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Are you spending countless hours writing and submitting your articles to article directories, only to find that they're not producing the traffic you expected or, worse yet, they haven't even been accepted into many of the directories?

In this article, I'm going to help you discover what may have gone wrong and provide some tips on how to effectively create and submit your articles for the best possible chance of success. You can then compare your articles to what you learn here, make a change and resubmit them.

The popularity of information-based marketing is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing and submission are also gaining popularity. The recent increase of online article directories can only benefit the writer if the article creation and submission is done properly.

Let's take a look at the most common mistakes some people make when creating and submitting their content to article directories:

1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.

In article writing, there are three key benefits why you are promoting them; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.

But there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If the article is not focused on this primary and most important purpose, it will fail to achieve the three promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading them.

You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing better content.

2. Improper article formatting.

Submitting articles with embedded HTML to a directory that does not require HTML, and vice versa, will produce an unattractive display of your article. The result? Your article may be declined.

You should have two versions of your article handy. One in plain text format and one in HTML format. This should cover all of your article directory submissions.

3. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.

You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from that same article?

Mention keywords at strategic places. Just be sure not to abuse them. Some are even using anchor text which is also an effective method. But it is important to know that the majority of the directories are not able to support this.

Remember that it is not only about the links back to your site. Part of doing well in your article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with a large number of audiences and gaining the ability of leveraging other brands because of the quality of your work. Better search engine results are also great benefits.

But these things do not put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings. Not just increase the number of visitors to your site.

Start out with a plan and see to it that your article will serve the function that you intended it to have.

4. Publishing content that does not help your readers.

Maybe in the process of writing articles, you are thinking that all you want is links back to your site. And any visitors it can generate are fine.

Guess what? Not all article directories are going to accept your content automatically. Oftentimes, they have some guidelines and specifications on the articles that they are accepting.

You can double the number of sites that accept your articles by writing articles that the directories want to share with other people. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience overnight.

Write articles that publishers want in their publications if you want your article marketing to work the most effective way for you. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines, spell checks, researching on a good topic and even hiring a writer to produce good content on your behalf.

5. Automatic article submission or not?

There are many tools that authors can use to make the process of distributing their articles much easier. Let's face it, we all want it to be as quick and painless as possible. However, fully automatic article distribution software/services could be hurting your article promotion efforts.

Following are some of the drawbacks of automatic distribution. Any one of these could get your article declined.

- Only one version of your article is available. (Discussed previously in #2)

- Improper category selection. Category titles are unique to each article directory. The best any software can do is guess at the category.

- No page preview. Most article directories allow you to preview your article before submitting to see how it will look when published. Any formatting errors can be caught at this point.

Semi-automatic article submission software is a better way to go. It involves a little more time, but it remedies all the previous issues and the increased acceptance rate and benefits to your business will make it well worth your time.

In the end, it is all really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased links back to your website, but on a very basic level. Or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra time creating quality content.

I hope this article has shed some light on how to get your articles accepted into more article directories and ultimately increase your exposure. Now, get those articles fixed up and submitted!

You are invited to my Article Directory to get quality content for your websites, ezines and blogs. While you're there, take the time to submit your articles. Everything is FREE!