When publishers are reviewing your article to decide if they want to publish it, they will look at the author bio area as well as the article. Publishers will have editorial guidelines for this portion of your article, and if yours does not abide by those guidelines, the article will be declined.

Not sure what to aim for when creating the author bio for your article? Here are seven common things that publishers look for in a resource box when evaluating your article submission.

1. It needs to contain more than just a website address
It may be tempting to regard your author bio as just a place to put the link to your website, but it’s so much more than that. This is the one spot in your article submission where you can tell a little about yourself, your business, and your products. You can (and should) give the reader a reason to visit your website.

If you just put a link there and leave it at that, you’re missing out on the opportunity to connect with your reader and lure him or her back to your site. You’ll have a much better chance of getting traffic from your articles if you invest some time and effort into formulating your resource box, rather than just putting a link there.

2. It needs at least one link
While it’s not all right to just have a link in your author bio without any other information, you do want to be sure to include a link to your site somewhere. Some people get so focused on the biography aspect, they forget the only way the article will drive traffic to their website is via that precious link – don’t forget to include one.

3. Be sure the link works
This is a very common mistake that can easily be avoided. After you enter your article into the submission form, preview it and be sure to test out the links in the resource box. Click on them – do they go where you want them to?

4. Anchor text is too long
“Anchor text” refers to the words that are used to form the link leading to your website. The anchor text that you use in your resource box should be a keyword phrase you’ve researched, ideally two to three words long. Some publishers limit the length of the anchor text to three words maximum, so keep that in mind.

5. Too many links
Many publishers will allow a maximum of two links per author bio. Keep in mind that your goal is not just to generate backlinks, but to craft your resource box in such a way that the reader will want to click the link(s).

Because most publishers have length limits on author bios, if you put more than one or two links, you won’t have enough room to try to convince the reader to click them.

If you put too many links in there and don’t give the reader a reason to click them, odds are the reader won’t click any of them.

6. It has too many characters
A common length limit for author bios is 400 to 450 characters. That’s not a lot of text – you really have to choose your words and the information you decide to include strategically.

7. It doesn’t have any biographical information
Some people will just put information about their business or products and a link to their website, without mentioning anything about the actual author of the article. While you don’t have to mention anything really personal, it’s a nice touch to start by mentioning the author name (you’ll be writing in the third person), why you should be regarded as an authority on your topic, and what your business is.

Each individual publisher decides what editorial requirements he or she has for article submissions, but there are some common ones that many high-quality publishers have. Whether a publisher requires all of these or not, your resource box will only be made better by abiding by these seven guidelines. The better your resource box, the better chance that publishers will accept your article and that readers will click the link leading to your website.

“A company that I am an affiliate of has made some articles available to me to use for marketing purposes. I was wondering if I could submit these as free reprint articles? Would I need to change them, or can I even submit them at all?”

Great question! A similar situation is one where a person has acquired some PLR (private label rights) articles, and they’re wondering if those articles are suitable for use in article marketing. For anyone who doesn’t know, PLR articles generally are very cheap and are sold to anyone willing to buy them. So, the same article is sold to multiple people, in the same way that articles that affiliate companies provide are shared with multiple people.

In those cases, there is no exclusive copyright ownership and, consequently, that type of content is not suitable to use in article marketing.

When submitting articles to publishers, the content needs to be 100 percent owned by you and no one else. Publishers do not want to receive the same or very similar content multiple times, so you really do need to make the effort to produce (or pay a professional writer to produce) articles that are unique and owned exclusively by you.

You may be wondering, how would a publisher know if the article you submit was not owned by you exclusively? Many publishers will employ a tool that detects whether content is already appearing on the Internet. There are various online services that do this sort of thing. Many times, website owners or other online publishers will use a tool like that to discover if content is plagiarized.

People who hire writers to create content for them may also use that sort of tool to tell if the content that’s been produced for them is unique.

From a publisher’s point of view, it is not necessarily a deal breaker if he discovers the article that you’ve submitted is already appearing elsewhere online. If the content is clearly marked as belonging to you, there will probably not be any problem.

However, if the publisher sees that the article you’ve submitted is appearing other places on the Net under different author names, then that is a red flag.

With many publishers, that would result in an article decline.

You may be wondering then, can you just take that non-copyrighted material and “change it up” a bit?

