Article Marketing Edge

Of the seven or eight most common ways people promote their websites, article marketing is almost certainly the most effective. Unfortunately, there are five mistakes that can ruin an article marketing campaign. Avoid them at all costs.

1. Too many authors choose titles that do nothing more than describe the subject of an article. That’s not good enough. Remember, both the article directory website owners and website owners looking for additional content for their sites must find your titles interesting enough to begin reading your articles. If not, the time you spend producing articles is wasted. Make the effort to craft good titles.

2. Don’t view an article merely as a vessel for your priority keywords or a prelude to your author’s box. Give your readers helpful information. If your articles are good, they’ll be spread all over the Internet, along with links back to your website. If they don’t have good content they won’t have legs. It’s really that simple.

3. Many website owners believe that only articles written about the same topics covered on their website will help improve their search engine rankings. In fact, the opposite is true: by writing about a wide variety of subjects, more webmasters will consider using your stories.

4. Article writers often tend to be formulaic. In some instances they try to cram a prepared list of keywords into an article. In other instances they try to ensure that 3-4% of the content consists of keywords. While such formulas may make sense from an SEO point of view, they often make articles unreadable.

5. Never submit an article that has not been read, critiqued and edited by a second party. Remember, a single error can prevent an article from being published. It happens frequently.

Article marketing done properly requires considerable time and thought. But, because it can establish you as an authority, produce immediate traffic to your site, and boost your search engine rankings, it is well worth the effort. Do it well.