Are You Making These Article Marketing Mistakes?

June 18, 2008 | By Saif In Adwords, Article Writing |

When you’ve spent a lot of time any amount of time looking at articles and approving them for your article directory like I do, you start to notice the same mistakes coming up again and again.

So how many of these mistakes are you making?

Here’s the top 5…

1. Poor Headline – If you compare an article directory to your e-mail inbox you’ll realize how important a good headline is. Do a quick scan and you’ll notice there will be some e-mail headlines that jump out at you compared to others they may all have the same great information but the headline is what makes you want to know more and grabs your curiosity.

So how can you improve your article headlines?

Easy, do a quick scan through an article directory and find the headlines that stand out and just copy them. When I say copy I don’t mean word for word but rather the nuts and bolts of the idea what makes them tick. Another article headline idea to look for magazines related to your market and apply the same thing as the article directory idea.

Plus using magazines you’ll also find words or phrases that only people in your target market use. Use them in your headline this help to speak to your niche even better.

2. Poor Spelling – This is a big no-no. If you’re trying to impress someone with your knowledge in an article and its full or spelling errors, what impression are you sending out?

There really is no excuse for this mistake, all computers and most article directories have a spell feature you should use before submitting your article.

You may think this doesn’t happen much but you’d be surprised we’ve received articles with even the authors name spelled wrongly!

3. Lack Of White Space – Reading on a computer can be hard on your eyes. If you come across an article that’s just made up of solid paragraphs with no rest between you’ll soon give up or just do a quick scan and move on.

To solve this problem spread your article out into shorter paragraphs and/or use bullet points to add more white space.

4. Writing Too Much – Like the last point I made, sitting reading at a computer can be hard on your eyes. Most people don’t like reading as a general rule, so why go to the time and trouble of writing an article of up to a 1000 words that’s not going to get read.

Reduce what you have to say to 500-600 words. This way you can talk about the key points you need to make. If you need to write that many words why not spread it over 2 parts for example “Article Title Part 1” and “Article Title Part 2”.

5. Poor Resource Box – What’s the real reason for writing an article? “The Resource Box” of course, you want your reader to read the article but more importantly you want them to click that link at the bottom and visit your/affiliate website.

So if you’ve got a poor resource box all your hard work was for nothing. You need to consider your resource box more like the headline after the article. You’ve got a headline at the beginning so why not a headline at the end?

Don’t just put down this article was written by “Joe Soap” and expect people to come flooding. You need to put yourself in your reader’s shoes. What would they want more of, more great information, something free?

Remember you’ve put a lot of work into your article so why not wring as much traffic out of it as you can. Just because its free traffic don’t mean you shouldn’t give it as much thought as writing a Google adwords ad.

Finally,

If you take these points on board you’ll be way ahead of the other 90% of people who use article marketing and wonder why they’re getting very poor results from it.

Need lots of lovely FREE traffic for your website? Visit www.ItWasSoEasy.com and give us your articles. We’ll do our best to get as much FREE traffic to your site as possible…its what we’re here for!