2. As an article directory owner and editor I am exposed to a
huge number of articles every single day of the week.
3. I sometimes receive complaints from authors who are
angered by the fact that their article has not been
published, which leads me to believe that there are still a
lot of people out there who do not understand article
marketing, nor the role that directories play.
4. For those who are not finding success with articles, or for
those considering starting out, here are a few ground rules
that will save you a lot of work in the long run and will
likely get your article marketing career off to a much more
auspicious start.
5. Read the article directory's specific terms of service and
guidelines. This may seem like a boring, tedious and long
winded waste of your valuable time but in the long term it
will save you hours of frustration and wasted effort. All
directories set their own rules and some are stricter than
others. Most directories labor under a huge number of
submissions and the work of sifting through them is often
the job of one individual. This means that if your opening
paragraph or introductory statement is poorly written or
contains mistakes, that is as far as the editor will go before
hitting the delete key. The luxury of time to edit an
author's mistakes or to decline an article as opposed to
deleting it, is one that most editors do not have.
6. Mass submissions are usually viewed as spam. Let's face
it, none of us are capable of writing over 200 articles in a
day - I would say that even producing more than ten
would be a pretty amazing feat of productivity. It should
come as no surprise to those submitting large numbers of
articles in a 24 hour period to find that they are all
deleted. Article directory software usually allows for quick
erasure of such submissions, so if you don't want your
work to fall victim to mass deletion, don't mass submit. All
that is needed is a little common sense. If you are using a
submission service, set the option to stagger your
submissions over a longer period of time.
7. Proof read your articles. If you don't know what this
means, look it up! If your writing is riddled with spelling
errors, poor structure, punctuation horrors and
grammatical butchery, don't be surprised if none of them
get published. I could write thousands of words on the
most common mistakes seen in people's writing. These
usually involve spelling and grammar. Spell check your
articles, even if you think you're perfect, you will often be
surprised at the mistakes you make. If you tend to misspell
a word regularly, you will never correct it unless you make
yourself aware of it.
8. If you are of the opinion that these things don't matter
(after all, people will know what you mean!) then think
again. If you want to write and, more importantly, see
your work published and picked up by other website
owners and bloggers, you need to demonstrate an ability
to write well.
9. As an example, all the "SEO experts" who talk about
search engine optimisation (sic) but don't even
understand that being able to spell their claimed
occupation correctly would lend a little more credibility to
their claims. Just for the record, most words ending in
"ize" use a "z" and not an "s". This is a very common
mistake, but it would be corrected by the use of a spell
checker, as would so many others.
10.
11. None of us are perfect and this is not a lecture on
grammar and spelling, no matter how needed it might be.
12. If you are tempted to use PLR articles, even if you rewrite
them in an attempt to make them unique, remember that
you will be competing with all the other shortcut seekers
who are doing the same thing. It's another shortcut to the
delete key for a lot of directories.
13. When it comes to the resource box, it is quite amazing
how many authors defeat their entire purpose by making
a mess of this vital section. If the article directory in
question allows one, two or three live Hyperlinks, make
good use of them. Think about your anchor text very
carefully. In other words don't say......to find out more
click here and Hyperlink the words "click here". The
resource box is where you need to give readers a
compelling reason to visit your site(s) but it is also the one
place you can make the most of good keywords as the
anchor text in your links.
14. Use the resource box wisely and take full advantage of
everything the directory is offering you by way of
promotional tools. Adding your URL without making it a
live link is a pointless waste of time if the directory allows
you to use Hyperlinks in your resource box. Conversely,
adding more than the quota of permitted links will
probably result in deletion of your work.
15. Another thing to watch is linking directly to affiliate
programs. Read the directory's policies on this point or
again, you may well find yourself on the cutting room
floor. Many directories will stipulate that you may only
link to affiliate programs indirectly by referring readers to
your own site or domain. Some do not allow straight
redirect links either.
16. Relevancy is also an issue here too. In other words,
submitting a PLR piece about gardening and linking to
your MLM program is not very helpful or wise, just one
more recipe for deletion.
17. I should finish by saying that yes, you can churn out badly
written articles to your heart's content, just don't be
surprised at the results.
