Article marketing can be a great way to promote your site and product. Unfortunately, many articles these days are written solely for the links they have in their resource box, and are poorly written for actual reading. The content may be fine, but it's not really readable. Here are some steps you can take if you want to improve the chances of your article being approved by the article directories.

Poorly Formatted Text

There are a number of ways an article could be poorly formatted, and will likely cause rejection.

The first is the use of hard breaks. This is where, at the end of every line, the return key is pressed instead of allowing the text to naturally wrap around onto the next line. As, in many cases, your article will be viewed at a variable width, depending on the resolution of the viewers monitor, this casues the article to look very poor.

For example:

This text has had the return key

pressed at the end of every line

which causes it to look poor and be

difficult to read.

Pre-formatted text. This is where the article text is posted between pre tags, which means the style and font of the text does not match the rest of the site. In addition, pre-formatted text doesn't not wrap around on a viewers monitor, which requires the reader to scroll from side to side to be able to actually read the article.

No paragraphs. Here, the text is not broken up into paragraphs for the readers benefit. Instead, there is just a solid mass of text from the start to the finish of the article. This is unpleasant to try and read. Make sure paragraphs are seperated by a blank line between them. Just use one blank line, using more tends to make the article look disjointed.

Overuse/Inappropriate Use of Keywords

These are articles written solely for search engines, not for anyone to actually read.

Overuse and inappropriate use of keywords is where keywords are added that have no real relevance to the article. For example, you have an article called Advantages of Dedicated Webhosting, but instead, it is called Advantages of Dedicated Webhosting Texas. Why? What possible relevance does Texas have to do with the article? It's not discussing web hosts situated in Texas, instead it's a general article on webhosting that has added a keyword added to the title for the benefit of search engines.

An extreme version of this is where the keyword is added to a phrase throughout the article. For example, an article on Hair Extensions is called Pittsburgh Hair Extensions, and everywhere the phrase hair extension is used throughout the article, Pittsburgh is added in front of it. This makes the article pretty unreadable, and is also likely to get it rejected.

Adverts, or Self-Promotional Articles

I call these the "I'm good, me" article.

Now, articles are a form of advertising, this is true. However, they are also supposed to be informative. Certainly, write how something can benefit an individual, but generalize it. Don't specify throughout the body of the article how your company can provide a benefit because it uses a certain process. Instead, write how the process/product/service is of benefit, then, in the Resource Box, state how your company uses/supplies it to others for their benefit. If you're writing about, for example, outsourcing, don't say "Our company name outsourcing can provide benefits for businesses". Just say "Outsourcing can provide benefite for businesses" and leave the promotional blurb for the resource box. That's why it's there after all.

Insuffienct Content

At a minimum, your article wants to be at least 500 words long. That's not really that long an article to write, so it won't be that painful to do. A sentence or two does not an article make.

One way of ensuring that your articles will be accepted more often than they are rejected is by using such services as Article Marketer or iSnare. Yes, you will need to pay for them, but your article will be checked over before distribution, and you can simply copy the approved text for use anywhere else you wish.

In summary, write your article as if a human is going to read it. They may do, and even if they don't, search engine algorithms are getting better, so poor content is increasingly unlikely to get good listings.