February 16, 2010 in ArticleSnatch News by ArticleSnatch

Article Marketing can be a challenging task if you don’t keep a few things in mind while doing it. Remember this is not a race and consistency will pay off more in the long run that burst work (i.e. you would be better to submit one article per day, than 30 no and wait a month to submit 30 more).

ArticleSnatch.com has over 800,000 approved articles, and well over 100,000 that aren’t approved. Below you will find some tips to make sure that your articles end up in the approved pile as well as some tips that can help those articles get more traffic.

1) Article Title – the article title is the first thing a viewer sees and has a lot of impact whether or not they click on it. Too short and you have not given the reader enough information, too long and the opposite is true. Aim for 65 to 90 characters and be descriptive about what your article says. If your article is about great vacations, then “great vacation” would be the worst title ever, but “How To Have a Great Vacation With Your Family” might be better.

2) Article Length – often times people ask us how short can an article be, or what is the minimum length of an article. I think those people are looking at the approach of writing articles backwards. Instead write the article to say what you want it to, then stop and check the length. Articles below 250 words (and this might change) are denied automatically. Articles under 300 words are more likely to be removed with less scrutiny. The sweet spot is really closer to 400 or 500 words. But again, don’t add filler to just stuff your article and make it longer.

3) Article KeyWords / Tags – When you submit an article you can put several keywords in the keyword box. It is best to use keywords and keyword phrases with less than 3 words (or 4 words if you have to). Keywords should not include common words (and, or, if, the, to, etc) and they should be descriptive of what the article is actually about. When the topic pages are built, the words in the article tags/keyword section are factored in, but more importantly , the content of the article is also factored in. So tagging an article with google, when its about canon cameras probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Try to find 5 to 7 keyword or keyword phrases that best describe the article.

4) About the Author / Resource Box – These 500 characters at the end of the article are a great place for you to shine. This is the part where you want to write a bit about the author as well as a call to action. 3 properly formatted html links are allowed, and you should always use all three. One of them should be your domain name and with no anchor text – other than the domain name. For example http://www.articlesnatch.com/ would be a good link to include. The reason for this is that if someone decides to use the article on their site and they don’t include your anchor text links (which they are required to), then at least someone reading the article can still contact you.

Nofollow/Dofollow resource box links – this was put in place as part of a plan to recover from a strong Google Filter. But it is by no means permanent, if your account currently has nofollow links in the resource box, and you have submitted more than 5 articles, email webmaster AT articlesnatch DOT com, include the email address on the account and we will be happy to review the account and remove the nofollow. This is in place to discourage fly by night spammers and those looking to promote inappropriate topics on the site, while pushing the better, stronger articles to the top. Since this was implemented, traffic is up, indexing is up, indexing rates are up.

5) Links – Policy used to dictate that links were only allowed in the resource box, however that has changed. Before October 2009, the links in the body of the article were filtered out and not displayed. Now they are allowed. However, stuffing an article with lots of links, would still be a spammy technique and likely would get your account shut down. So while this is allowed and encouraged, it should always be done with the viewer in mind. Ask yourself first, will this help my reader? If not, then don’t include it. The links in the body of the article are currently nofollow and will likely stay that way.

6) Formatting – If you write your articles in Microsoft Word or similar word processor, it would be best if you first copied the article and pasted it into a plain text editor, then copy it again and paste it into ArticleSnatch.com, this will prevent any of the formatting issues caused by Microsoft. MS Word often inserts characters that can’t be properly stored in the database, and this can cause other functions of the site to break. MS Word is also the number one reason why links in the resource box get broken. We are looking to implement a new editor when you submit articles to help fix this issue.

7) Category – picking the right category also improves the likelihood of your desired reader finding the article. Not only are the RSS feeds of each category distributed widely, but it makes it easier for a reader to find what they are looking for. If you are using a software program to submit articles, just double check and make sure that the articles go in the right category. If you fail to pick one, it will be put into the Uncategorized category along with all the other misplaced articles. Additionally when we review your account, if most of your articles are there, we will ask that you fix it.