When you are familiar with these guidelines in advance, it makes it easier to create quality content that will not only get accepted by the article directory but will be picked up and distributed by numerous websites, blogs, and newsletters. The following are the 10 most common requirements.
1. Your article must be not duplicate (original) content. This means you may not copy content or publish content written by another person without attaching their name (signature) and contact information in the biography box within the article. This as well means PLR content and public domain articles may not be permissible. If you hire a ghost writer to write your articles, you will need to have an exclusive licensing agreement that only permits your name to be linked with the articles produced for you. Do not submit articles from article packs that have non-exclusive licenses as almost all directories will throw out those articles.
2. You are usually required to include your 1st and last name as the author of the article. Each directory has their own strategy, and most require you to only have one account with them however lots of will permit you to submit under different author names. This can be supportive if you have several different websites or businesses. Your bio box generally allows you to link to your website, if it does not think using a different article submission site.
3. Linking: Linking guidelines vary from submission website to submission website. Some welcome and encourage embedded links while others strictly prohibit it and will throw out your article if you link to your site or any other site within the body of the article. One suggestion is to write different versions of your article, one that contains embedded text links and one that does not. The majority of submission websites does not permit affiliate links and only allow you to link to sites you own.
4. Article content: Most article submission sites will throw out your article if it is a sales piece. The intent of these sites, and your article's purpose, is to provide benefit to readers – not to sell a product or service. Take care to not field your product or service in the body of your article. That's what your author's bio box is for.
5. Article quality: Take care to read your article thorough to confirm there are no grammars, spellings, or formatting mistakes. Your article could be picked up by 100s of websites, blogs, or newsletters and if there are mistakes it will be published all over the internet, reflecting poorly on you and your business. As well, disagreeable material (adult words) of any kind is not allowed.
6. Article length: There are usually minimum and maximum article length requirements for each site with the medium requested length being between 400 and 700 words. The easiest kinds of articles to read on the internet are usually broken into manageable steps, tips, mistakes, bulleted lists or numbered lists. This provides your reader with a benefit, the ability to read your article rapidly and easily, and an easy way for you to formation an article to meet your word count requirements.
7. Some article submission sites permit HTML formatting in your article, others do not. If you do not familiar with basic HTML, do not worry. The HTML that is normally allowed is extremely basic and there is usually a rapid tutorial if HTML is allowed.
8. Keywords and SEO: All sites permit you to optimize your content for maximum exposure and search engine ranking. This means including your keywords in your title, opening paragraph, closing paragraph and sprinkled reasonably throughout the body of your article. Numerous also enable you to tag your article to help people find your information.
9. Your author's resource section. Most article directories divide your bio box from the content of your article. Your resource box will usually contain your name, a bit of your history or experience, an email address and a link to your website.
10. Take care to read the submission site's copy web content guidelines. Some websites explicitly state that you do not post your article on any other directories or submit the same article with minor changes. This is a good practice to stay away from because the search engines tend to look unfavorably upon copy content.
