If you’ve submitted an article recently to SEJ, you may have noticed we’ve made some changes. In an effort to offer the most awesome content out there, we’ve made a few updates to both our publishing process and our article requirements. We’d like you to know what we’re up to and why.
Our Goals:
- Decrease the time it takes to get posts published
- Increase transparency in the content review process
- Increase transparency of who our authors are
- Improve content quality overall
“Draft-to-Publish” Process
So, what happens when you’ve finished an awesome post and pressed that blue WordPress button “Submit for Review”? We’ve created this snazzy flow chart that lays out the stages that your post will go through:
“Submit for Review”: This stage is where I will do an initial “thumbs up/thumbs down” review of your post. I’m looking for unique, fresh content. The criteria here is a little hard to define other than “Must be Amazeballs!”, and it may be contextual, too. For example, a post might be awesome but we may turn it down if we’ve just published a similar post.
“Needs Copyedit”: This stage is where our copyeditor Danielle gets out her red pen. She corrects for:
- Typos, grammar, content flow.
- Links. If the link is germane to the content, it stays. But include a link 4 times? Use keywords or calls-to-action? Too self-promotional? The red pen will spring into action.
- Full-Disclosure. If you reference your company in the article, your connection as the author needs to be made clear. So instead of “ABC SEO published a case study…” it should read “My company, ABC SEO, published a case study…”.
- Images. This is a significant change from our previous policy. Please include at least one image per article. All images must be either creative commons licensed or have the creator’s permission for use.
- All photos must have attribution at the end of the article. Like this “Image credit: Creative Commons”Why? Because getting sued for copyright infringement sucks.
- Screenshots must include time stamps. Why, you ask? ‘Cause websites change!
“Editor Hold”: Your post draft goes here when we have asked for changes and are waiting for your response.
- You will receive an email notification of the change requests. You can also login and view the editor’s requests in the field Editorial Comments.
The sooner you respond, the sooner your post will get published. If your post is in this status and you have not seen anything from us, please let us know: editor <at> searchenginejournal.com.
“Ready for Scheduling”: All post drafts that have been copyedited and are ready to be published go here.
“Scheduled“: Our goal is to get down to ~2 weeks from the time you submit your post draft to publish. We are not there yet. But we are working on it!
Your (Complete) Author Profile: Readers want to know who you are
Your author’s bio is displayed at the end of every article you write for SEJ. Readers want to know who you are. We at SEJ want to know who you are! It’s in everyone’s best interests to have complete profiles.
Please have the following listed in your profile, or else you’ll be hearing from someone on the team:
- A LinkedIn PERSONAL profile
- Two out of three personal profiles linked: Google+, Twitter, Facebook (a company Facebook page is OK)
- Text only in the bio statement (HTML and links don’t work)
- Author image must be a photograph or illustration of the author himself/herself. No logos, abstract designs, Rorschach inkblots. You get the idea.
Want more info on the editorial guidelines? We’ve updated them here. Note that they are a “living” set of rules and we will be updating them over time.
Thanks to all our contributors and community of readers for your suggestions and support– especially Larry Kim for his enthusiasm, passion and positive ideas. 🙂
Questions? Feedback? Drop us a line at editor <at> searchenginejournal.com. It would be great to hear from you.