Unfortunately not. The only time when you might re-write content would be if you had decided to take content that you wrote for your own blog or website to resubmit as a free reprint article. In that case, since you already own the content, it would be perfectly fine to re-write it to submit as an article. For content that you don’t own, however, you should not try to re-write it and submit it as a free reprint article.

The idea is to create articles that have unique tips and ideas and that contain information that is not found all over the Internet. It does take extra effort to create unique articles, but that’s just the way that article marketing works. The effort involved in producing quality content will pay off in two ways: the number of publishers interested in publishing your article and the value your article brings to your readers.

Did you know that after you submit your article, it will most likely be reviewed by an editor before it is published on a website? This editor will have a list of editorial guidelines that he or she is using to evaluate your article.

If your article passes the test, then it will be published. If it does not, it will be declined. One of the first things publishers/editors look at is the title. There are several reasons why an article might be declined right out of the gate due to issues with the title.

What’s so important about the title?
The title is the very first thing a reader will see and it’s often the primary means by which a reader will decide if he wants to read your article. If your title is great, more people will read the article than if it’s just so-so. The title can have such a big influence on the success of an article, that publishers will often decline articles solely because of problems in the title. The rest of the article may be perfect but, if there are problems with the title, then the article can be declined.

If you knew what publishers were looking for, you could craft your articles around their requirements. In this article we’ll cover some article marketing tips and common title issues that result in publisher declines:

1 — Improper grammar or spelling.
It’s absolutely paramount your title be grammatically correct and have proper spelling. One error could result in an immediate decline from publishers.

The title is also an indication of the article’s quality — if the title contains errors, it will be assumed the rest of the article will too.

2 — The title does not accurately portray what the article is about.
The title serves the purpose of informing the reader what the article is about. If it drops the ball on that count, the article will be declined.

Here are some ways that a title may not reflect the content of the article.

• If you say that an article has 25 tips on a certain topic, it has to contain 25 tips. Someone once asked me if she could have a title that mentioned 25 tips and then only include 24 in the article with the promise of providing the 25th on her website. She was thinking of this as a way to lure readers to her site. In the article marketing world, that would be a no-no. If you say the article has 25 (or however many) tips, then you must list 25 tips in the article.

• If the title mentions a location, the content must apply specifically to that location. Sometimes when a person is marketing a local business, he will want to include the city in the title of the article. That would be fine if the article contained information about that city, but oftentimes the information is just generic. If your article is: “10 Tips For Hiring A Babysitter In Miami,” then the article needs to contain tips on that specific topic, rather than tips that would apply to any location.

In most cases, it’s better to leave the city name out of the title and write an article appropriate for all locations. Then refer to the city in your resource box.

3 — Title is too short to be descriptive.
I’ve seen some super minimalist titles, as if the author thought the title didn’t matter. At many quality publishers, the title must be at least two words long, but I encourage you to elaborate even further.

Some people who are very keyword focused will simply use their keyword phrase as the title, which results in a very bland, non-descriptive headline. It’s great to use your keyword phrase in the title, but ideally you’ll work it into a more descriptive title that includes the keyword phrase in a natural way.

4 — Overuse of keywords in the title, to the point where the title does not read well.
The title is a great place to include your keywords, but it defeats the purpose if you use so many keywords that the title ceases to make sense. Publishers are very sensitive to overly keyword-optimized titles and articles (and readers can easily pick up on it too). It’s essential the title and article serve the reader first and foremost. Just one keyword phrase worked naturally into the title in a grammatically correct way is sufficient.

5 — There are other less obvious things that publishers look for.
These can still be serious enough to merit a decline of the article, such as not putting the title in title case (where the first letter of every major word is capitalized), putting the title in quotation marks (which is unnecessary), or ending the title with a period (also unnecessary).

These are the major things that publishers look for with titles. If you keep these guidelines in mind when creating your article submissions, then your titles should be acceptable.

Here’s the truth: Although it is important to have a variety of links coming from different types of sites, it does not hurt your website to have many different sites publishing the same article.

There is a lot of confusion when it comes to duplicate content, but the penalty only occurs when one website publishes the same content repeatedly, rather than when multiple sites publish the same content. Do you see the difference?

Google objects to having many pages on one website all featuring the same content. That is not the situation with article marketing though. When you submit articles, you can end up with multiple websites publishing the same article one time on each site, which is not something that would result in a penalty to your site.

Having your article published on multiple websites is similar to distributing a press release or some other form of content syndication, such as RSS. Content syndication is essential to how the Internet works, and it is very common.

