Article Submission Tips - Guidelines for Beginners

There’s no doubt about it; submitting articles to directories is one of the best ways to increase the popularity of your website and to increase your sales and profit. In this article, I wish to share with you some important guidelines to keep in mind when distributing your articles online. These will help you improve your chances in getting your articles accepted and published.

1. First, ensure that your articles are of high quality. Gone are the days when publishers will accept even those articles that are obviously of poor quality. Today, they have stricter guidelines and they are committed in giving online users real value. They’ll most likely to publish your articles if they are well written, very informative, well researched, and useful to the eyes of your target audience.

2. Do not plagiarize. If you’re one of those people who think that they can get away with copying other’s work, think again. Article directories are now using sophisticated tools in determining if your articles are 100% unique. These tools can even detect if your articles were just rehashed of other articles that they’ve already published. If you don’t want your articles to be rejected, I’d say write them using your own words and offer new information.

3. Proofread your articles. People behind article directories expect you to ensure that your articles are ready to be published when you submit them. They surely won’t have the time to correct every grammar and spelling error. They’ll rather reject your articles and get you to do the legwork. So, to save time and energy, I suggest that you manually proofread your articles before you submit them and ensure that they’re perfect.

4. Keep it short. Publishers are not looking for lengthy articles. In fact, they’ll accept copies that have 300 words. These people will appreciate it if you keep your articles brief but meaty – exactly how online users want them to be.

5. Do not “over optimize” your articles. By this, I simply mean avoid using too many keywords on your articles. What publishers recommend is that you keep the keyword density to 2% or less. They will appreciate it if you make your articles search engine friendly without sacrificing their readability and quality.

6. “Prepare” the requirements. Publishers have requirements that must be met before they’ll accept your articles. They’ll require article summary, keyword list and resource box. Article summary, as the term implies is the summary of your article. This must contain no more than 5 sentences. Keyword list on the other hand is the list of keywords that you’re targeting on your article body. Lastly, your resource box is where you can talk about your website and where you can invite your readers to click your site’s URL.

7. Distribute your articles. You don’t need to use all the article directories in the online arena. You’ll be able to save time and still get the kind of exposure you need for your articles by using only those that are reputable and very popular like ezinearticles.