Detailed content guidelines

For Tier-1

There are no more ready topics to choose from for Tier-1. You need to choose a topic yourself, write an article, and submit it. Once again: you must submit a complete article, not just a topic suggestion!!

How to choose a topic

• It should be something that you know well (a specific L1 blockchain, a major DeFi project, a blockchain game, a comparison between exchanges, a service like staking or yield farming, an important recent event, a famous crypto entrepreneur etc.).
• It needs to be relevant, timely, and interesting to the wider audience. So, for example, a  small-cap crypto project that you worked for as an ambassador before is probably NOT relevant.
• It’s better to pick a narrower topic and go into detail than take a wide topic and cover it superficially.
• Remember: the main reason we post articles on the site is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We want users to see our articles in Google search results.. So, the article should be about something that users are interested in and would Google for more information..
• Absolutely no promo for other projects.
• Only original content. You may not submit an article that has already been published somewhere else (like Medium).

How Tier-1 articles are scored and rewarded

• Zero tolerance for plagiarism: if we find plagiarized sections in the article, you’ll get a strike (score=1). A close rewrite is also considered plagiarism. So yes, you can get a strike for an article you have suggested yourself.
• If the article is of extremely poor quality, you can also get a strike.
• Any score below 3 is NOT rewarded with any cash bounty.
• Along with the score, you will receive suggestions to improve the article and increase your score. You can only make edits once and within 1 week in the same file. Once you are done, reply to the scorer’s comment in the file, saying that the edits have been made for the article to be checked again. Note that the second score will be final.
• In order to be promoted to Tier-2, you need to score 4 or higher at least 3 times (and have a good leaderboard rank).
• Scoring depends on the content of the article, as well as its formatting, structure, spelling, and grammar.

For Tier-1 and Tier-2: how to structure and format an article

Before you begin: check out this  example of what the structure and formatting should look like. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vsg-LGUUKu-Swk7NFQJsBeELIFyJF1G2LgjJz75iEyk

Important: your article must be in English.

Also important: you must provide editing rights to the document.

Note that the scoring criteria are more stringent for Tier-2: the same low-quality article can get a 2 if written by a Tier-1 ambassador but will be scored 1 (a strike) if it’s by a Tier-2 ambassador.

Structure

1. AIM FOR QUALITY. Your article should be interesting to read and truly informative. Avoid general, superficial statements. Every sentence should add value for the reader. One problem that we’ve been seeing with ambassador articles is that they do not go into sufficient detail and lack deep research. .
2. Do proper research. You can’t write a good article based on just 1 or 2 sources. Prepare to go through at least 10 sources (30-50 is normal).
3. No plagiarism. It’s not just direct copy-pasting that counts as plagiarism: close rewrites are plagiarism, too. Example: If you take a sentence like “Solana allows developers to build fast, secure, low-fee dApps ranging from games to liquidity mining protocols,” and rewrite it as “Solana makes it possible to create fast, safe, cheap decentralized applications that range from gaming projects to yield farming protocols,” it is plagiarism. Taking sections from other articles and rewriting them by changing some words but leaving the structure intact is plagiarism.
4. At least 1,000 words -- This is very important for SEO.
5. Title: The title must be informative and no more than 50 characters long. ‘Decentralized Exchanges’ is NOT a good title. ‘The Top 4 Decentralized Exchanges on Solana’ is better.
6. Lead: The article should begin with an informative, relevant lead that summarizes the content and its importance. (No generic leads like ‘In today’s world, blockchain is very important’, please). The lead must mention the subject of the article.
7. Sections: The article must be divided into sections.he biggest sections should be divided into subsections.
8. Summary: Add a short bulleted summary (TLDR) at the beginning. Your score won’t suffer if there is no summary, but it will improve if there is one.
9. Logic:Every sentence should be logically connected to the previous one, and every paragraph should follow from the one that precedes it. The narrative should progress coherently.
10. Answer the key question at the start. If your article is about PancakeSwap, consider naming the first section something like ‘What is PancakeSwap?’ and starting it with a definition: ‘PancakeSwap is….’. This makes the article more SEO-friendly, as it responds to the search intent of those users who Google ‘what is PancakeSwap’.

