Article Marketing Tips: The Seven Deadly Sins

It’s no secret article marketing is a great way to promote your online or offline business. A successful campaign will help you build brand recognition and credibility, send your link popularity through the roof and lead targeted traffic to any landing page you choose. But not all campaigns are successful, and a poorly executed article marketing campaign can ruin your online business. Here are seven common article marketing mistakes that can kill your online business.

1. Spelling and/or Grammatical Errors – Perception is everything. Publishing articles with poor spelling and grammar will lead people to question your intelligence and professionalism. No one seeks the advice of a "dummy" and no one wants to do business with people who are unprofessional.
2. Hard Selling – People don’t go to article directories looking for advertisements, they go looking for content. If your article reads like an advertisement, people will assume the article is spam and keep looking. The top article directories are unlikely to publish your "advertorial" and you might even get yourself banned from a few. Don’t derail your article marketing campaign by trying too hard to generate a sale.
3. Too Many Links – Use links sparingly in the body of your article—particularly self-serving links. In fact, it’s a good idea not to include any links in the first three paragraphs. There’s a lot more to article marketing than easy backlinks.
4. Unhelpful Articles – In all likelihood, your readers came across your article while trying to solve a specific problem or learn how to successfully complete a task. If they’ve read your entire article and aren’t any closer to accomplishing their goal, you’ve already wasted too much of their time. Many authors feel that if they actually solve the reader’s problem for free, they’ve blown an opportunity to make money. In fact, the opposite is true. The most successful article marketing campaigns are those where your readers are convinced you have helped them. It’s the best way to build brand loyalty.
5. Misleading Titles – If I read an article titled "3 Simple Tricks to Boost Sales," I expect to learn about three tricks, each of which is fairly simple and actually boost sales. Two tricks won’t do it. Nor will three difficult tricks, or even three really simple tricks that don’t work. It’s a matter of trust. Your readers want what you promised them. If you mislead them with your article title, they’ll assume you will mislead them about your products and services.
6. Submitting to Shady Directories – Like it or not, your site will be judged by the company you keep. There are hundreds of article directories made up almost entirely of spam articles linked to illicit websites. It’s pretty clear to the search engines that these directories are filled with links to low quality sites. Add your articles to too many of them and you run the risk of becoming guilty by association. Using automatic article submission tools can result in your articles being added to hundreds of nefarious sites and ultimately, your website getting "Google slapped" (penalized for poor quality).
7. Duplicate Content – Many of the top article directories will only publish unique content. You need to know which ones before you start your article marketing campaign or you may get banned for violating the directories’ guidelines. If the best article directories stop accepting your articles, you’ll have to rely on the shady ones. Be wary of article spinners that promise to help you "instantly turn one article into twenty". You’ll probably end up with twenty really bad knock-offs of the first, none of which will be unique enough to fool the article directories. If you’re not going to opt for a great article spinner, you had better rewrite your articles manually.

Now that you know how to kill your article marketing campaign before it gets off the ground, here is some advice that will guarantee your success—flood the top article directories with useful, unique and well-written articles on topics of interest to your target audience. Buzzle is a good place to start.

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