As the owner of two article directories ( Links are in the footer ) I can tell you what I'm looking for when I review the articles submitted to my article directories.
First of all, please be sure you are submitting original content that you OWN. It's perfectly fine to employ a ghost writer , but make sure that when you pay someone to write your articles that they are unique and that you own complete copyright to the article. If they are selling the same article to hundreds of people I do not want it submitted to my article directories.
ORIGINAL is the keyword that you should place in the front of your mind. There are tons of sites and pieces of software out there today that are scraping content and then using word replacement on someone else's article. Let me be clear about this. It is plagiarism. It is STEALING. Any good copyright lawyer is going to sue you and win if you use these methods to generate articles.
You must actually produce original content to be successful in article marketing. Period.
Another big no-no in my book is 'cut and paste' articles. Do not submit articles that are simply cut and pasted from some other source. I get submissions all the time that are obviously taken from wiki sites, dictionaries, and professional glossaries, and these articles are denied immediately. Every single day someone submits an article to me that contains a 'glossary of terms' for a certain subject. Give me a break. Please submit an actual article.
Once again, produce and submit original content. Period.
Don't try to be sneaky with your articles. This includes writing articles titled ‘My article, Part 7' , in the hopes that the surfer will come to your site looking for the rest of the story. I now delete all ‘series' titled articles unless the entire series has been submitted to me all at once. I even CREATED a special category for series articles.
Your title is important. Just like a newspaper headline, you are trying to quickly grab the reader's attention. Be short and concise. Be sensational! Be creative! If you have a mile long boring paragraph for a title like “The Technical Wording Of Router Design As Designated By Cisco In Their Corporate Interoffice Memorandum Circa September 2004' or some other long gibberish, I'm going to delete it. Title your article with something that is going to actually get them to read it. They actually have to read the article for your link back to drive traffic to your site. Plus, other webmasters are not going to reprint your article if you don't keep it short and sweet.
There's much, much more that you can consider when marketing your articles, but these are the basics. If you would like to learn more about ethical article marketing I have setup a forum where webmasters are discussing article marketing and more. You are more than welcome to join up and jump right in: http://www.affiliatewebdesign.com
In closing, if you get anything at all from this article, please let it be ethics. Anything you do in business should be moral and ethical. It's you that has to face yourself in the mirror each morning. It's you that has to look your children in the eye. Unethical marketing of any type may pay off in the short term, but will eventually kill your online business in the long run. Stay ethical and create original promotional content. It will take you to the top.
