Article marketing is one of the best ways to promote a website. Article marketing is relatively simple, extremely effective, and usually free (or at least very low cost).
There is a catch. For article marketing to work, your articles need to be accepted by the article directories you submit them to, and they need to be published by webmasters and ezine publishers.
As the owner of a popular article directory, ElectricText, I can tell you that there are 5 simple ways to prevent your articles from being rejected. Avoid these 5 things, and your article marketing will probably be very successful.
1. Bad writing
You don’t have to be a great writer to get your articles accepted into most article directories. But you have to be at least okay. Not everyone has a natural talent for writing. Don’t be afraid to ask someone you know to review your articles and help you improve them.
2. Bad grammar
Many people are not very good at grammar or write and submit articles in a language (usually English) that is not their own.
Article directories and publishers expect articles to be ready to post, without editing. Minor issues may be overlooked, but when you’re submitting hundreds (or thousands) of articles per day, it’s easiest to simply reject articles with bad grammar.
This doesn’t mean you have to give up article marketing if your grammar isn’t perfect or English isn’t your native language. Just find someone who can help you edit your articles. Most of the articles I have to reject for bad grammar could have been fixed with just 5-10 minutes of editing.
3. Badly edited (or badly rotated) elements
I am continually surprised to receive articles in which the author obviously did not check the spelling or read the copy before submitting it. Many otherwise fairly well-written articles have several minor typos: misspelled words, missing words, etc. These are the kinds of errors that could have been caught by any word processor or even just reading the article before hitting submit.
The advent of private label rights content and “article spin” software has definitely added to this problem! What is turning the article? Many people buy the rights to articles written by others. They then run them through special software that is supposed to randomly replace words and phrases, like you would manually with a thesaurus. Their idea is to improve your article marketing by submitting unique articles.
Unless you overdo this (see #4), there’s really only one problem. Article spinning software often produces some pretty clunky writing. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if an article was written by a non-English speaking person or by article threading software.
In both cases, the solution is simple. Edit your articles manually before submitting, or have someone else edit them. Check your spelling and grammar. Read the article out loud to see if it flows. I see a lot of articles that probably would have been edited if someone had tried to read them out loud before hitting send.
4. Duplicate (or Near Duplicate) Items
This is linked to n. #3, as it appears to be largely the result of private label content rights and “article spin” software. There are some authors who consistently submit multiple copies of the same article with very slight differences.
I literally had to ban authors from submitting articles after spending an hour or two a day for several days trying to weed 5 or 6 unique articles out of 50 or 100 duplicates. I quickly realized that it’s just not worth it as there are so many other authors and articles to post.
I guarantee you that irritating editors and publishers and getting banned is the dumbest way to try to do article marketing!
5. Plagiarized articles
I’m not sure which annoys me more: #4 or #5. I can’t count the number of people who copy and paste articles directly from Wikipedia (an online collaborative encyclopedia) and then submit them as their original work. They often don’t change anything! Yes, I realize that Wikipedia is “copyleft” and not “copyright”, but there are still rules.
There is nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as one of your sources – it is an excellent source. But use a few more fonts too, then add your own original thoughts and put it all in your own words. Please.
There you have it, 5 ways to avoid rejection and be successful in article marketing. If you write and submit many articles and manage to avoid these 5 things, I think most of your articles will be accepted and you will be very successful in your article marketing.