8 Article marketing tips for EzineArticles: Article Submission Checklist With Fails Noted
Article marketing tips from a journeyman article writer may sound less than exciting, but my experiences with EzineArticles have been instructive. I've finally developed a repeatable article submission blueprint and jotted down a checklist that's got my article approval cut from 8 weeks to about 3 business days. Since I have very few articles published and don't pay for any premium features, I think I represent a typical internet marketer using article distribution for traffic.
I came to EzineArticles with some trepidation last April after reading horror stories about multiple rejections and lengthy approval periods.
Come up with an article idea
I know. Thank you, Captain Obvious. But hear me out. I think it's good to start there but to iterate it a few times with the next step, which is determining the main keyword phrase.
Determine the main keyword phrase
Determine the main keyword phrase based on the article idea. Check the article idea by searching for it on Google, then looking at the results at the bottom of the page. Those results are likely to be better focused keyphrases than the one you came up with, yet they will, we hope, be directly related to it.
For example, I originally thought the title of this article would be "Article Marketing Checklist". When I entered that into google and checked the bottom of the first page of search returns, I noticed that the first suggestion was "Article Marketing Tips". Another one was "Article Submission", which I resolved to use as the secondary keyphrase. I combined them to form the title of this article, then threw the "checklist" on for good measure. Plus, I love checklists.
You can create a series of articles using the primary keyphrase
Steven Waggenheim pointed out a potent strategy for writing multiple articles on the same subject: reuse your primary keyphrase as the title for many or all of the articles in your niche, followed by differing secondary keyphrases for each article. This makes you an authority and at the same time makes you easier to find in search engines.
Using this article as an example, other keyphrases Google returned for "Article Marketing" included "article submission and "article distribution". If this is the first article in a series on article submission, I might later create an article named "Article Marketing Tips: Article Submission for the Rejection-Weary" or "Article Marketing Tips: Error-Free Article Submission at Warp Speed".
Write a 3-6 sentence summary of your article.
Many submission services require a brief summary of the article. So do many bookmarking sites. You may want to save the summary for last, but I find doing it first boosts my writing speed for the article itself. I think the focus helps.
You have two possibly conflicting goals here. One is to leave a little mystery. The other is to improve your article's visibility to search engines. For the latter, it helps to put the primary phrase first if possible. For this article the summary might be "Article Marketing Tips to turbocharge your article submission process. Take it from someone who's been there: this article marketing advice will save you oodles of time in the long run."
Get the primary keyphrase into the article lead
Try to include the primary keyphrase in your article lead. This is mostly for search engine purposes. There's plenty of evidence that Google doesn't look at the entire article so it's a good practice to get that keyphrase in early. Get the keyphrase in one or two more times for a short article (up to 500 words), and no more than fourth time for longer articles. One excellent use of the keyphrase is for the anchor text in your resource box. (Anchor text is the visible portion of an HTML link.)
Read the rules carefully
One problem with the EZA article submission process is that the editors clearly use some kind of boilerplate system for comments. Understandable. This can't be a huge company and each editor must evaluate massive numbers of articles every day. The upside is that real humans see your article, which is an impressive feat for what appears to be a self-funded operation without venture capital. The downside is that they are overworked and occasionally make mistakes.
My first article took 8 weeks to get approved because the EZA rules, all of which make solid sense individually, are a lot to get your arms around. After a few tries in which my first article was rejected for what seemed like nebulous reasons, I got discouraged and gave up.
EzineArticles has real tech support
When I finally revisited my article, I rooted around for the EZA tech support form and asked very specific questions that showed that I had read their message, but couldn't figure out where it applied to the article. I got an actual helpful reply from a human in return and carefully read the EZA terms of service. Sure enough, they were right and I was wrong. Pilot error for sure. I resubmitted triumphantly.
My article was rejected for what I think was the fourth time. Again I didn't understand the general-purpose error message. Again I submitted a brief, to-the-point query. This time I got a slightly less general purpose message, which helped me track down the issue. My bad again. I resubmitted... and finally received the coveted "Your article... has been accepted and published on EzineArticles.com" and the "You've also earned Expert Author status" line. Snap!
