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Ezine Articles New Guidelines

by Lisa Angelettie

Ezine Articles Revamps Writing Guidelines

One of the article directories that I always promote here on my site is EzineArticles and that is primarily for the fact that is truly the most human reviewed directory out there — which I love because there is a level of quality on the site that is not found anywhere else — BUT that also leads toezine article guidelines problems for many new article marketers — Their articles get kicked back.

If you’ve ever had an article or are worried about article submission to EzineArticles, then I think you’ll be glad to know that they’ve revised their old writer’s  guidelines. They haven’t changed much, BUT they have rewritten them to further explain what you should and should not include in  your articles to ensure that they are approved in a speedy manner.

Here’s the new Editorial Guidelines breakdown:

Content Qualifications - As an introduction to the Editorial Guidelines, the Content Qualifications sections discusses how to keep your articles unique and informative, which in turn builds your credibility and a loyal audience.

Article Content - This section provides all the do’s and don’ts while writing the content of your articles.

Author Name - Your author name is an essential extension of your brand. These guidelines will help you in branding as well as choosing pen names and managing ghostwriters.

Format - Providing do’s and don’ts of article titles, optimizing your article body, how to use keywords naturally, tips for your resource box, as well as link strategies, the Format guidelines ensure you don’t let one bit of your article go to waste.

 

Can I Submit Same Articles To EzineArticles & Blog?

by Lisa Angelettie · 10 comments

Can I Submit The Same Articles To EzineArticles & Blog?

I guarantee you that someone asks me this question every week, no matter how many articles I write about it. So I thought I’d feature it as one of my frequently asked questions this week. Plus, it sort of ties in with my whole Google theme this week.

Q: Lisa, one of the problems I am having is that I want to use EzineArticles to promote my articles as well as my own website. Can I use the same articles that I write for EzineArticles on my website?

A: I am a big believer in repurposing articles – so my answer is yes – but with a few caveats. First of all, I need to know where you are in your business. If you are just starting out, then I definitely recommend getting some momentum going by publishing articles to EzineArticles as well as your blog.

Don’t worry about duplicate content, etc. right now. EzineArticle’s WordPress plugin will help carry this out even faster. After you’ve published the article to your site, you can publish it as is to EzineARticles throught the plugin OR you can make a few changes tot he article and then publish it to EzineArticles via the plugin.

If you are in the middle of your business, meaning that you are generating some income and have been building a list for a while, then your site/blog has probably gained some traction on the web. You are appearing in the search engines, but now it’s time to really take your optimization a little more seriously. Duplicate content starts to matter to the established webpreneur.

Now when you submit your blog articles to EzineArticles or vice-versa you need to make sure that you change the article enough that it looks like a different article to Google. This is actually much more important now than it use to be due to Google’s latest algorithm update. Sites like EzineArticles took a hit because too many websites had identical articles to the ones on their site.

Ways to make sure your articles are different are to rewrite them (which I do) or use article spinning software. An article submission service that also offers a high quality article spinning service is SubmitYourArticle.

Bonus Tip!
Also, writing unique articles will be easy for EzineArticles and your blog because you should be using links to related resources/content in your blog articles. On the other hand, you cannot add links to your EzineArticles articles (or at least only one in the body of the article) the other links are only allowed in your resource box. Having an article with no links vs. one with links helps create two distinct articles that the search engines will view as different and unique.

 

 

#1 Google Penalty To Avoid

by Lisa Angelettie

#1 Google Penalty To Avoid

There are a few experts out there who would like to scare you to death about depending on Google for search engine traffic to your site. While I don’t recommend depending on only one marketing strategy, I do highly recommend implementing good search engine optimization practices to maximize all the real, organic traffic you can attract to your site. Why?

1. It’s free and that’s always great.

2. It’s typically a highly qualified prospect who finds you via a Google search.

3. It’s simple to implement.

So while I think I have covered a lot of fabulous things about grabbing Google traffic as well as the recent Google algorithm updates that have changed the game for some site owners, I thought it was important to give you another side of the coin. Some of the pitfalls (Google penalties) that you can fall into when writing content for the search engines and how to avoid them.

While I could talk about this topic for days, I selected one major Google penalty that you want to avoid for today’s article, because I see it happening so much. Especially by new marketers or frustrated solopreneurs.

Aggressive Link Building

It is no secret that in today’s society we all are looking for a way to do things faster, better, easier, quicker, etc. This is no different with entrepreneurs on the web. Even with all the lightening fast progress that we’ve seen on the web, people still want faster. Even with the great amounts of money you can make online with minimal effort — people still want to make more money by doing less.

In that spirit, a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to artificially build up the ranking and importance of their sites by acquiring links a.k.a. back links to their sites with lightening speed. Unfortunately, this is probably the #1 way for a site owner to suffer a Google penalty and see your site fall in the oh-so-awful Google sandbox. Why? Well, understand the logic…

Google started assessing a site’s importance based on the number of backlinks it had and the quality of those backlinks years ago. Originally the intent made sense, because if you owned a site which was accruing a regular amount of inbound links from reputable sites – it is thought that your site hosted relevant content to the niche you are ranking in. Thus making you relevant and important as well.

