How Not to Article Market

Article marketing is one of the most cost-effective, efficiently viral ways to generate one-way links on the Net.  This is also a way you get your site off the ground if your budget happens to be a bit tight, because basic article submission to free article directories is free.  Even if you have money to spend, this way of viral marketing is still well worth your time.  It builds traffic, page rank, and credibility, if you do it correctly.

So, what's correctly?  There are a lot of theories about that, and several of them work.  However, the list of things you can do to hamstring yourself is pretty much consistent, and so I recommend not doing any of these:

• Spam articles:  These are machine-generated, keyword rich piles of gibberish you then blast across the Net in the hopes it will stick on one or two article sites.  More and more sites are using human editors or machine-defeating image confirmations (that strange picture of letters they ask you to type in at some logins) to prevent this.  It's also a waste of your time, because no one puts these kinds of articles on their sites, so your back links don't spread.
• Topic drift:  Write an article about one thing only.  People tend to read and use articles around 500 words or less anyway.  If you write an article about a topic, it should be focused, to the point, and pleasant to read.  So, if you're writing about repairing auto glass, for example, don't comment on the weather or otherwise drift off-point.  It should be one topic and one topic only per article.  If you have more than one, write multiple articles (which also benefits you).
• Neglecting keywords:  This is a reality of the Net.  Most of the time your articles are found by people searching keyword terms.  And the keyword that most matches your article should be in its title.  If you have a commercial keyword tool, you can use it (I use mine for pay per click advertising, meta tag generation, and article titles, so they're worthwhile purchases), or you can use the slightly bare bones but otherwise free Overture Keyword Tool for a dozen good ones or so.  Put a keyword that matches your topic and sounds sensible in the title, because potential traffic will be forever finding your article otherwise.

Article marketing isn't as difficult as rocket science, but you do have to keep a few things in mind.  Avoid the pitfalls, and you're well on your way.