How to Format your Article
We strive to have every article on our site reach the broadest possible audience over the long-term. To accomplish this goal, we are committed to ensuring each post is optimized so that search engines rank it as high as possible. There are a number of strategies that we ask our authors to incorporate into their content. We believe these steps will help ensure your article is seen by the largest audience.
Keywords
Keywords or phrases help search engines understand what the story is about (for example, “new treatments for gout” or the “risks of knee surgery.” )
In general, keywords should appear in:
- Titles
- Headings
- Subheadings
- Within the first 100 words of content
- Throughout your content
Use keywords or phrases naturally. That means they have to make sense, fit into the story and be grammatically correct. Avoid “stuffing” your story with keywords.
There are many resources that can help you understand how to determine and use keywords for your topics, such as SEMRush, Also Asked, and Google Trends.
Please try to follow this organization of content:
1. Title
- Begin with the Main Keyword
- Avoid catchy titles that don’t help a reader understand what the topic is about. Example: WRONG: “You Can Beat the Odds” RIGHT: “How a Plant-Based Diet Can Help You Lose Weight
- Use an online headline analyzer to provide an SEO-friendly title (We reserve the right to change the title, however, to be sure that it is optimized for search).
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Subtitle
- This will appear just below the title and can be used to highlight the key point of the story
3. Introductory paragraph
- A 3-4 sentence introduction to the topic. Please use the target keyword within the first 100 words.
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Subheadings
- Please use keywords, keyword phrases and their synonyms in subheadings.
- Limit your content under each subheading to less than 300 words.
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Bullet points
Present important points as bullet points instead of long lists of items in a single sentence
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Summary or Concluding Statement
Add an appropriate call to action if it’s relevant to your story. Example: “Leave a comment to let us know how you feel.”
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Featured Image & Other Media
The featured image is what appears at the top of your story and encourages readers to engage with your article. Please refer to our Submission Guidelines for more details on the Featured Photo. You may include other images, video, or other media within the body of the content. It’s required that you either own or have permission to use whatever media you submit with your story.
And make sure not to forget…
Internal Links
Internal links are links to other pages on our site. We encourage you to become familiar with what we have already published on your topic. If you find an article on our site that relates to your article, please link to it.
- Make sure the linking word or phrase for internal links is relevant to your story’s keywords or phrases.
- If we have a story that is related to your topic, but it doesn’t work to link to it in the body of the story, please type in caps where you think we could include it as a related story link.
- We may also add additional related links to your article.
- These types of links help enhance TDWI’s Domain Authority and the Authority of your story. All of this helps with SEO.
- Here is an example of what a related story link looks like: Here are other stories about sleep on TDWI
Author Bio
You may include a brief author bio, credentials, headshot, and links to your website and social media. For more author bio instructions, please refer to our Submission Guidelines.
Article Length
- Articles should be at least 1000 words, but we encourage longer articles when writers want to dive more deeply into a topic.
- 1500-3500 word in-depth articles tend to do better in Google search. However, please do not pad your article with repetitive information just to reach a certain word length.
Cite Sources Properly
We prefer that you use references that are either in peer-reviewed literature (e.g., from PubMed) or come from high quality medical sites (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Medscape, etc.). We ask that you provide a link to the reference or use endnotes so that our readers can easily learn where the information was derived from. These types of links increase the Domain Authority of TDWI and the overall authority of your story.
- Make sure to always put concepts into your own words and avoid unintentionally copying sentences from research materials. Double-check your work for unintentional copying by using Plagiarism Checker.
- Please use endnotes if you have references that you haven’t provided a direct link to within your article. Writers must us JAMA citations. You can find examples of JAMA citation style here. Use a superscript to cite the content.
- We welcome you to include additional materials for readers. List any: books, articles, videos, social posts, tweets, or PDFs that can help strengthen your content.
Ensure Readability
All of our articles, even those about technical or complicated medical issues, need to be accessible to a wide variety of readers. Don’t “dumb down” or oversimplify your topic. Instead, use language that makes complicated topics easier to understand for the general health information consumers who are searching for answers to their health-related questions.
Use standard English conversational language. Explain or link to definitions of words or concepts that required further explanation. The goal is to make it easy for your readers to understand your content.
Proofread
Please make sure grammar, spelling, structure are error-free. We suggest running your piece through Grammarly* to help with proofreading. Double-check the validity of your sources. It is a top priority to keep our information accurate and up-to-date.