But! If the article begins with a bulleted summary (a good idea!), then the first point on the list will probably be ‘PancakeSwap is ….’, in which case you can start the first section after the TLDR differently.

11. Avoid long general introductions. Don’t start with general sections like ‘How cryptocurrency works’ or ‘The evolution of blockchain technology’ – unless that’s what your article is about. Stick to the point.

12. Integrating Pontem and Aptos into the article. Try to do this cleanly, without making it seem like an obvious advertisement.. (This can take some very creative thinking, but it’s always possible).

Example: If the article is about Solana, you could talk about Solana’s outages and then say that because of these breakdowns, Solana may face serious competition from blockchains that are equally fast but more reliable, such as Aptos. Then turn to Pontem from there.

In addition, you should add a ‘blurb’ – 1 or 2 paragraphs about what Pontem does at the end (a small section called ‘About Pontem’ or something similar).

VERY IMPORTANT! Be careful with what you put in the blurb. Anyone who writes that Pontem is a platform building for Diem/Silvergate/Meta/Kusama will get an automatic strike. Why? Because you can’t be an ambassador if you don’t know what the project does.

13. For tutorials: if an article is a tutorial, you should go through the process yourself and screenshot every step. If the process requires that you spend a little bit of crypto, do so – it will be added to the reward (but not more than $5).

Formatting

1. Font: use Arial, size 12.
2. Text alignment: justified (it’s better for readability than left-aligned text).
3. Correct header styling: H1 or Title for the title, H2 for the main sections, H3 for subsections, H4 for subsections within H3.
4. Links. Add links when mentioning projects, numbers/stats, people, and events, as well as when citing a source. Anchor links to small, relevant chunks of text, not to the whole sentence. Having a lot of links is good for SEO.
5. Visuals. At least 4 images per article, though a tutorial will naturally have more. All visuals should be relevant and high quality. A small logo isn’t considered a proper visual! Take actual screenshots when possible. When using ready visuals or photos from another site, credit the source.
6. Capitalize proper names. All proper names (names of projects, blockchains, exchanges, people etc.) must be capitalized. If you write ‘binance’ instead of ‘Binance’, your score will suffer.
7. Grammar and spelling. Be very careful here. Anyone who writes ‘Etherium’ instead of ‘Ethereum’ will get a strike :)

For Tier-2 ambassadors

Making an article SEO-rich

The topics for Tier-2 are already SEO-optimized and selected with the help of Pontem’s SEO and marketing team. But we want the Tier-2 ambassadors to step up their game and make the articles as SEO-friendly as possible with keywords and meta descriptions.

Meta description

Each article should have a meta description, no more than 160 characters long. This is the description that can be displayed in Google Search results:

Keywords

Aim for 1-3% of keywords in the text, including the title. In an article of 1000 words SEO keyphrases and keywords should account for at least 10-30 words. Highlight the keyphrases in yellow.

Initially, your score won’t suffer if you don’t do SEO keyword research, but you can increase the score if you do it.

You can use any of the keyphrases from the table below. You don’t have to use them exactly as written - add articles and prepositions as needed. For example, the keyphrase ‘‘decentralized exchange crypto’ can appear as ‘the best decentralized exchange in the crypto industry’.

Advanced: article-specific keywords

If you want your score to go up even more, find and use some relevant keywords for your article topic. Use a free keyword research tool like https://www.wordstream.com/keywords or https://ahrefs.com/keyword-generator. Plug in your topic (such as ‘Solana DEX’ or ‘NFT on Polygon’), run the search, then pick some of the resulting keywords and keyphrases. Use them in the article natively.

Another great SEO tool is Google's People Also Ask. Google the subject of your article and check the section ‘People also ask’ in the results – it will give you hints on the keyphrases you can use and the questions you should answer in the article.

Congratulations! If you’ve managed to read this guide to the end and understand everything, you have the potential to become a good Tier-2 content creator. Now please put in the effort - and it will be rewarded!