Of course Google didn’t count on the fact that marketers were going to figure out a way to put that process on steroids and get hundreds of links to a brand new website in one day, for multiple days! When they saw that happening, they realized that that wasn’t natural inbound linking. And of course Google was not going to reward sites that did this by giving them great ranking – so they began penalizing sites that did this type of unnatural link building and they still do this to this day.

So please be aware of this major link building blunder as you seek inbound links to your site. Do not build links to your site aggressively. If you did nothing and just allow other sites to find your content and link to you naturally there is absolutely no way you will ever have to worry about this penalty. BUT the sit back and wait method is not something I necessarily recommend, especially for folks looking to see immediate results. So in that case, do not actively and aggressively build links to your site by:

1. Joining a large link farm. The quantity and quality of links from this type of source is dubious and Google will penalize you for it.

2. Buying large amounts of links. Google does not want you to buy any links, but if you do, know that you should buy relevant ones and a few at a time.

3. Publishing hundreds of articles at one time. Many people do this because they’ve bought some sort of submission software as a shortcut, but it’s important that you know that you should not publish hundreds of articles at one time. You should trickle the publishing dates so that you do not have too many new links pointing to your site at one time.

In fact, I recommend that you build new links to your site at a rate of 10-15% or less than your existing link totals per month. For example, if you have a site with 100 current links, that means you can safely build in another 10-20 links without drawing any undue notice. Of course, the larger your site, the more links you can safely build on a monthly basis.

Want more writing for Google tips like this? I’ll be talking about a lot more very soon. Stay tuned! In the meantime, take a look at these related articles:

Why Google Still Matters

Did Google Give Article Marketing A Slap?

Also if you have any questions about writing content for Google, feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I’ll answer them.

 

Did Google Give Article Marketing A Slap?

by Lisa Angelettie · 7 comments

Did Google Give Article Marketing A Slap Right In The Face?

If you have been thinking about using article marketing for some time but weren’t sure about it, because of the rumblings on the web about Google’s latest algorithm shuffle, then I have a few things to say to clear up any confusion…

Google Slap

First – Let’s Be Clear About What Article Marketing Is These Days.
As all things on the web, article marketing can move and bend and change shape as things shift on the web. It is no longer just a way to take an article and publish it to as many sites (junk or not) as you can. In fact, it is that very act that has a lot of site owners lower in the rankings and crying the blues — because the same articles were published to so many low quality directories and blogs. Quantity over quality is no longer effective article marketing. This is NOT how I get my oodles of #1 spots on the web, and this is not what I teach to nice folks like you. Look at what happened to poor JCPenny!

Second – Article Marketing Is Not Dead  – It’s Just Going Through A Metamorphosis!
Google periodically shakes things up on their end to get rid of some of the dead weight and the site owners that were “getting over”. This is nothing new and nothing to panic about. The reality about article writing is that it will always be relevant because content is the foundation of the internet. This is not about whether to use article marketing, but rather this is more about writing “better” articles and giving a damn about where they end up.

Third – Can You Please Just Step Up?
So how can you become Google compliant? Well the first step, is that you simply need to step up and write better! Stop believing all those hyped up “lazy marketer” ads. If you want a real, thriving business, then stop writing junk that you’ve thrown together in two seconds. Quit looking for a million shortcuts to create articles and other content. Get real in your business and start writing from the heart. That will be a great start to getting your content noticed, read, and virally shared with others.

Fourth – Get Snobby!
The next step is to make sure that you are being selective about where you publish your content. That is imperative. It use to be that you could publish your articles anywhere and get the benefit of a backlink. That has changed. Not Google notices what kind of sites are pointing back to you. Are they high quality? Are they even human updated? Or are they automated junk or scraper sites?

No now you have to be basically a snob and only publish to high quality, relevant, sites. This includes directories, other websites and blogs, and strong social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Fifth – Spread The Wealth
Don’t just limit your article marketing to article directories. Share your work with high quality and niche focused third party bloggers and site owners. While the industry doesn’t call this article marketing, but guest blogging or guest posting, let’s be real about this. It’s all marketing:)

Also, don’t forget to add articles to your own site or blog. This is going to become much more relevant as the years go on. Get in the habit of doing this now. You want to create a direct path from a Google search to your site and this is how you accomplish that.

Conclusion
Let me put it this way, my overall rankings improved with the latest Google shake up. My keywords either shot up to #1 or fluctuated in the top 5 results. The reason for this is that I was a snob who stepped up long before Google forced my hand. Trust me when I say that there are many tricks of the trade to staying in favor with the web’s largest search engine and I’d love to share them all with you, but this just isn’t the platform for all I want to say.

In fact, I am planning a big ole’ Google Love event which I will be inviting you to very soon. Look out for that to come shortly. In the meantime, do you have any questions about the latest Google algorithm updates that you want to ask? Leave them in the comment section below and I’ll get right back to you.

EzineArticles Diamond Level Membership

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Article Rewriter – Does It Work?

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High Ranked Article Directories

High Ranked Article Directories Pagerank is a number that search engines like Google assign a website based on it’s relevance and importance. No one knows for sure, but there is some secret algorythm that Google uses to decide what websites deserve what ranking. The criteria has changed over the years. Pagerank use to be much [...]

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