JL Forums

I run a site that carries mostly user provided content.

We get anything up to a couple of hundred article submissions per day and, every day we reject most of them. It is not that we have impossibly high standards but more usually that members submit articles with fundamental problems that, if addressed would help them with submissions to many other sites.

Recently we have started to see an influx of content from people who seem to be using Article Builder. On the whole we welcome this, strangley enough it is leading to a noticeable improvement in readability of submissions; but there are some points to note:

1) Providing a title that carries your keywords but that has no relation to the content provides will see your article deleted. This morning I deleted an article with a title about insuring the health of horses, the content was about dog insurance and no mention of horses at all.

2) If you are trying to use local keywords then make sure that the context fits. If it does not fit then we delete.
Here's an example of what works and what does not work:

...provided by SEO outsourcing companies England have been...     DELETE!

...provided by English SEO outsourcing companies have been...  Publish!!!

The first example will get your content deleted from many sites. The second is perfectly fine. Search engines use a system called LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) to extract meaning from website content and understand that Indian and India both refer to the place and to SEO. There is no need to mangle the language to get your point across. We learned that for normal keywords fice years ago.

3) Sticking with local keywords for a moment. If you write an article about, for example, laser eye surgery in Chelmsford, then it is not good enough to simply have a generic article and then paste in something like 'best laser eye surgery Chelmsford provides expert service' It makes no sense and does not help people looking for info about laser eye surgery in Chelmsford at all. This gets deleted.

Go for something like this: 'Dr Smith's laser eye treatment centre in Chelmsford is the best because they only employ qualified opthalmic surgeons' Now you have provided value to readers and a cue to the search engines that this is an article about laser eye surgery in Chelmsford.

4) At the moment Article Builder is a new service but over time there will be a huge number of 'tips' articles floating around and I expect that they will routinely get deleted just as we tend to do when we get a raft of PLR submissions all on the same topic of the day.
To avoid this try to use the tips as a part of a 'proper' article, one that is making a point and has a beginning, middle and an end.

5) Try to get the tips closely focussed on a topic, so, for example, if writing about health insurance try to focus upon a niche, maybe health insurance for old people, or getting the best deal with an employer based scheme. This means selecting the tips that are going to be used and then writing an introduction and conclusion specific to the theme.

6) If you are going to spin paragraphs together to make several articles into a single spinnable seed article don't try to rewrite them automatically, at least not for article directory submissions. The quality of automatic rewriting is too poor and it is unnecessary. You are almost certainly better off submitting very readable content that is not unique than submitting unique rubbish that gets deleted and never published. (Copyscape is NOT your friend here!)

7) Please do not shoot the messenger, but if your native language is not English, or your written English skills are not good, then do not even think of using spinning or rewriting tools. Stick to basic Article Builder content and you will do much better.

Thanks for reading. We look forward to seeing many more article submissions and fewer rejections.

Thanks Meg!

A suggestion that Jon makes but which is ignored by very many people is to ALWAYS check the output of any automated substitutions of synonyms.

Here's something that came across my desk this morning:

Drug addiction among teens is an intricate condition that results in stern unfavorable circumstances characterized by obsessive drug cravings

What was this writer trying to say?
No matter the quality of the information within the article if a reviewer on a decent site sees something like that in the first paragraph then the rest of the article will not get read.

Here's another example of the shortsighted tendency of submitters to use a decent article, maybe even spin it perfectly and then ruin it by forgetting that their readers are not illiterate.
See why this article had to be rejected:

Some years back, some wise men said, ‘Common Sense is not that Common’. True were the words they spoke. Now, while looking for the Best Cosmetic Surgeon India, all you need to do is use your common sense.

This article was actually quite interesting to read and thus it got the benefit of not being chucked out at the first sentence. But the error was repeated and we do not have the time to edit that which should have been written properly in the first place!
Do you all see the issue here?
The words 'Best Cosmetic Surgeon India makes no sense in the context of the sentence.
Writing something like 'Now, while looking for the best cosmetic surgeons in India...' or ' Now while looking for the best cosmetic surgeon in India...' would both work, would be recognised by search engines and provide the benefit of backlinks and human traffic.

