One of the most common blunders by those using article marketing to distribute free reprint articles is to include periods after domain names at the end of sentences. Surely those authors who have made this blunder realize that if that period gets included in the URL, the link will lead to a 404 error or "Page Not Found" message any time a visitor clicks on your link from any web site that used your articles. Publishers complicate things by not visiting links included in author resource boxes and failing to correct the address error in the URL once they do notice it.
To be fair to publishers, it is often difficult to edit within some content management systems and it simply takes too much time to make those changes. To be fair to article authors, we certainly ought to be able to use correct punctuation in our writing, even if it does cause problems with automated link creation in CMS (Content Management System) tools. To be fair to CMS programmers, writing exceptions into the software on CMS sytsems to remove that period leads to incomplete and truncated filenames along with other complex unintended consequences.
But the ultimate responsibility for this issue rests squarely on the head of web content authors who write articles intended to gain them links from other websites. Most have figured out the eccentricities of the web and know how to avoid this problem after seeing a few bad links or URL's that are not hyperlinked by web content publishers. You MUST understand these issues to successfully use article marketing to get your web content used by publishers.
For those web content authors who have NOT figured out the eccentricities of publishing on the web, here a a few guidelines:
1) I'll repeat the opening admonition here because it bears repeating as the most common error by article marketers - Don't follow web addresses with periods or the resulting link will lead to an error page. Include a space between domain names and periods if you must use a period following a web address. Content Management Systems (CMS) used by web content publishers will include that period in the hyperlink!
2) Never cut and paste from Microsoft Word documents or other proprietary word processing software, because most use non-ascii text which replaces common punctuation with code unique to their software to create punctuation marks such as hyphens, elipses, quote marks, accents, exclamation marks, dashes and underscores. It is very irritating to read articles that include those odd looking foreign characters on web pages. Most publishers cannot, and the remaining publishers WILL not take the time to fix those strange characters in your text before publishing them to a web page or pasting them into their plain text newsletter. So your article simply will not be used in most cases.
3) Start a new line each time you include a web address within the body of the article AND in your resource boxes, because email clients often "break" web addresses if they are longer than 64 characters. Count the characters in any web address you use in articles or in your resource boxes because if theyare longer than 64 characters, many will wrap onto the following line of text, those content management systems (CMS) will then ALSO truncate your web address and send anyone who clicks that incomplete URL to a "404 error, Page Not Found." Use one of the recognized URL shortening and forwarding services to make the longer web addresses short. My favorite is http://www.shorl.com
4) Don't use proprietary software to paste your articles INTO before distributing to ezine editors, article distribution and web content sites because that proprietary software converts both previous proprietary punctuation from word processing software and previously ascii text punctuation within your article to use IT'S own proprietary punctuation which shows up on web pages as bizarre foreign and unrecognizable characters as it sends that article to web publishers. Again, leading to your article not being used by web content publishers.
5) Always remember to use the leading http:// portion of web addresses that you want converted into links by web content publishers because, once again, their content management system (CMS) won't recognize it as a URL (web address) if that portion is missing from the domain name. Most will not take the extra time to add that required element to your address to cause their CMS to embed the hyperlink for them and almost nobody will return to add the hyperlink if their CMS fails to do it for them - many don't know how to write the necessary HTML to embed links but would be required to add it if their CMS didn't do it for them initially - so they can't link to you if they want to.
6) Use only those article distribution sources that embed hyperlinks in your resource boxes to distribute your articles. I've run across dozens of sites using my articles that referred me back to the articles distributor saying, "They don't provide the hyperlink from their site". If you do use an article distribution source that DOESN'T automatically embed hyperlinks for users of your articles, learn how to embed them yourself during submission. Most web content publishers simply will not take the time to add it if they use those article distribution sources that don't provide it to them.
7) Never distribute articles with HTML already included to embed links as it will result in web content publishers NOT using the articles because their CMS then DOUBLE embeds hyperlinks- often breaking those links and leading to further error pages. Even if it the resulting hyperlink works properly, it makes reading difficult since you'll then see the HTML code displayed in unicode characters on the page of some sites.
Learn the bugaboos of Web CMS and take advantage of the knowledge to out-perform your article marketing competitors who haven't yet learned how to manage Content Management Systems to their advantage.
Copyright ? August 12, 2005
Mike Banks Valentine operates http://publish101.com - a web content resource for article authors and publishers. He offers a Text to HTML converter for web publishers who don't have expensive Content Manangement Systems to automatically insert paragraph tags, create HTML lists and hyperlink domain names for use on the web without the need to learn HTML. Just cut and paste articles into the converter, click a few buttons and paste pre-formatted articles into your web page template. http://publish101.com
trusted cleaning company Bannockburn ..Ever read one of those web articles written by an... Read More
Many writers struggle with the decision of whether or not... Read More
Every time I run a course on Freelance Writing, students... Read More
Are you ready to become an internet marketing expert? Are... Read More
Online readers love information, but be sure your information is... Read More
Publishing articles on the Internet is a tremendous way to... Read More
Understanding the rules of correct formatting for online articles will... Read More
Search Engines are constantly on the "look out" for freshly... Read More
Article writing can be such an intimate act as you're... Read More
We all know that article writing is a great way... Read More
Writing a letter to your newspaper's editor is a privilege... Read More
By avoiding these common mistakes, you will greatly improve your... Read More
A large portion of your business relies on your ability... Read More
Many online marketers have crowed about the value of writing... Read More
MS: Shelley, you're an excellent person to talk to about... Read More
Want your articles to get picked up and reprinted by... Read More
Start by Being QuotableIt's tough to stand out online. With... Read More
You pick a pen, grab a piece of paper and... Read More
Is Putting your Articles in the Public Domain really a... Read More
Why do so many internet marketers waste their time on... Read More
You are running out of ideas, you sit down in... Read More
Selling books online means that you need to get interested... Read More
Are you short of ideas? There are times when we... Read More
The Shortest Distance to Your Home Town Enterprise is Over... Read More
Proven and Exceptional Click-Through ResultsTesting has proven again and again... Read More
luxury cleaning services Lake Forest ..It doesn't really matter who you are; you definitely know... Read More
Many writers do not understand that the online writing business... Read More
1. Participate in chat rooms related to your targeted audience.... Read More
Writing for the internet requires that you create a large... Read More
Most business owners are overwhelmed with the day to day... Read More
Everyone knows an expert is just a drip under pressure.... Read More
Been reading up on SEO? If so, you know that... Read More
What is Anchor Text Optimization?Anchor text optimization consists of the... Read More
Many online marketers have crowed about the value of writing... Read More
Writing articles for publication on the Internet is, at the... Read More
MS: John, you must be one of the most prolific... Read More
When writing articles for publication, it is important that you... Read More
Frequently when I am communicating with other webmasters and I... Read More
How would you like to have your name and web... Read More
Online PR in the form of website and ezine article... Read More
People love to hear stories. They'll identify with what you... Read More
Articles are a fantastic source of links and additional traffic... Read More
One of the best ways to build credibility and promote... Read More
Heard about article marketing but not sure why you'd need... Read More
Ready to jump on the keyword article bandwagon? Billions of... Read More
The Whole reason you write those articles is so you... Read More
How are you marketing your articles? As a writer prospecting... Read More
People who have an idea for a website sometimes require... Read More
By now you probably understand how important writing for trade... Read More
1. Choose A Topic.You need to choose either a hot... Read More
Article Writing |