The Inside Scoop on Fast Approvals
a.k.a. How to significantly improve your articles’ chances of getting approved the first time.
As the EzineArticles Managing Editor I’m often asked, “Penny, what’s the secret to getting my articles approved fast?”
My answer is always the same, “If you’re not quite ready to invest in Premium Membership, the best way to speed up your approvals is to follow these simple guidelines:”
- Read and re-read your article. Double check for grammar and spelling errors that add time to your article review. Verify proper punctuation and read it aloud to determine if the language flows naturally.
- Deliver what you promised in the title. If your title says you’re about to give the reader (5) tips, then give them (5) clear tips which are easy to read and straight to the point.
- Don’t include more than 2 self-serving links (links that you own or have interest in) in the resource box. You want your article to look clean – webmasters and ezine publishers will value your article more when it contains fewer links.
- Don’t use the term “scam” in your article body or title. It causes confusion for both readers and article editors alike and can cause an article to be rejected.
Most importantly, read and follow the posted Editorial Guidelines.
If, despite your best efforts, your article receives a general error, ask the following questions before contacting Member Support:
- Do all the links work?
- Do the links provide value. Are they more than just ads or affiliate links?
- Is the title grammatically correct?
- Does the title make sense? Will readers know what they are going to read based off of the title?
- Does the article contain content that could be perceived as being negative? If so we may not allow it.
- Does the article unjustly review a product by not providing the pros and cons of that product? A good review offers both.
- Is the article content going to be outdated quickly (in a few days)? If so, revise it to reduce the loss of value over time.
That’s all there is to it. Following this advice will help ensure that the vast majority of your article submissions will get approved the first time.
One final tip: Submit more articles! It’s simple – the more articles you write, the better you’ll become at creating articles that not only engage and motivate your reader, but also fly through the EzineArticles approval process. Best of all, those additional articles will generate more exposure and traffic to your website!
Jonathan,
This is about user-experience. The longer the anchor text, the spammier the article appears.
We are continuously taking steps in educating both you and our editors on what is acceptable and not acceptable, this never stops. There is no hard line rule on 3-5 words except to say that anything over 5 will NOT be accepted, period.
With every editor you will have their own view on this and with that may come a small percentage of inconsistencies. We continually train them to make educated decisions and help them determine what quantifies as quality content. I would recommend to you that if your content does not blow someone away in terms of GREAT quality, then limit your text to 3 words.
Without looking at your account specifics, any article over 500 words that has the wow factor, would be OK to submit with 5 words in anchor text.
November 6, 2009 at 1:01 PM[Reply]
Hi Penny,
Thanks for your fast reply. I appreciate you taking the time to answer me.
I totally agree that a an overly long anchor text may seem to be less professional (although I don’t think that over 3 words is too much, but that’s a question of taste).
The problem is threefold:
1. As a writer I find myself having to twist the English language quite a bit to create anchor texts which make sense and still would give me some SEO benefits.
I don’t think that wanting some SEO benefit makes me a spammer but the prevailing wind seems to be that it does.
The other thing that’s left to do is place the entire URL of the specific page to which I want to link to. I put it before you that this may seem uglier than a 4-5 word anchor text link.
2. I can’t know in advance which of my articles will strike the editor as unique enough and since I don’t want to have to edit each and every article, I am driven never to use more than 3 words on any of the articles, anyway. I don’t believe that an article has to be over 500 words to be useful.
3. There are cases in which 3 words simply aren’t enough. For instance, writing a review about a movie called From Here to Eternity and wishing to link to a page with the same topic may be difficult to do since the movie title itself is 4 words long.
But even if it were 3 words long like Star Trek 3, I don’t believe that using an anchor text saying “Star Trek 3 Review” will seem spammy. I believe it fits the article.
This goes for many products whose names are 3-5 words in length.
I suggest that the editors take this into consideration when they’re reviewing articles.
Since the beginning of November they seem to be much more zealous in rejecting articles based on this guideline. I believe I am far from the only author to which this is happening.
Thank you for your time.
I do appreciate how you’re trying to make the site useful for us all, but I believe that there can be improvements in this respect.
Jonathan
November 10, 2009 at 7:41 AM[Reply]
Article Title is where you should focus 95% of your SEO benefit, even though your article title should be in about 65% natural language and 35% keyword intelligent. Most completely ignore this or think it’s not enough. It IS enough.
If your Star Trek 3 review blows us away, the Editor has the discretion to grant the 4 word anchor text link.
We are tightening up quite a bit the last 6 weeks as too much has slipped in that doesn’t deserve to be in the site… hopefully as we continue training and retraining our Editors, we can become more consistent in our review process (as this is one of our internal goals).
November 10, 2009 at 3:11 PM[Reply]