There is lots of information and advice on the Internet about article marketing. That’s great for those who are learning who need the advice – and for those of us who never stop learning! However for all of the good advice floating around it’s also good to discover the things that you ought not to do and what you should steer clear of.
The idea behind this article is to assist you to get the best out of your article marketing campaigns by showing you 5 things that you need to avoid, why you should avoid them and what you should do as an alternative if you want to make the most out of your article marketing campaigns
O.K. then, here are the 5 things that you should avoid:
1. Ignoring Article Directory Guidelines.
The reason why you ought not do this is because guidelines vary from directory to directory and if you ignore them you are less likely to get your articles accepted. Instead, you ought to check the guidelines of each directory that you submit to, or if you can’t be bothered decide upon a minimum standard and stick to it.
For instance many directories have a minimum word count, the average seems to be about 400 so write 500 to give yourself a safety gap. Although some directories allow more than one link in the article body and author bio, some only allow one in the bio, so if you haven’t checked guidelines and particularly when you are mass submitting it might be better to stick to one link..
2. Broken Links.
It’s perfectly obvious that the reason you are submitting articles is to drive traffic to your website whether it be through clicks from the links in your author bio or building up authority with backlinks from the directories and the publisher’s websites. It’s quite surprising just how many article marketers do not format their links properly or even forget to add any when the sole purpose of submission is the links!. Instead, you could get better results by just taking a little more time and checking to see if your links work before submission..
3. Writing Fake Product Reviews.
That is a matter of ethics and conscience, but when I am interested in buying something and want to know more about it I find the fake reviews from people selling the products easy to spot and blooming annoying when I have to click on link after link to find genuine reviews. Instead you should check the products out first before writing about them, and if it’s an electrical or mechanical product you should use them for several months before voicing an experienced opinion that is worth listening to.
4. Avoid Writing Articles In Word.
Unless you turn ‘smart quotes’ off in word when you submit to the article directories some of the punctuation turns into what looks like web dings. This ruins the look of your articles and will put publishers off reusing them on their sites or ezines. I’ve also found that smart quotes can block the RSS feeds going out from directories which can affect the performance of the directory and everybodies articles. So you should turn the smart quotes off in Microsoft Word, or write your articles in notebook or even straight into your blog as I do.
5. Submitting Articles Without Checking Them For Errors First.
In the short-run it can be tempting to do this when you are tired and wnat to leave your computer, but in the long-run it’s always best to check for errors. Even if that means delaying submission until you have ore time. Remember that we all make mistakes, none of us are perfect and even when you think that you have scoured an article there can still be a teeny weeny mistake that can get your article declined, costing you and the article checker valuable time.
If you carefully avoid these 5 very common errors and act upon the suggestions offered for alternatives instead, your chances of article marketing success are going to be much better than they otherwise would.
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