Editorial guidelines

Every submission to PressSphera is held to the standards on this page, whether it arrives as a free editorial pitch or a paid placement. Content that does not meet them is declined. Serious breaches — the categories under what we refuse outright — end the relationship permanently, and where the law requires it we will report them.

Quality standards

Every submission must be:

• Original, and not published or indexed anywhere else at the time you send it.
• Written in clear, accurate, grammatically correct English.
• At least 800 words. Long enough to be useful, tight enough to be read.
• Substantive and genuinely informative — written because it is worth reading, not to host a link.
• Factually accurate, with statistics and claims supported by credible, verifiable sources.

Accuracy and sourcing

Factual claims need to be checkable. Where a piece states a statistic, a study result or a market figure, it should link to the primary source rather than to a secondary article that quotes it. If a claim cannot be sourced, it either comes out or it gets rewritten as what it actually is: an opinion.

Originality and AI

Work must be original and unpublished. We do not accept syndicated pieces, spun rewrites, or articles duplicating content already live elsewhere. We check.

We accept work where AI assisted the drafting. We do not accept work that no person has reviewed. A byline is a claim of responsibility for what the piece says, and someone has to be able to stand behind it. Drafts that read as unedited machine output are returned for revision.

Links

A Standard placement carries 1do-follow link to the advertiser’s site; a Featured placement carries 2. On top of that allowance every article carries one further link that must point either to a credible external source substantiating a claim in the piece or to a second website, chosen for editorial relevance rather than for SEO value. That is 3 links in the body at most.

Accepted placements are published as do-follow links; we do not add nofollow to them. Links still have to earn their place, and an editor may move or reword one so it reads naturally. We reserve the right to remove, replace or reassign any link at our editorial discretion, including after publication.

Author bio links do not count against that allowance. A bio may carry one link, to the contributor’s own site or professional profile.

Links must not point at:

• Gambling or betting platforms, licensed or otherwise
• Adult content platforms
• Payday loan and high-cost credit providers
• Sites selling prescription medication without requiring a valid prescription
• Sites facilitating or promoting activity illegal under UK law

Disclosure of paid placements

Every paid placement carries a Sponsored label above the headline and on listings, before a reader engages with the piece rather than at the foot of it. This is not negotiable and cannot be bought out.

Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and the ASA CAP Code, publishing paid editorial without identifying it as advertising is automatically an unfair commercial practice. The label protects you as much as it protects the reader.

Any commercial relationship behind a piece has to be disclosed to us at submission, even where no money reaches us — if an author has a stake in what they are writing about, say so. Undisclosed commercial content is the one thing that gets a contributor permanently declined.

What we refuse outright

The following is declined under all circumstances, at any price, in the article body, the author bio, and the destinations it links to. Submitting it is a breach of the warranties you give us when you send us copy.

Regulated sectors

If you advertise in financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, cosmetic treatments or legal services, you are responsible for ensuring your content meets the rules of your sector before you send it. We may ask for evidence of authorisation, and failing to disclose your regulatory status is a breach of the warranties you give us.

What else we decline

• Purely promotional pieces, including thinly disguised product pages.
• Content in regulated areas giving specific medical, legal or financial advice.
• Articles built around a link rather than around something worth reading.
• Off-topic pieces. We publish Technology, AI, Business, Finance, Health & Beauty and Lifestyle.
• Anything that would need a rewrite from scratch to meet the standards above.

Editing

We copy-edit for house style, structure and clarity, and we will add headings and images where a piece needs them. One round of revisions is included. We do not change the substance of an argument without talking to the author: minor edits for grammar and formatting are ours to make, but material changes to factual claims or meaning are agreed with you first.

Corrections

If something is wrong, we correct it. Substantive corrections are noted on the article rather than made silently, and the update date changes. Trivial fixes such as typos are made without a note. Report an error through the contact page, with the article link and what is wrong.

Permanence

Accepted posts stay published. We do not remove or no-index a piece after the fact, and we do not quietly retire placements once they are paid for. We will update a piece where the facts change, and we reserve the right to unpublish anything found to breach these guidelines — undisclosed commercial content, plagiarism, or anything in the refused list above.

Ready to pitch? The submission form is here. What we do with the data you send is covered by the privacy policy.

These guidelines are published by PressSphera and apply to every property we operate.