When a piece of content appears on multiple sites, Google will try to determine the originating source that published the content and use that source as the main reference in its search results.

Having multiple copies of the same article appearing on different websites does not adversely affect the site that is being linked to. Think about it — if that were the case, it would be very easy to destroy a competing website simply by creating a lot of content that linked back to it. That would also mean that no business would dare to submit a press release, for example.

When marketing your website it’s important to first focus on creating a quality website that offers readers value.

Getting a high ranking in Google isn’t just about marketing a website, it’s about creating a site that is worthy of a top ranking. As you build up the content on your own site, it’s natural to take some of it and repurpose it as free reprint articles (rewriting the content so that the information on your own site remains unique).

As you focus on creating quality, free reprint articles that are truly helpful to your readers, you get wider exposure for your website and yourself. Many times people will read your article and then click the link in your resource box to get more information from your website. This is the type of ‘warm lead’ that is very valuable for converting customers and increasing sales.

It’s also important to do keyword research. Then link back to your website using a variety of keyword phrases associated with your niche and link to different pages on your site.

The topic of your article along with the keywords in the title and especially the anchor text in the resource box helps Google to know what your website is about, which assists Google in determining where to place your webpages in its rankings.

Article marketing is still an effective means of driving targeted traffic to a website. The main things to concentrate on are: creating a website with lots of quality content, using that content to create syndicated content that offers value to readers (free reprint articles), as well as making use of a variety of keywords in your article submissions.

Focus on the value that your website and the content that you create brings to your readers. Make your marketing efforts more about enhancing the experience of your target readers. The result? You will naturally attract readers to your website.

I’ve actually done this myself several times. Especially when I go on vacation, I try to write enough articles to last while I’m away, so I have less work to do while on holiday and so that my website marketing can continue without missing a beat.

It takes a little planning, but it’s worth it, and it makes the vacation so much more enjoyable knowing that my article marketing campaign is still going strong.

Here are some article marketing tips for pre-writing articles in preparation for a vacation:

1. How long will you be away from writing? You must first figure out how many articles you’ll need to write ahead of time. Ideally, you would do this at least a month before you leave for your trip to give yourself enough time to produce the articles. The more advanced time you give yourself to write, the easier it will be to produce the extra articles.

2. Let’s say you need to write 16 articles in one month (eight for the current month and eight pre-written for the following month). How in the world do you go about doubling your article output when it’s already sometimes a challenge to come up with writing topics?

The best approach I’ve found is to write all the articles on a related topic. That way, each article bounces off the previous one and it makes it much easier to generate the article topic and also to get your mind warmed up to the new article topic (since it is somewhat related to the last one).

3. Start by writing a list article that lists several main points. By “list article,” I mean an article that has a title like “Seven Ways To Improve Your Writing.” The article itself starts with an introductory paragraph that leads into a numbered list of each of those seven items. Each item will be followed by a short description or summary of what the item is about, and the article will end with a concluding paragraph.

By the end, you’ll have one article that lists seven main points. This is your first article.

Your next seven articles will each take their cue from one of the seven points listed in that first article, so each point from the original article will end up with an article that covers that point in depth.

When you finish writing those articles, you’ll have eight total – you’re halfway to the finish line. You just need to repeat the process with another article with seven main points. In the end, you’ll have 16 articles.

Why do it this way? Because writing about one overarching topic that is broken down into smaller points is easier than thinking of eight separate article topics.

If you write an article called “The Seven Best Places To Hike In The Fall,” for eight articles you know what you will be writing about – you’re going to be writing about the best places to hike during the fall season. After you write that first article, every time you sit down to write, you’ll know exactly what to write about, which makes things so much easier.

Do you have a vacation coming up? If so, I encourage you to do a little planning and pre-work so your article marketing campaign can continue even while you’re lounging on the beach or skiing down the slopes. It all starts with one seven-item article and some relatively easy writing after that. The hardest part is coming up with topics for the articles, and with this strategy, you only need to do that once.

It’s a huge opportunity, so take your quality standards up a notch and write content that ezine editors will be attracted to.

Ezine editors will often have different (more strict) criteria for publication than website owners. They bear the responsibility of trying to please their list subscribers and, if they don’t, then they run the risk of having them unsubscribe. Since ezine editors only include one or two articles per publication, they are really scrutinizing articles to see which ones live up to their requirements.

How can you write and submit articles that will be attractive to ezine publishers? Here are seven tips for you:

1 — Keep your word count between 600 and 800 words.

