Review and send

The last step before an article leaves you, described as "The last step: skim your article and the links it makes, then send it to the site's editors."

Your article is on one side, exactly as the editors will see it, with every link highlighted. The list of links is on the other.

Your article, with the links pulled out

"Your article exactly as the editors will see it. Highlighted links match the list on the right."

Click a highlighted link and the panel shows its wording, its destination, its root domain, the paragraph it sits in and what kind of link it is.

Read this like an editor would. The question is not whether each link works; it is whether each link is one you would defend if somebody asked why it is there. An editor reading a 1,500-word article with four links to your own pricing page is going to say no, and it is much cheaper to find that out here.

If the article has no links at all, the panel says so rather than looking broken.

At a glance

A summary of the package: how long the article is, how many links it makes, and how many external domains it touches.

A very short draft is called out, because most sites set a minimum and a draft under it will be rejected without being read.

Sites you link to

For each external domain, figures describing that site: an authority score out of 10, a worldwide rank where lower is stronger, and roughly how many meaningful domains link to it, along with when the underlying data was collected.

These are read-only. You do not type them and you are not asked to research anything.

What they are for is context. An editor deciding whether to publish your article wants to know whether you are linking their readers to something reputable. A link to a site with no authority and no inbound links is the kind of thing that gets an article sent back.

Use them as a prompt to check your own sources rather than as a score to optimise.

Sending

Send it to the editors? confirms, and explains what it does: "Below is your article with every link it makes, so you can check nothing surprises them. Sending locks this version while they read."

What locked means

Your draft becomes read-only while the editors have it. This is not a punishment; it is what makes review possible. Reviewing a document that changes underneath you is not reviewing.

It unlocks if they request changes. If they approve it, it stays as it is, because that is the version they approved.

After you send

The article moves to Sent for review and appears in your list. What happens next is theirs: they can approve it, ask for changes, or decline it. You will get a notification either way.

See tracking your guest posts.

Where to go next

When the editors ask for changes is the most likely next step, and it is a normal one.