Contributor Guidelines

These guidelines apply to all contributed and sponsored content published on The Industry Leaders. They exist to keep our site useful for readers, credible with search engines, and safe for everyone who publishes here — including you.

Content that does not meet these standards will not be published. Where content is already live and later found not to meet them, we may update or remove it.

What we publish

The Industry Leaders covers business, leadership, entrepreneurship, careers, finance, marketing, and adjacent professional topics. Content should be genuinely useful to a professional audience — practical, informed, and written to inform rather than to sell.

Our readers come to us for insight from and about the people leading their industries. That's the test every contribution has to meet. The subject matter matters less than the intent: a managing partner writing about how AI is changing legal discovery is exactly right for us; a search-optimised guide to hiring a personal injury lawyer in a particular city is not — even though both are "law" content.

What makes a strong contribution

Three things characterise the contributed work we publish. If a piece doesn't meet all three, it isn't right for us.

A named author writing in their own field. Articles are bylined by a real, identifiable individual with genuine standing in the subject they're writing about. We don't publish under firm names, agency names, or generic bylines.
Insight a reader would seek out on its own merits. The piece should leave a reader better informed about a topic, or better informed about the author's expertise. Content written primarily to rank for a search term doesn't meet this bar.
Links that act as credentials, not funnels. Outbound links should point to the author or their organisation — a profile, a bio, a company site. Links to service pages, location-specific landing pages, or conversion pages are not what contributed content is for.

If you're unsure whether a piece meets these standards, ask before commissioning the writing. We'd rather have that conversation early.

How we publish contributed content

The Industry Leaders publishes some content produced by approved third-party contributors on a compensated basis. This content is published transparently:

Every contributed article carries a visible disclosure at the top of the piece identifying it as sponsored content.

Outbound links to a contributor's own or client websites are marked with the rel="sponsored" attribute, in line with Google's guidelines on paid links.

We handle both of these automatically. You do not need to add them yourself, but your content must be compatible with them (see below).

You keep the byline and the credit. We keep the disclosure and the link attributes. This split is what allows us to publish your content without putting our domain — and therefore your placement — at risk.

Content standards

Write for the reader first. Articles must be genuinely useful, original, and well-written. Thin content that exists only to carry a link will be declined.

No endorsement or superlative language. The Industry Leaders does not endorse, rank, rate, or accredit any company, product, or service in contributed content. Titles and body copy must not use language such as "best," "top-rated," "#1," "recommended," "trusted," "approved," or "you can trust" in a way that implies our endorsement.

Roundups must be informational, not accreditations. List-style articles are welcome when they inform the reader (for example, "Approaches to X" or "What to consider when choosing Y"). They must not present themselves as an authoritative ranking or an award, and must not imply that inclusion reflects a judgement by The Industry Leaders.

No ranking of named individuals. Contributed content may not rank, score, or list named individuals. Recognition of individuals is reserved for our independent editorial programme and cannot be purchased or influenced.

Real authorship only. Content must be attributed honestly. Fabricated author identities, fake personas, or invented credentials are not permitted and will result in removal of content and termination of the publishing arrangement.

Relevant, appropriate topics. Content must be suitable for a professional business audience and must not promote anything misleading, unlawful, adult, or reputationally damaging. We decline content that facilitates academic dishonesty, evades detection systems, or similar.

Accurate claims. Statistics, quotes, and factual claims must be accurate and, where significant, sourced.

Content we don't accept

To protect the integrity of the site and the value of publishing here, we don't accept content in the following areas:

Adult content
Gambling or casino
Cryptocurrency, or any content promoting these
Geo-targeted local service content (for example, articles built around a service and a city)
Content written primarily to rank in search rather than to inform a reader
Any piece where an outbound link is effectively the reason the article exists
Anything defamatory, misleading, or factually unsupported
Anything we judge to fall below our editorial standards

If you're unsure whether a topic fits, ask before submitting.

Editorial review

We reserve the right to review all contributed content before it goes live. We may edit for compliance with these guidelines, request changes, or decline a piece. Our editorial decision is final. Review is what keeps this site a credible place to be published — it protects the value of every placement on it.

Why these standards matter to you

Search engines increasingly penalise sites that host large volumes of undisclosed or low-oversight commercial content. If our domain were penalised, every placement ever published here would lose its value at once. These guidelines are how we keep the domain healthy — which is how we keep your placements worth having.

For more on how we separate editorial recognition from commercial content, see our Editorial & Advertising Policy.

Questions? Contact us at contact@theindustryleaders.org.

Last updated: August 2026