Ezine editors are looking for quality content that has some meat to it. They also usually work with word count limits, so writing an excessively long or short article makes it less likely yours will be chosen.

2 — Write articles that teach the reader something practical, rather than trying to sell to them through the article.

You’ve got strong competition when it comes to being published in an ezine. The number of articles in the newsletter are limited to just one or two each week and the ezine editor wants to be sure those articles are useful to his audience.

Resist any urge to use the article to draw attention to your business. Instead, use your article to teach the reader how to do something. Remember, your resource box will be included in the ezine. That’s the spot where you can try to draw attention to your website or business.

3 — Make a resource box that will work for you.

In an ezine, the resource box gets extra attention. Remember, your article may be the only piece of content the reader is seeing. If the article was helpful, then the reader will look to the resource box to see who wrote it and find out more about him or her.

Be sure to write a resource box that provides good information about you and your business and also inspires the reader to click the link going to your website. The extra time you take constructing your resource box will pay off with click-throughs down the road.

4 — Don’t write an article that is part of a series.

Those would be the sorts of articles that say “Part 2,” “Part 3” etc. in the title. When you indicate that your article is in some way dependent on or attached to other articles, it makes it less likely that an ezine editor will choose your article. If he were to use an article that had “Part 4” in the title, he knows his readers might be confused about where the other parts are. It also might result in fewer readers because they assume they won’t know what’s going on in “Part 4” because without having read the other parts.

5 — Write a title that grabs the reader’s attention and states what the article is about.

The title should give accurate information about what the article will talk about. If you cite five tips in your title, the article needs to contain five tips. Whatever the article is about, you need to indicate that in the title. Don’t be cryptic or cute by creating a mysterious title — that tactic usually does not work in getting a reader’s attention.

6 — Figure out what the people in your target audience need to learn, and then write content to satisfy those needs.

You can do this by simply asking questions of your customers or clients, or by making notes of the questions they ask you. What are they confused about? What do they need to learn how to do related to your niche? These are the types of topics that you should be covering in your articles.

You can also do basic keyword research to get this type of information. If you can see what your target readers are searching for in Google, then you can get a good idea of what they need.

7 — Check your article for grammar and spelling errors.

Since articles that appear in ezines are in the spotlight, you need to be extra careful that your article is free of any mistakes. It minimizes your chances of an ezine editor choosing one of your articles if there are embarrassing typos and grammatical errors.

Even if an ezine editor does not choose your article, every type of publisher appreciates helpful, quality content that reads beautifully.

These seven tips will help you to create a piece of content that is highly attractive to all types of publishers.

One of the most popular marketing tools is submitting free reprint articles. You write articles on the general topic of your website and then you submit the articles to online publishers, along with a resource box that contains some information about yourself and a link back to your website.

Another popular, but very different, marketing tool is a blog. With a blog, you regularly publish content (posts) on your own site.

If you’re writing articles for article marketing and also writing blog posts, there is a way to make the two activities work together, cutting your writing almost in half. The trick is to first publish a blog post on your blog, wait long enough for it to be indexed by search engines, then re-write the blog post to be submitted as a free reprint article.

The following are answers for some common questions on this topic:

1. Can a blog post be used verbatim as an article?

It is not advisable to take content from your own website to submit as a free reprint article. Ideally, the content on your own site would not be found elsewhere. That helps make your site more valuable to search engines.

To maintain the uniqueness of the content on your site, you can simply re-write the content before submitting it as an article.

2. Should you write the blog post first or the article?

Publishing on your own site first allows your site to receive “credit” for the original content. It’s just another safeguard to be sure your site is valued as highly as possible. After posting the content on your site, wait until search engines index the content before re-writing it and submitting it as a free reprint article.

3. What kinds of blog posts would make good articles?

The types of articles that are popular for article marketing are:

* Articles that contain a step-by-step tutorial on how to do something.

* Articles that teach the reader about a topic related to your niche.

* Articles that contain numbered lists, bullet points and sub-headings to make it easier to read.

4. How long should my blog post and my article be?

You can make your blog post as long as you like. You’re the publisher – what you say goes.

However, if you plan to make your blog posts do double duty, keep in mind, online publishers have word count requirements. Some accept articles with word counts as low as 400 and as high as 1,500. An ideal range to shoot for is 600 to 800 words.

5 . Can I use a blog post or article for anything else in my online marketing campaign?

