Environmental Guest Post 

This guest post should be focused on helping others learn about the Ocean and why Ocean preservation efforts are of the utmost importance. Your guest post should also ideally teach folks about our nonprofit organization, Ocean Blue Project, and our work in removing microplastics from the Ocean. 

Please do not use this guest post to promote your business or any items for sale. backlinks to your website will not be allowed on the Ocean Blue website, unless you have made a donation to remove plastic from the Ocean. You can, however, use external links in the blog post, but all links must be relevant to your topic and be used to add authority and support your main idea. Please only use websites that are considered to be a source of the highest authority regarding your specific topic.  

Are you an Environmental Non-Profit?

To all of our Environmental Non-Profit friends, thank you so much for the incredible work you do to help the health of our planet. We would love to publish your uniquely written guest post for free after we review the topic and title.

You are more than welcome to include an author bio at the bottom of the post. This bio may include one external link to your website ONLY. Please do not link to a company or business you are writing in place of. The bio may NOT contain SEO phrases or keywords linked to the company or business you are writing for. Please view our Sponsored Post page for fewer restrictions on the topic and link placement. Keep in mind, all sponsored post links will have the rel=nofollow attribute added to them.

Submission Guidelines to Ocean Blue Project

•         Your blog post should have a minimum Klout Score of 40. The higher your Klout Score is the better.
•         When you submit your blog post via e-mail, please include the term “Guest Post” in the subject line.
•         Please try to make the post a minimum of 650 words in length.
•         Please keep your post topic related to the environment. If you are unsure if your topic fits this criterion, please send me an email before you write your blog post.
•         Guest posts submitted with SEO-targeted keywords/URLs in the author bio will be asked to purchase a sponsored post. However, an exemption will be made for non-profit and non-governmental organizations.
•         You must include 1 or 2 suggested pictures at least 670 pixels wide. See below for picture details.
•         You must include 2 embedded tweets as a link url in your submission. This helps make your post more dynamic and media-rich, which is engaging for your audience.

If we do publish a guest post from you, please feel free to promote the article on your social media to help further expand your audience. This is why we take your Klout score into consideration.

Other things to keep in mind:

Original/Unique Content Only: We will publish original content only. Your blog post must be written specifically for our blog and have not been posted elsewhere before. We check all submissions through Copyscape.com for plagiarism and content published on other websites. We will reject your submission if it does not pass copyscape or we find the article published elsewhere online.

Note to Submitters:

We reject more than 75% of guest post submissions due to poorly written or generic/boring articles. If you want an article on our site, it should be High-Quality content that is creative, interesting, and useful for readers. We are really looking for something that will educate, entertain, and enlighten our readers. Please keep in mind that this is an opportunity for you to grow your audience as well. So it is important to put your best foot forward when writing your guest post.

Submission of a guest post does not guarantee you will be published. We reserve the right to  be selective in choosing which articles we’d like to publish. That being said, we are not overly picky, we are just trying to avoid spammers. Additionally, we reserve the right to add the rel=nofollow attribute to any links we see fit. We also reserve the right to allow doFollow links that we agree with editorially.

Be Creative and Noteworthy: Check our site for topics that have already been previously covered. Your chances of your submission being accepted go down significantly if we’ve already covered a subject matter you’d like to submit.

Sources: Please link your sources for content so we can avoid any plagiarism issues. Please make sure your sources are of the highest caliber and authority.

Images/Videos: Please include photos or videos with your submission. This will draw your audience in and help bring your post to life. Images must be attached to your submission email as an extra attachment,  and be 670 pixels wide. Your images MUST be an original picture by you, from the public domain, from a corporate media publishing kit, or from creative commons (Flickr Creative Commons is a good source). Please link the source of your image. This link will not count as an external link in-post. Not having GREAT images included in your post, will lessen the chances of your submission being accepted.

Thank you for your time and interest in submitting to Ocean Blue Project. We look forward to pushing forth ocean education with you soon.

Please Note: Best Practices by Ocean Blue

• The template at the end of this document goes in line with the formatting needed to post each blog post in WordPress on the Ocean Blue Project website.
• You do not have to have x number of sections or x number of subheadings.
• You DO need to limit each block of text to 250-300 words. If it goes beyond that, break the section up into smaller blocks of text.
• Roughly one-half of the posts on the Ocean Blue Project website is read on smartphones. You need to keep this in mind when writing. Forget what your teachers told you all of those years in school. If a paragraph goes beyond two or three lines of text, not sentences, you need to start a new paragraph. This is because a “normal” paragraph of four or more sentences would cover more than the length of a phone screen. People walk away when that happens.
• Remember, write for the skimmer, diver, and for Google.
• The H2’s are for the skimmers. You can also use bold print when needed.
• The keyword/keyphrases are for Google. A lot of research has gone into providing low-competition keywords/keyphrases within the briefings on Trello. Please use these 5x or more in each post. Best practice is to put them:
  • At the beginning of the title
  • In the first paragraph
  • In some H2’s.
  • Spread out evenly in the body of text
• In addition, please propose a 160 character (not word) meta-description that uses the keyword/keyphrase. In Google Docs highlight the text, then select tools/word count. It will show you the character count there.
• Remember to provide a 1-3 sentence author bio at the end of the document.
• References are important, but we have to be careful not to create an imbalance of outbound links to inbound links, else our domain authority score will go way down. So, unless it really adds to a post to put a link, don’t. When you need to give someone credit for something they said, write the credit into the body of the text. No footnotes or linking is required.
• When linking to other Ocean Blue blog posts, please try not to say  “click here” or “at this link”. Just make it fit naturally within the sentence.
• Please note that, as a nonprofit organization, we cannot sell products or services. So, be careful that your writing does not promote or link to a product or service.
• When you first start writing, go ahead and set the share preferences to “anyone with this link” and “editor”.
• Our editorial team works on a busy schedule. You are welcome to turn in your draft early, but it may not be edited immediately. We have to pace ourselves to match our editorial calendar.
• When you turn in your draft, drag the card to the “Editing – Rick” column on Trello unless you have been assigned a different editor. Add a link to the Google doc and ping @rickwaggoner1
• WE ARE HERE TO HELP! REACH OUT IF YOU NEED ASSISTANCE. PLEASE DON’T GHOST US.

Do A Hemingway Analysis

• Use the free online Hemingway App to analyze your document – http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
• Aim for 6th Grade Reading Level – Follow Suggestions Provided
• This is the first step your editors will take when looking over your blog post. If the reading level is high or the word count is low, we’ll recommend you make changes before we continue editing.
• Minimize use of the passive voice
• Get rid of all red highlights that show sentences are very hard to read – Note: Occasionally a quote from a scientist will make this impossible. Such quotes should be put into your own words and referenced with a footnote.

Conduct A Plagiarism Check 

• Use https://www.quetext.com/ or a similar online plagiarism checker to make sure you didn’t accidentally plagiarize.

Blog Title – Title Formatting – Bold

—Cover Image Will Be Inserted Here—

Blog Title – H2 Formatting – Bold

Meta-description – 160 characters or less