We are still seeing people using Article Builder content without making sure the title is relevant. If you are writing about buying cheap insurance then it is not good to have a title about how to make an insurance claim. When we see 'em we delete 'em.

The sites that accept rubbish are also sites that ARE rubbish. In most cases you waste your time by submitting to them. I have spoken with people running article sites who are considering moving away from User Generated Content as the quality of submissions has fallen so low.

We love taking your submissions, promoting them and helping you to succeed but we hate it when our members do not show us the respect of submitting decently written content that makes sense to most of our readers.

I reckon, but have not tested, that LSI would take care of this issue as I know it does with many other cases and has done for many years, the days when we had to write keyword larded text to ram context down the throat of stubborn, illiterate search engine spiders is long gone.
If an article is well written and is genuinely about 'dentists in Nottingham' and is not just a generic article with a keyword or two lobbed in, then the context is fairly clear - and in the end, how many dentists are actually promoting their business in Nottingham using article marketing.

However, a link that is unmade is no good to anyone.
If a reviewer rejects an article because the link makes no sense or is out of context then there is no benefit to anyone. Therefore I'd suggest that even if a link is only worth 50% of its potential because it is not in exactly the right form the value is much higher than ZERO, ZIP, ZILCH from no link due to a rejection.

To be honest, I tend to cut a little slack to submitters from India etc who are writing about local topics in a language that is not their first, but if an article writer from Coimbra is writing about dentists in Nottingham then I expect him to be able to keep up with the UK writers. Of course, many, many people with English as their first tongue really should not be writing on behalf of any businesses though. It is also very clear that often these gems of the writers art are from native English speakers, just lazy and careless.

If a writer needs to use a particular form then there are ways around the problem, for example, run a keyword phrase across two sentences like this: '...the city has the best dentists. India, overall, trains dentists very well.'   [personal URL removed and redirected back to the forum - please keep personal Urls in the sig. only]

Of course that requires actual creativity rather than simply taking a PLR article and stuffing it with keywords.

There are probably more literate, in English, Indians than there are Britons. The problem that I see is that many of the less capable ones are submitting 'articles' for marketing agencies. The more capable ones are busy writing Booker Prize winning novels.

If an article submitting person NEEDS to have a mangled anchor text link then they NEED to understand that it is going to get edited or deleted. So, the article submitting person gets to make a choice: Is NO link better than A link?

I think I know what the answer is.
That means using one's submissions appropriately.

I have no concerns about where an article submitter is based or his/her nationality. That said, if one looks at the stats for pretty much any article directory there is a clear preponderance toward the Indian sub-continent. I am happy to have a fairly large Indian readership and am happy to be accepting content that is Indian market relevant - I have been trying to reach out for that for some time.

It's always good  to hear something straight from the horse's mouth. Thanks for the insites Andrew!

Andrew,

You are a better man than me to manage article sites. I would go ballistic having to put up with all those messed up articles!!

Dang...had not heard those figures. That is a nice income. I may have to look at this business model some time. Have too many irons in the fire as it is now though.

Five Tips To Make Your Article Submissions Profitable

Most of the articles that are syndicated to my site are rejected. I am sure it is true for most sites that review content for quality.

Overall we reject over 50% every day and if we want to increase the quality (which we do) then our rejection rate has to increase or we have to help our contributors to syndicate better quality content.

Not all articles we reject are rejected because they are badly written, sometimes it is just that they are boring.

Sometimes we publish an article that is badly written with poor English because it is interesting.

So, in an effort to make the lives of reviewers and editors everywhere easier here's my 5 top tips to get your article accepted at 'the best places' and also to get your article read. (it ain't just about the back links you know!)