Later I would learn to reread the terms of service when I wrote an article. Having made so many errors I was able to absorb more of it. In the next half-dozen articles only one got rejected. I diagnosed the problem myself based on their now slightly more comprehensible error message, resubmitted, and got approved. It now takes about 3 business days, sometimes just one, even though I only have a few articles published there.
They're internet marketers at heart too...
I am a novice internet marketer. I am not a novice writer, having earned a living as a technical writer for years when I first embarked on a white-collar career. I am also very well off, as a result of a self-financed startup launched during the first dot com bust. I still run it today.
Yet the "You've also earned Expert Author status" message is one of the highlights of my nascent internet marketing career, equaled only by my first sale! Let's be real. The vaporous Expert Author title has almost no intrinsic value. A little, certainly, because of EZA's tremendous search engine presence. Other than that carries identical weight to the gold star my fourth grade piano teacher glued over "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie" when I managed to play it without too many mistakes. EzineArticles.com wields copy with subtle and deadly efficiency. They have somehow turned the contribution of free content to their private business into a privilege. I know it, and I've bought into it totally.
...because they follow the #1 rule of internet marketers
The #1 rule of the top internet marketers is to deliver great value for the money. EZA is king because, like Google, they continually challenge their content providers to produce more focused, more customer-oriented, more substantive work product than any of their competitors. This benefits almost everyone in the ecosystem, the sole exceptions being the incompetent and the entitled.
How I generate articles for EZA fast and get them published almost as quickly
I failed a lot getting to this point. Each failure I added to a checklist I use for each article. Here's what it looks like.
I use this checklist each time I write an article. It was borne of frustration but has proven increasingly more useful.
Now go create some great content!
P.S. I'm doing this on an Alaska cruise and won't be able to answer this post for a few days. The Inside Passage has awful net access, and I'm pulling out of port even as we speak.
I came to EzineArticles with some trepidation last April after reading horror stories about multiple rejections and lengthy approval periods.
Come up with an article idea
I know. Thank you, Captain Obvious. But hear me out. I think it's good to start there but to iterate it a few times with the next step, which is determining the main keyword phrase.
Determine the main keyword phrase
Determine the main keyword phrase based on the article idea. Check the article idea by searching for it on Google, then looking at the results at the bottom of the page. Those results are likely to be better focused keyphrases than the one you came up with, yet they will, we hope, be directly related to it.
For example, I originally thought the title of this article would be "Article Marketing Checklist". When I entered that into google and checked the bottom of the first page of search returns, I noticed that the first suggestion was "Article Marketing Tips". Another one was "Article Submission", which I resolved to use as the secondary keyphrase. I combined them to form the title of this article, then threw the "checklist" on for good measure. Plus, I love checklists.
You can create a series of articles using the primary keyphrase
Steven Waggenheim pointed out a potent strategy for writing multiple articles on the same subject: reuse your primary keyphrase as the title for many or all of the articles in your niche, followed by differing secondary keyphrases for each article. This makes you an authority and at the same time makes you easier to find in search engines.
Using this article as an example, other keyphrases Google returned for "Article Marketing" included "article submission and "article distribution". If this is the first article in a series on article submission, I might later create an article named "Article Marketing Tips: Article Submission for the Rejection-Weary" or "Article Marketing Tips: Error-Free Article Submission at Warp Speed".
Write a 3-6 sentence summary of your article.
Many submission services require a brief summary of the article. So do many bookmarking sites. You may want to save the summary for last, but I find doing it first boosts my writing speed for the article itself. I think the focus helps.
You have two possibly conflicting goals here. One is to leave a little mystery. The other is to improve your article's visibility to search engines. For the latter, it helps to put the primary phrase first if possible. For this article the summary might be "Article Marketing Tips to turbocharge your article submission process. Take it from someone who's been there: this article marketing advice will save you oodles of time in the long run."