Certainly, and the list is long:

* You can turn your article into a podcast. Either you can read the article yourself or you can hire a professional actor to read the content. People can subscribe to the RSS feed for your podcast, and you can market your feed on your website.

* You can then create a video based on your article, using the podcast as the audio. The video can be similar to a PowerPoint presentation with key points highlighted and perhaps some images to help illustrate your points. Upload your video to YouTube, and publicize your YouTube channel on your website. You can also publicize your YouTube videos through the resource box of your articles, or on your Facebook page or Twitter account.

* You can turn your articles into an e-book that you either sell on your site or use as an incentive to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter list.

* You can use your article or blog content as the basis for a Squidoo lens or Hub page.

The key to getting the most bang for your article-marketing buck is to use your content in multiple ways for different types of marketing. That makes it so you create more doors through which your readers can find you, but you’re also keeping your writing to a minimum.

This, however, is a huge mistake. Your blog is the most effective marketing tool you have. It helps you:

* To quickly improve your writing skills;
* To grow your lists;
* To develop a meaningful, lasting, relationship with your lists;
* To continually promote yourself to a dedicated audience.

Here are my tips for staying on track:

1. Focus on the Content

To fully and quickly promote yourself, you need to: write and promote blog posts, build links, promote on Twitter, create Facebook fan pages, experiment with PPC ads and RSS feeds, create eBooks and the list goes on.

Feeling overwhelmed?

Trying to do everything above would be possible, and it would promote your blog, but you also would burn out quickly. It is no wonder so many people feel overwhelmed when they see such a list.

Don’t fret though. Simply focus on the core activity: writing content.

If you have time for only one task, use it to write content. Continue to build a body of posts, even if you don’t publish them all at the same time. I find when I’m in writing mode I can churn out articles and blog posts quickly. Then, when I have a little more time on my hands because I have some stock blog posts written, I’ll then use that time to promote my best posts. Simple.

If you write great content and promote it even slightly, your blog will grow naturally. Search engines will index the pages and you won’t lose your marbles.

2. KEY POINT: Have Fun With It

This is essential and it’s one of the reasons why I always say you should, ideally, choose a niche or topic you have a passion for.

You need to have fun with your blog. If blogging becomes a chore, you’ll lose the motivation to keep it alive it very quickly. If you choose a topic solely to make money, you’ll find it painful to write the content, no matter what.

Some people say they’ll do anything it takes to make it work but at the slightest obstacle they throw in the towel. Don’t let this be you!

While it’s good to provide technical/instructional content, it’s generally very bland and boring to read. Think about ways to enliven your blogs, such as including personal stories. Pay attention. This is a winning tactic that builds relationships and keeps readers engaged and, more importantly, buying.

3. Set Milestones

What gets measured gets done. That is why milestones are important.

They allow you to track the progress of your blog and, once you see things are improving, you’ll become motivated to keep working on the blog. Examples of milestones you could set:

* To reach 1,000 daily page views.

* To reach 1,000 RSS subscribers.

* To write a post that will receive 20 comments.

It’s funny how much you can achieve in a relatively short period of time when you set goals. Let me give you a current example:

Diane and I recently set a goal to cruise around Cape Horn at the Southern tip of Chile, South America. We built a list of all the places we wanted to visit while in South America: Peru, Chile, Falkland Islands, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. Having set out the structure, we then added the detail and the list of things to do grew and grew.

Several travel agents told us it couldn’t be scheduled. Even specialist tour operators couldn’t arrange it, (seems they like an easy life), mainly because we wanted first class or business class flights.

Not taking “no” for an answer, we split the tasks between us and set a goal to have it all booked by Sept. 1. On the evening of Sept. 2, 2012 we had everything booked just as we wanted it. We depart on Jan. 20, 2013 for a fantastic five-week holiday in South America, including a 14-night cruise around the Cape from Santiago in Chile to Buenos Aires in Argentina.

This demonstrates two things: how setting goals gives you the desire to get things done and how telling a personal story aids in keeping your reader engaged, as I mentioned in point two.

4. Monetize It

Like it or not, money is a very strong motivator. It is something we will need a lot of for our next cruise holiday because we travel first-class and use top hotels.

Warning: Don’t expect to get rich overnight. It takes time and persistence but you will get there.

Remember, once you get started and stick to your schedule, it becomes a cycle – one where you write more and better content to make more money. The more money you make, the more motivated you become to write more and better content.

