Stackify Blogging Guidelines

If you would like to be a guest contributor to the Stackify blog please reach out to [email protected]

Stackify’s website and blog attract more than 1,000,000 monthly visits. We aim to provide high-quality content that is valuable to the developer community. We’re always looking for contributors to share relevant information to our users. If you have technical writing skills and knowledge of the software development industry, we’d love to hear from you.

Please take some time to review our guidelines. It will give you a better understanding of the type of content, tone, and format that we want to publish.

Writing Best Practices

Well, you’re the expert. So, let’s hear what you have to say.

Join our community of over 100 contributing writers in providing fellow tech junkies with valuable high-quality content. Our readers come to Stackify bloggers like yourself for answers to today’s hot topic questions in technology. They’re looking to be educated, informed, and entertained. Here are some of the reasons our contributing authors choose to write for our audience:

• Nearly 1,000,000 monthly users
• 90,000 backlinks
• Over 13,000 Keywords ranked on the first page of Google
• 650+ blogs published

The most successful blogs usually include the following best practices:

Article Title:

• Include the target keyword in the title (preferably the first word)
• Try to include keywords such as Tutorial, Code Examples, Tips, and numbered lists
• Try to include the value they’ll get from reading the article
• You can take a look at our other blogs here.

First paragraph: 

• Include the main keyword
• Grab the readers attention
• Present the pain point
• Address the benefit of solving the problem
• Short teaser on how to solve the problem

Content/Body

• Use short paragraphs/lots of whitespace/bullet points when possible
• Try to include a relevant image or code snippets every 4-5 paragraphs to break up the text
• Include 3-5 internal Stackify links (relevant posts or pages)
  • Internal and external links, as well as their anchor text, are strong signals that tell Google what you’re writing about and the associated content that you value.
• Include at least 2 high domain authority external links.
• Use Moz Bar to get authority rankings.
• Avoid linking to other APM providers like New Relic, Datadog, or AppDynamics
• When writing about code, include snippets.
• Give industry insights and data to back up your points.
• Include how an APM tool, like Retrace, or a Dynamic Code Profiler, like Prefix, can be used with your topic.  For example, when writing about Kubernetes best practices, mention how Stackify Retrace can be used to improve the performance of your applications running on Kubernetes.

Tools

• HemingwayApp – Readability, grade level, sentence complexity
• Grammarly – Spellcheck on steroids
• Moz Bar – Check domain and page authority

Headings

Try to always use headings. We use H1, H2, H3, and H4 headings in our posts. Be sure to properly set these styles. People tend to read the first few sentences and then skim blogs looking for a header that addresses their problem. Once they identify that header they take a deeper dive.

• H1 – The title of the article
• H2 – The main sections of the article.
• H3 – Sub sections of an H2
• H4 – Less used sub sections of an H3

Images

Include a royalty free image related to your article.  Your image should be sized 1024 x 512 pixels.  Our favorites are Pixabay and Unsplash.

Keep in Mind

• It helps to have a good understanding of SEO, but always prioritize good writing over SEO tactics.
• Sometimes we have edits or suggestions but we’ll never post without your consent.

So, what’s the next step?

Because we have such a large community of writers, we have to be strategic about what content we take and what content we can’t.  We have five steps in place to make sure your content makes it onto our blog.  

Step One: Email us at [email protected] and let us know what you’d like to write about and why you think it’s a good fit. It’s always a good idea to link to a post or two on your own blog that you’re particularly proud of. (If you have a blog, that is. It’s not a requirement.) 

Step Two: We will provide you with a topic based on what you are interested in writing about.  We have a long list based on our extensive keyword research so we can work together to find the best topic for you.  

Step Three: Once we have decided on a topic, we will have you send over an outline.  We strive to publish content that is applicable for our highly technical, developer readership and want to make sure your article will be compatible with that.  

Step Four: After approving your outline, send over a draft of your article.  We will work together to make any edits needed.  

Please note: Multiple members of Stackify’s marketing team edit each guest blog article.  Sometimes, your article will be looked over by our product or development team, which can take a bit longer.  If you are looking to expedite the editing process, please ensure that your article is free from grammatical or technical errors and includes information about our products, Retrace and Prefix.  

Step Five: Once you approve our edits, we move forward with adding your blog to our publishing schedule.  Usually, our blog publishing schedule is booked out two to three months in advance.  We will schedule your article to publish as soon as we can. 

Please note: Once your article is published, we reserve the right to optimize your article for SEO purposes.  

Thanks, and welcome aboard!

A Little Bit About Us

After one too many unexpected late night code fires, we went searching for a set of application performance management tools to help us put an end to it. What we found told us what was broken, but lacked the ability to tell us why our applications failed, or how to maintain them and prevent the potential dumpster fire. So, we built Retrace and Prefix to do exactly that. From pre-production to deployment, it is our belief that when our 1,200 customers spend less time fighting technology they spend more time releasing it, and those new applications make the world a better place for all of us.