Get the primary keyphrase into the article lead
Try to include the primary keyphrase in your article lead. This is mostly for search engine purposes. There's plenty of evidence that Google doesn't look at the entire article so it's a good practice to get that keyphrase in early. Get the keyphrase in one or two more times for a short article (up to 500 words), and no more than fourth time for longer articles. One excellent use of the keyphrase is for the anchor text in your resource box. (Anchor text is the visible portion of an HTML link.)
Read the rules carefully
One problem with the EZA article submission process is that the editors clearly use some kind of boilerplate system for comments. Understandable. This can't be a huge company and each editor must evaluate massive numbers of articles every day. The upside is that real humans see your article, which is an impressive feat for what appears to be a self-funded operation without venture capital. The downside is that they are overworked and occasionally make mistakes.
My first article took 8 weeks to get approved because the EZA rules, all of which make solid sense individually, are a lot to get your arms around. After a few tries in which my first article was rejected for what seemed like nebulous reasons, I got discouraged and gave up.
EzineArticles has real tech support
When I finally revisited my article, I rooted around for the EZA tech support form and asked very specific questions that showed that I had read their message, but couldn't figure out where it applied to the article. I got an actual helpful reply from a human in return and carefully read the EZA terms of service. Sure enough, they were right and I was wrong. Pilot error for sure. I resubmitted triumphantly.
My article was rejected for what I think was the fourth time. Again I didn't understand the general-purpose error message. Again I submitted a brief, to-the-point query. This time I got a slightly less general purpose message, which helped me track down the issue. My bad again. I resubmitted... and finally received the coveted "Your article... has been accepted and published on EzineArticles.com" and the "You've also earned Expert Author status" line. Snap!
Later I would learn to reread the terms of service when I wrote an article. Having made so many errors I was able to absorb more of it. In the next half-dozen articles only one got rejected. I diagnosed the problem myself based on their now slightly more comprehensible error message, resubmitted, and got approved. It now takes about 3 business days, sometimes just one, even though I only have a few articles published there.
They're internet marketers at heart too...
I am a novice internet marketer. I am not a novice writer, having earned a living as a technical writer for years when I first embarked on a white-collar career. I am also very well off, as a result of a self-financed startup launched during the first dot com bust. I still run it today.
Yet the "You've also earned Expert Author status" message is one of the highlights of my nascent internet marketing career, equaled only by my first sale! Let's be real. The vaporous Expert Author title has almost no intrinsic value. A little, certainly, because of EZA's tremendous search engine presence. Other than that carries identical weight to the gold star my fourth grade piano teacher glued over "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie" when I managed to play it without too many mistakes. EzineArticles.com wields copy with subtle and deadly efficiency. They have somehow turned the contribution of free content to their private business into a privilege. I know it, and I've bought into it totally.
...because they follow the #1 rule of internet marketers
The #1 rule of the top internet marketers is to deliver great value for the money. EZA is king because, like Google, they continually challenge their content providers to produce more focused, more customer-oriented, more substantive work product than any of their competitors. This benefits almost everyone in the ecosystem, the sole exceptions being the incompetent and the entitled.
How I generate articles for EZA fast and get them published almost as quickly
I failed a lot getting to this point. Each failure I added to a checklist I use for each article. Here's what it looks like.
- Come up with an article idea
- Refine it to create a primary keyphrase
- Use the results of that search to determine a secondary keyphrase or two
- Consider writing a series of articles, each starting with the primary keyphrase but ending with a different secondary keyphrase.
- Write a brief summary of the article before you write the article itself. Make it enticing and leave some mystery.
- Get the primary phrase into the article lead for search engine purposes
- Read article submission rules carefully
- Don't be afraid to request help, but ask it in a way that shows you've tried to do your homework
I use this checklist each time I write an article. It was borne of frustration but has proven increasingly more useful.
Now go create some great content!
P.S. I'm doing this on an Alaska cruise and won't be able to answer this post for a few days. The Inside Passage has awful net access, and I'm pulling out of port even as we speak.
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