Lastly, everyone can blog. It’s easy to do and it should form an absolute cornerstone to your online marketing efforts.

I recently received this question from someone who works at a large corporation:

“Do you think article marketing would work for a large company? I know it works well for small business owners and that it’s great for establishing the expertise of an author but, as a large company, we want to bring attention to the company and not any particular person in our organization. Also, I don’t know if our traditional website would be very marketable. A lot of people these days have blogs and sites with lots of informational content, but our website is a static one that just has info about our company. Many thanks for your input on this.”

I am so glad someone asked me this. I know many SEO specialists working with large companies who use article marketing as part of an overall online marketing plan for their clients.

Article marketing is great for establishing the expertise of an author, but that’s not the main benefit by a long shot. The chief reason to pen free reprint articles is to obtain a higher search engine ranking for your website.

The following tips will walk you through the key article marketing steps:

* Submit Articles on the General Topic of Your Website

The articles should not be about your business or your website. Instead post articles that teach your readers about your general niche.

* Make Use of Resource Boxes

Along with every article you write, create a resource box. A resource box contains information about your company, provides a link to your website and gives the reader a reason to click the link to your website.

You can list an author name in the resource box if you wish, but it’s not required. Many who write on behalf of a large company will only list the company name, not the author’s.

A resource box gives you a place to link words of your choosing to your website. The words you choose are called keywords. Keywords classify both what your website is about and what people are typing into Google to reach websites such as yours.

* Keywords are Powerful

The keywords you choose are linked to your website, sending powerful information to Google and other search engines about your site. This helps Google and other search engines to classify your website and rank it appropriately. With consistent marketing such as article writing, ideally, your website pages will appear higher in the rankings when someone does a search for one of your keywords.

You can discover the best keywords for your articles by using a keyword research tool – many options are available online. When you do keyword research, you will gather a variety of phrases associated with the topic of your website. Alternate using those phrases in your resource boxes each time you submit an article.

Article marketing aids businesses of all sizes to have a strong online presence. The higher your website’s ranking, the more people who will be referred to your website. More referrals mean more targeted visitors, which, in turn, mean more potential sales and business for you.

Common Forms Of Search Engine Over-Optimization:

1. Repeating keywords or keyword phrases too often.

2. Breaking up the proper flow of paragraphs in an article or post to facilitate keyword stuffing.

3. Over-emphasizing your article or post by repeatedly using text modifiers such as bold, italic or headline tags.

4. Purchasing inbound links or exchanging links with low quality sources.

5. Creating backlinks by leaving comments on blogs or forums and repeatedly using the same anchor text.

Over-optimizing will increase your organic ranking over the short term, but eventually search-engine spider bots will flag your website.

Good Optimization Practices:

1. Have unique and useful content, with proper keyword density. Unique and relevant content is one of the main factors the latest Google Panda algorithm iteration is looking for.

2. Optimize your articles by including your main keywords or keyword phrases in your title and description tags, which should also be unique for each page.

3. Include your keywords in heading tags, and at the beginning and end of your article, plus have variations of your keywords salted throughout your content. However, make sure including your keywords still allows for correct sentence structure and grammar, and that articles and posts make sense.

4. Have your keywords optimized within your URL. For Bloggers that means your permalinks should be based on your keyword or keyword phrase, and not numbers or dates.

5. Do not link too deep, with folders containing viewable content within other folders. Use as few folders for content as possible. For example: do not have a folder structure like articles/SEO/pagename.html and another socialmedia/twitter/ pagename.html, and so on. Better, go with SEO as a folder, and place every related html file there. Ditto for a folder called
socialmedia. It may be easier to have folders defining the content in detail when you’re looking for something, but doing so is at the expense of optimization.

6. Your articles and videos should be interlinked for related content, as well as related articles interlinked too. This will greatly help with flattening of your site architecture.

7. Have only relevant, high-quality inbound links and outbound link only to related sites with higher ranking than yours if possible.

Following these few, basic search engine optimization guidelines will earn you a decent amount of organic search engine traffic whereas, over-optimizing your blog or website may cause you to be penalized.

If you’re guilty of over-optimization, stop doing so now and I suggest going back and editing some of your blog posts and website articles, as well as any page title and description tags that need it. I’d also recommend you revisit blogs or forums you have commented on previously and edit or delete any repetitive anchor links if that option is available. Then, moving forward, stick to standard optimization practices and you’ll most likely avoid a Google Slap or other form of penalizing for over-optimization.