Do You Really Know Why You Are Submitting Your Articles To Online Article Directories?

Article submission is perhaps one of the best ways to leverage your products and services on the Internet....that is, if done correctly, but like Link Exchange, I think it's being abused.

That said, I don't think Article Marketing is about to die. It's alive and strong!

I have noticed that a lot of authors are submitting articles for the wrong reasons. Authors are submitting 'half baked' articles fueled by a 'PageRank' and 'BackLink' craze, something I find very fruitless. Like in link exchange, the search engines have wisened up and are getting better at weeding out 'spam'.

It’s imperative that you submit ‘quality’ articles. A badly written article may generate you that ‘backlink’ that you so much desire, but the real purpose of submitting your article to an article marketing directory is to gain publishers who will willingly publish your articles on their websites, blogs and newsletters; that’s where the real traffic comes from. Publishers should 'want' to publish your article, hence the importance of good writing.

Submitting numerous short (less than 500 words), poorly and haphazardly written articles will do you no good. Also submitting the same article over and over with a few modifications is not acceptable; it’s duplicate content and defeats the purpose of a directory. An author needs to sit back, choose a good topic and come up with a article that is an effective marketing tool, an article that captivates the reader and makes him or her want to publish it, print and/or forward it to their friends.

Anything less is essentially a waste of time!

How many times have you seen a website with thousands of backlinks but with no ‘PageRank’ or worse still does not feature in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) at all. Too many, I must say. Too many article directories contain tons of 'garbage',...if 'numbers' is the game, then why do some of these directories with tens of thousands of articles have very low PageRank or in numerous instances none at all?

Quality rules!

As an author, your number one priority when writing an article is ‘quality and uniqueness’. You must write powerfully and with purpose. Your writing must be attractive and persuasive, otherwise it’s not worth the trouble.

My suggestion: Write a few 'very good articles' and submit them to carefully selected article directories. Make sure it's a well written and useful article....something site owners will want to publish in their blog, website or ezine.

As I post post my own articles to directories, I always find myself refining the article. This may or may not have any direct benefit but I strongly believe it's part and parcel of the quality control process.

Personally, I don't worry about PageRank or BackLinks, I also do not force feed my directory and I read each and every article that is submitted to the directory.

Write good articles and let it come to you naturally....the search engines will reward you as bloggers and webmasters post your articles on their sites, something they will only do if your writing is stimulating and relevant.

Look at your article as 'Your Product' or 'Your Service'. A service or product that is not 'choreographed' properly will almost always be rejected. If you are having trouble writing, make time and study what the topnotch writers are doing. The Internet is 'pregnant' with excellent writers.

As an owner of an Article Directory, I demand from my authors that they make a serious attempt at writing quality articles. For example, I now do not accept anything less than 500 words in length...debatable yes, but shorter articles are usually badly written.

In summary, here are a few salient points to note:

1. Plan, be clear, be original, structured, substantive and interesting.

2. Your writing must be grammatically and syntactically correct. Spelling mistakes are a no-no! Proof read your articles.

3. Your article(s) should be at least 500 words long.

4. There are plenty of writing samples and guides all over the internet. Look for them and use them. Visit article directories and read the articles within. Nobody is asking you to re-invent the 'writing wheel', but it's of utmost importance that you keep abreast with what the top authors are doing.

5. Get feedback from your friends and colleagues. Two or more heads have always been better than one.

6. Write on topics that mean something to you - passion breeds excellence.

7. Finally if writing is too laborious for you, hire a Ghost Writer and let him/her express your thoughts for you.

Article marketing should be a win-win situation for directory owners and authors, therefore responsible directory owners should guide their authors and help them improve their writing; such as digging up information for them and emailing it to them in the form of a weekly newsletter, a blog or a forum.

Additionally, directory owners should engage their authors in meaningful discussions on article and general marketing, as it is part and parcel of the cut throat Internet Marketing Game, a science that must be taken seriously.

Adsense is for Everyone

When Google's AdSense appeared, there were a lot of people who doubted Google's idea would be marketable and actually generate any profits. Yet as we stand here today it's probably the most well known pay per click venture in the world.

Yes, all those nay sayers ended up eating their own words in the end. And that is because the folks at Google never go and do something without assessing whether or not it will be profitable, or exactly how profitable it is.

But of course, as you might very well know, AdSense isn't just profitable for Google. It's also profitable for the people who advertise via AdWords and very profitable for publishers who use it to make earnings which are sometimes just enormous.

So one must ask himself why this is such a good deal for everybody. And the question in itself is very justified because you hardly ever come across something that's profitable for everyone in the chain. So why would AdSense be any different.

