The rise of article marketing has seen an absolute torrent of people trying to drive traffic and build links to their blogs, websites and online business ventures. There is no lack of advice on the subject, much of it, it has to be said, not particularly good.

Hopefully, this article will go some way to redressing the balance and helping article marketers everywhere to avoid some of the more serious and damaging mistakes that will often kill off an article marketing strategy before it's even got off the ground.

The whole system of promoting with articles rests on what has to be considered a fairly tenuous base. Article authors benefit from their writing by giving away their work - in return they earn back links to their websites, both from article directories, and, from any other site on the web that decides to republish their submissions. Additionally, they will increase their chances of ranking well in the SERPS for their targeted subject.

The article directory owners are effectively the "middle man" acting as the meeting place for authors and publishers, bringing the two interested parties together and enabling them to feed off of one another's services. The directory owners offset their costs in various ways, usually via advertising, and also benefit from building links and raising their own profile on the web.

So, a win-win for all three parties, or so it should be.

As with any Utopian idea however, there are plenty of people who are far too short sighted to see the benefits and accept them as they are. This excellent marketing tool is never enough for those who I think of as "greedy" - those who think they are smarter than the system, that they can "beat" everyone else, that they have discovered a way to effectively "game the system".

Sadly, it is this kind of attitude that is slowly strangling article marketing.

It is my optimistic, some might say naive, hope that by reading this article, some people will reassess their methods and that anyone just starting out will choose not to follow the greedy philosophy of the herd.

As an article directory owner and an article author, this comes from experience on both sides of the coin, and it's good advice.

Your articles must be quality. They must be well written, properly punctuated, well structured and proof read for mistakes. Anything less does you a disservice and will be difficult to get accepted into any decent directory and even harder to successfully syndicate to publishers. Failure to ensure these basic tenets of writing will harm your efforts.

2. Advertisements are not articles. Writing ad copy and trying to pass it off as an article will invariably fail.

3. The Resource Box - use it wisely. Your article's ultimate aim is to encourage people to find out more about you and your business. Writing an article about one subject and linking to something completely unrelated is a waste of time. Any decent directory will check for relevance in relation to resources. Give a reader a good reason to want to visit your site for more information on what you have introduced them to in your well written article. Do not link directly to affiliate programs - most directories will delete such links, or even your whole article. It's dumb to do all that work and shoot yourself in the foot this way.

4. Credibility. If you really don't know much about a subject and can't be bothered to research it, don't try and pass yourself off as an expert. Write about something you know about and on which you can offer genuine advice and information. A classic example is the huge number of people writing about making money online and linking to a cookie-cutter type website with no ranking whatsoever and a ridiculous domain name. I'm sorry, it may fool some people, but it only serves to damage any authority you are trying to build. Counter productive article marketing, is the most suitable phrase here.

Also, remember the old saying; People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". Pontificating about good writing and littering your efforts with mistakes is a sure fire way to look rather silly.

5. Don't "keyword stuff" your work. Write sensibly and incorporate the words you are trying to rank for, but never, ever, sacrifice readability for keywords. Blatant abuse is painfully obvious and usually results in deletion. Another far too common self destructive mistake, so don't make it.

6. When it's time to submit your polished article, stop and think for a moment. Try to see things from a publisher's point of view. Are they looking for something they will be proud to publish on their site, or are they just looking for "filler" that can be found on hundreds of other competing sites? Once you've answered that question, think about the article directories. Do they want something that hundreds of others are already syndicating, or something that adds real value for their visitors?

Now, go ahead and use a submission service, who, in exchange for a fee, will send your work to countless directories of varying quality. Then again, you might be fooled into thinking that just because you have some submission software that can easily submit your work to hundreds of directories, that is the best way to gain massive exposure. In actual fact, you will often find that being somewhat selective will often provide far greater returns and is more likely to see your work reproduced elsewhere.

The scattergun approach is not always the wisest, despite the advice you may have seen to the contrary.

7. When you do decide where you are going to submit your articles, never submit multiple articles all at the same time. I've seen people submit over 50 articles in one hit. Guess what happens to them - each and every one. Regardless of the content, this thoughtless tactic will label you as a "directory spammer". Once you give yourself that reputation your article marketing activities will be severely curtailed. Just be sensible, and spread your submissions out over days and weeks. If you are using PLR articles, change them significantly before submitting to directories. I know that even the hardest working authors can write a handful of articles in a 24 hour period, so when I see a huge influx of them from one author, my radar is on immediate alert.

8. An impressively large database of articles does not necessarily make for a good repository of your work. Neither does it mean it's a bad place, but sometimes, it's wise to look for somewhere with less competition, maybe increasing the chances of you being found and picked up. You might want to seek out good niche sites if your subject warrants it, in addition to posting at a few select general directories.

9. The temptation to use other people's work should be resisted unless you want to find yourself in a lot of hot water. If you are using PLR articles, unless you make significant changes, also means running the risk of being seen as a spammer. Trust me when I say that editors often have to deal with hundreds of submissions every day and duplication stands out like a sore thumb. Once your name is associated with either poor quality, rehashed and unoriginal content, repeatedly bad English, keyword stuffing, irrelevant links, ill disguised ads, plain dishonesty or evidence that you are no more than an "article farm" your days as an author with any well run directory will be over.

10. Once you have made your submissions, you should soon start seeing some incoming links to your site. If you have the time, check out the places that have published your article - if it's a blog, leave a comment. You never know where you might develop some new networking or business relationships.

Footnote :- An article should rarely be less than 500 words, and many directories will use this arbitrary limit to avoid the more careless and poor quality writing and the advertiser brigade. I would say that it is wise to use this limit too as although some places will accept far less, are those the places you really want to see your hard work, rubbing shoulders with the herd?

Maurice Snell is an internet marketer and blogger living in the Cayman Islands. He blogs regularly at his popular internet marketing blog and you can find or submit quality articles at his free article directory. His web hosting directory offers a wide range of informative articles reviews for those seeking web hosting services.