Solving The Issue Of Rejected Content

Many new marketers battle with rejected content. They submit articles to article directories or web 2.0 pages and they submit guest posts for consideration and blog comments that seem to disappear into the infamous black hole of the internet. Why? What can you do to change it?

Article Directories

Rule number one for directories is to read their guidelines. Article directories have varying editorial guidelines. Some of the best ranking sites have specific rules. How many links? How many self-serving, what kind of links, etcetera. If you don’t follow the rules, it will result in rejected content.

Learn the guidelines and follow them and you’ll save yourself time, effort, and frustration. And, for the high ranking directories, their methods work – that’s why so many of them are successful. Follow their editorial guidelines and you’ll probably get traffic and search engine rankings from those articles.

These sites know you want backlinks but they also know what works in terms of making their own site seen as valuable and therefore well-ranked.

Web 2.0 Sites

Web 2.0 sites have specific guidelines as well. If you get accepted by the lower end sites with crummy content, sure it may not get rejected but what’ll it really do for you? Not much.

Higher end sites have guidelines and by taking the time to learn them, you’ll get approved and get traffic. A fine balance of promotion, interest, and link building can be very beneficial.

Individual Site Owners

Who wants your article if it’s not valuable? You need to submit content to site owners that will benefit their readers. Take the time to learn who their readers are and write something for their benefit. The same applies to comments.

Blog comments can be valuable from a backlink perspective and they can be good for business because they can draw attention to your own blog. But if your blog comment doesn’t provide any value to the discussion, it’ll either get caught by Akismet or another spam filter or the blog owner will nuke it into oblivion and roll their eyes.

So, how to do write so that you’ve got less chance of your content being rejected, wherever it is that you’re planning to submit to?

1. Give readers value. Write without fluff and hype.

2. Know who you’re writing to and write for your audience.

3. Deliver on the promise in your title and your teaser.

4. Don’t stuff the keywords in. Think quantity first and keywords second. Do some keyword optimisation after you’ve written something good.

5. If your product is good, it’s good to talk about its benefits but instead of writing with the product name, write about potential solutions and then lead to your product in the appropriate section, such as the resource box. Most directories won’t allow direct selling.

6. Learn to write a good article and then learn to write a good byline. If the article is good and not too salesy, a well-written byline will drive traffic to your site where you can be as salesy as is necessary.

7. Regarding blog commenting, read a blog article you’re planning on commenting on so you can comment intelligently and increase the chances of your comment being approved. Too many who are trying to get blog comments simply skim and as a result aren’t able to write something that the blog owner will approve.

Content marketing is worthwhile, if you learn what it is that makes it work. A combination of following guidelines, quality writing, interesting content, and SEO can pay off. Your rejected content will likely diminish and your results will likely show that your articles are doing what you intended them to do.

See you at the top of Google!

Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
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