Well, AdSense is where it stands today, giving benefits for everybody in the game because it exploits a gap in the Internet's advertising model.

You see, the Internet is a very interactive environment, and its interactions come from the people who are browsing. They choose whether or not to follow a certain link and the term "navigating" is probably the most precise one at describing this situation.

So AdSense is great because it links together buyers and sellers. Yes, you have to hand it out to Google for a brilliant idea. They know there are people out there that want to buy stuff and people who want to sell them what they're interested in. And Google AdSense helps members of the two categories find each other.

It works for the visitors, because the model is very transparent. You don't see a huge graphic banner which tries to lure you into buying something. You just see a few words. And if you like what you see you can just click it. It works because visitors don't have that feeling of someone trying to lure them into spending money. Ironically, however, they're wrong.

It works for the AdWords advertisers because their ads go everywhere. Not only will they find themselves listed in Google's search which gets gazillions of hits per day, up front without working as much for SEO and waiting so much.

Their ads can reach any website that deals with anything similar to what they're trying to sell. Now you must realize they could never pull of such great advertising by themselves. And that brings us to the thing that makes Google's AdSense a publisher's best friend.

It comes from the fact that the ads are contextual, that they somehow related to the keywords you deal with on your page. Because people or on your site, which deals with a certain topic, you already know they're interested in that topic.

But, hey, wait a minute, Google knows some companies which want to sell your visitors something related to their topic. Google wants your visitors, you want Google's advertisers and the visitors just want to buy stuff. And that is the essence of what makes AdSense a great deal for everybody.

This is by far the most profitable hook-up deal you're ever going to see anywhere on the Internet.

So you have to appreciate Google for realizing a killer deal. You have to appreciate how well thought out, yet simple this scheme really is. Sure, in practice it has a few quirks but those are minor and, up to this point everyone seems to be enjoying Google's AdSense.

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Adsense and the Surfer

AdSense is an easy program to grasp: it's a great form of an advertising bringing a lot of benefits to every person in the chain. And of course, seeing the results it can have on a business (and a publisher) people encourage this form of publicity.

For the browsing audience this is probably the most straightforward model available, because they can be directed to a lot of new sites they wouldn't have otherwise found. Needless to say, if you have an AdSense banner on your site, and a large number of visitors you'll know it offers a great financial benefit.

But why does it work for the people clicking the links, as opposed to a standard approach?

It is aided by today's society. With bloggers and information based articles on the internet, people may be encouraged to complete purchases, which adsense can provide links to relevant suppliers whilst also benefiting the publisher.

And the good thing about this is that it works for site visitors as well. In fact Google realized that by pleasing the people who are looking for something, and directing them to what they need faster, everybody wins.

 It is because of this that a lot of websites promote through AdSense in both content and search. They do it because they ultimately learned that it works for everyone.

If we look in the past, we can realize that this kind of publicity has a great impact over the people, especially in the last few years. When we enter on a web site and we see a graphical banner, our first idea is to cancel it out of our mind, because it's of no concern to us.

That's why traditional banner advertising is wrong. It's precisely because people are becoming savvy that they don’t look at a flashy banner because they think they'll be losing their time with it.

We've gotten accustomed to banners that don't interest us. And we're accustomed to them having nice graphics. So we naturally associate the two things and think that a banner with nice graphics has nothing to tell us.

But we might look at a text-ad because we've grown accustomed to them being targeted at what we're looking for. Basically these advertisements have marketed themselves into being looked at by any visitor.

This is a typical "no fluff, just stuff" situation. And in the end it means the visitors will see what they're interested in, not some random cool graphics you throw at them.

As stated above, site visitors adopt this advertising mechanism, because it is efficient in leading them to pages of interest and can offer ton of things they really want to see. Someone coming across an article on adsense was probably looking for shoes or doing research on shoes when they came across the article.

And most importantly for everyone, including visitors, this scheme can only improve as the process gets further refined to make ads more relevant to what you're looking for, not just a couple of keywords on a site.

Nowadays, it is because of AdSense that Internet surfers are looking after more interesting related things from banners, and the companies behind the site (Google and the advertiser) need to have better ideas to display, as expectations have increased a great deal.

So could "Do no evil" actually work in today's cut throat competitive marketplace? Well, as you can see it can and it does. And you, as a visitor are the one who gets to enjoy this the most. Advertising becomes less of a burden and more of a benefit, and is still a benefit you can choose to ignore.

Less obtrusive banners; banners that you're actually likely to be interested in and click means you'll be less annoyed by surfing the web and feel like you as a visitor being offered a relevant service.