaExaminer’s How To Create a Social Media Marketing Plan
You can also use bulleted lists, for example see this Guide to Guest Blogging.
Your opening subheaders should be after the first, second or third paragraph, and should be at
least 6 words long. Longer is usually better for subheaders.
Example opening subheader, before a numbered list:
Human Interest Factor: 3 Methods Ge Won At Doing
You also need a closing subheader, and another 2-5 if the piece is very long and needs to be
broken up.
Example ending subheader:
Conclusion: Doing Content Marketing Right Takes Personal Investment
3. Auto-Formatting Removal: Do NOT allow Word’s auto format. Instead, delete (go back)
and remove formatting.
Instead of this:
1. Be Creative with Your Headline. One simple way to nail engagement with your
audience is to advertise an awesome headline that delivers a punch.
Do this:
1. Be Creative with Your Headline. One simple way to nail engagement with your audience is
to advertise an awesome headline that delivers a punch.
That way it can be pasted clean into a Wordpress blog post.
II. WRITING RULES
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Use only ONE space after each sentence.
Bold each subheader and do not use indentation in any paragraph(s). See below example.
Limit heavily the use of exclamation points in informative article content.
No run-on sentences.
No sentence fragments.
Proper punctuation is mandatory – be especially careful of common pitfalls, such as
apostrophes in possessive “its”.
Do not plagiarize. EVER.
Stay positive instead of negative. Instead of opening with Have you had a tired day at the
office, and you just want to sink in a chair with a bottle of wine and never have to go
back again? Try Paradise Islands! Try this: A sunny beach, a bottle of wine, your
favorite slow rock track, and the ocean skyline in your view. Try Paradise Islands.
You can start with a negative idea if you follow the pain point- solution formula for the
article. As an example.
“Now that your employee years are done, you have a lot of things to look forward to for
your retirement. But, are you worried you won’t find a good and affordable place to
relocate to, after you retire? Try Ecuador, the favorite destination for many retirees who
have chosen to settle outside of the US.”
Do not overly sell in any web content or article, either the client or competition.
AMERICAN SPELLING and no variations, unless otherwise specified. Example: Cozy
vs. Cosy, Jeopardize vs. Jeopardise, Americanize vs. Americanise.
Familiarize yourself with the client’s site.
o Review their “Home” and “About Us” page to ensure that facts (such as years in
service, background, experience, etc., are accurately reflected).
Do not make guarantees or dubious claims – avoid claiming that the client is “the best” or
“the leading” or “the top” anything. Avoid hyperbole and exaggeration, and stick to the
facts presented on the site.
Avoid referring to variables such as dates, prices, model numbers, etc. as these may
change or unless it is specifically required.
Review every article for spelling, and grammar. Use spellcheck, but also review
manually to ensure you haven’t missed any errors that spellcheck wouldn’t catch.
Blogs that contain blatant errors that would have been caught with a simple spellcheck
may not be paid for and will result in loss of future assignments.
III. LINKING & SEO RULES.
We now require citations placed mandatory in every blog you write. These are simply high
quality links that you a) first verify are high quality with the MozBar b) place in the content on
the right words.
How to create a blog citation:
1. For every claim, event, notable person or reference to a blog/content piece, back up with
a citation (link). See examples.
2. Download the MozBar and use the DA to check the site you will link to. It’s very simple.
The MozBar is free: https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar To explain the DA: this means
Domain Authority. Moz defines that as metrics that reflect the strength of the website as
a whole, influencing the ranking potential, competitive difficulty, and value of backlinks
from any page throughout the domain.
3. The point of getting the MozBar is so you can check the DA of every website you link to.
Except for the client’s site, all sites you link to MUST be a DA of 50 or more. This places
a quality citation in the content.
LINK STYLE RULES (These must be followed)
When you are linking from a guest blog (very common), name the author of that blog – don’t
just say the guest blog itself. Exceptions can be if you don’t see the author, or if they have a
relatively crazy name that would make the content look weird (this can happen!). In that case,
just say an author at. This is all about giving credit where credit is due.
When you place the link, either link to: a) the author name b) the blog name c) the main thought
in the quote. Please do not be lazy and place the link on one word. Ask, what would the reader be
comfortable to click on? What makes sense?
Correct citation examples:
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“Zac Johnson, a blogger at Search Engine Journal, says that a good rule of thumb when
creating content is to do it better than your competitors.”
“A Buffer guest blog author, who is one of the members of Canva staff, recently outlined
how the online graphic software got its recent tremendous blog growth.”
“The Ultimate Content Marketing Conference, also known as #ThinkContent, went down
this year on May 2015.”
How Many Links?
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Natural Links Throughout: Links past the first paragraph: Don’t insert links in the
first paragraph, but anywhere afterwards. Relevancy is key: don’t count your links, but
don’t overuse links. Only link to one site once; don’t link more than 5-6 times in 500
words, unless the link is high quality and absolutely needs to be there to back up a claim.
1 Link: Client Site: Include 1 link back to a page or blog on the client’s site in a brief
ending sentence in the blog. Example: Visiting Angels Living Assisted Services is one of the
most trusted homecare services in America. Visit our Springfield, MO branch today to see if
we’re right for you.
IV. KEYWORD RULES.
General: Keyword density should be under 3%. This means 5-10 keywords in a 500-600
word article. The main thing is to use the keywords as they feel natural, and use
variations/related keywords to these.
Keyword Usage: If it sounds awkward, use the keyword with variation by utilizing stop words
or synonyms. Utilizing stop words: Examples of “stop words” are: in, at, of, the, is, was, on, has,
had, have, etc. If you have the keyword “SEO California”, using it with a stop word can yield to
"SEO in California". Visit this link for more examples: http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-stopwords.html.
Utilizing synonyms: You can rearrange the words in the target keywords to come up with
“synonyms". Please remember that you must retain the original context of the actual keyword
phrase.
Keyword: risk management Indiana. Synonym: indiana risk management
If it sounds natural and it is not awkward, mention it as is.
When dealing with awkward keywords, regardless of the instructions on mentioning it "as is",
always utilize stop words to make the keyword sound natural.
 What is an awkward keyword?
An “awkward” keyword phrase is a phrase that does not sound grammatically correct and note,
an “awkward” keyword typically is a keyword phrase wherein the main keyword precedes a
geographical location (also known as geo-target). It is called “awkward” since it does not sound
grammatically correct and it would be a challenge to mention it “as is” without being too obvious
that you are targeting that keyword phrase.
Example: Awkward keyword: cupcakes new york. Utilizing stop words: cupcakes in new york
Keyword Structure:
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A. The most important keywords (primary) are to be used in the Title and first paragraph
of the content.
> Think of the use of keywords (primary, secondary, supportive, synonyms) as an
inverted pyramid.
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The most important keywords are to be utilized in the beginning of the content and then
use derivatives and synonyms of the primary keyword throughout the rest of the article.
The only exception is if you are given more than one keyword per article, in that case,
focus on the keywords given.