1) Inform Your Readers
When you write an article pass on real information about a topic. Teach the reader something. In a 400-500 word article you should be able to introduce a topic and share something concrete about it. For example, if writing about digital photography; in 500 words you should be able to explain in easy terms what 'depth of field' is and why it is important in making good pictures for your printing company to turn into printed albums.

If you simply tell us all about why you think your printing company is so good then you are wasting everybody's time. We will reject your article for being advertising driven and the places that will accept it know that nobody will read your article (and because they don't care the page will likely never get indexed!)

2) Ask Your Readers A Question
And then start to answer it for them. Use the article to outline the question and what it means, teach the reader something but then make it clear that they can finish answering the question by following the link at the foot of your article.
So, using the example in Tip 1 above you might in the title ask 'How Can I make My Photographs Look More Clear and Sharp?'

Then you can start to explain about what makes a picture look sharp - how to focus and how to use depth of field to make important parts of the picture look more sharp. Then you can ask readers to come to your pages for more information and picture examples to show off the ideas.

Now you have a magnet to get real people to your site and you can sell them stuff when they get there.

3) Don't Assume That Your Readers Know Nothing
This can be a toughie.
Often it is clear that whoever is sending us the article knows very little about the topic and so they write YET ANOTHER ARTICLE ABOUT BACKLINKING that covers the absolute basics, the stuff from Wikipedia that took five minutes to get and does nothing more than repeat what has been said hundreds of thousands of times before.

If you want to get a good audience for your articles try to go beyond the basics. Take a topic and examine it. Maybe even write a series of articles that go into greater depth. On sites like mine that is easy to do as readers can easily click onto the other articles on the theme.

Because we get bored with these basic, basic articles that simply duplicate what has already been written a million times we sometimes reject from boredom.
For sure though we hold such lazy writing up to a higher standard. If you are going to send the world's latest opus on why teens get acne then we WILL hold your writing to a higher standard in other areas! If you interest the reviewer then the chances are that your article will be published; the reviewer might even correct a spelling mistake or two rather than reject an interesting piece.

4) Make Sure That Your Article Makes Sense
Readers are easily put off by words that are in the wrong place, or in the wrong order or completely missing. If you want to get people to visit your pages they need to want to stay with you to the bottom of your article.
Readers need to trust that you will not waste their time if they go to your web page.

You break the deal when you write words that make no sense.  You kill a reader's attention when they find a phrase or sentence is all jumbled up in order to squeeze in an anchor text link. When a reader comes across such things they usually click away from the page and my site.
You have lost those eyeballs on your pages and now have no chance to get them to do what you want them to do.

So, use proper word order, ESPECIALLY when it comes to place names - towns, cites etc. We all know that there is a particular word order when we talk about things and places. We customarily reject articles where the writer does this: 'looking for an expert locksmith Guildford' because he thinks that the words 'expert locksmith Guildford' will rocket his page to the top of the SERPS. The search engines are better than that and your readers deserve more respect.

Write the phrase properly: 'looking for an expert locksmith in Guildford' will get you published, get readers to carry on reading, get people to your pages and put money in your pocket.

5) Proofread Your Article
Every day we reject articles because the spelling is just too horrid. Is there some kind of version of Office or Open Office that does not have a spell checker built in? I think not!
Spell checking takes no time and makes a real difference to the success of your article marketing.

But it gets worse...
Each day several people will submit articles where the hyperlinks are not properly formed. Sometimes one is OK but the next is not.
Articles like these are simply rejected without delay. If you can't be bothered to make sure that your article is laid out correctly then why should we bother to read or correct it?

In Conclusion:
Remember that each article that you send out is an advertisement for your business. Each time a reader sees poor spelling, bad grammar, nonsensical wording they see a business that does not care, is disrespectful of its clients and is not worth dealing with.

Your articles can all be silent salesmen for your business directing people to your site ready to spend money.
Sadly too many are like a gang of hoodlums hanging around outside a shop - nobody wants to walk past them to buy anything from inside.

Please send out an army of silent salesmen who will, without pay, send your business qualified prospects ready and willing to spend money with you.

Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the bottom.