If you want to generate free traffic for your site, articles are the best ways to do it. But they are not supposed to be a blatant advertisement. Your article marketing strategy will be useless if your article will not be accepted by the directories who review what you have been submitting.

To ensure that your articles will be accepted, here are some important things to remember.

1. Proof read your article.

If you want your articles to be accepted quickly and easily, spend the extra time proof reading before you submit them to the article directories. You will waste much more time submitting an article that that does not get accepted.

You should check and review your spelling and grammar more than once. Sometimes it takes a second or third look to find something that you missed at first glance.

It is sometimes best if you know someone who can review it for you. Ask them to look for any grammar or sentence formation that does not seem right. They will be more likely to notice mistakes that you have missed.

When writing articles, you tend to get so familiar with the content you are creating that you become unaware of even obvious mistakes. By having someone less familiar with the content read your article this problem can be eliminated.

2. Write articles that have value.

Look at it from your publishers point of view. Their main priority is finding new, fresh and useful content to put in front of their readers. Trying to include a link to your site in that content is obvious advertising.

This is the quickest way to get your article tossed in the trash, regardless of how valuable and well written your content might be to their readers. We do not want all your time and effort to be for nothing.

What we do want, is to give your readers the opportunity to go to your site to get more information about your and what you are offering. There is a resource box at the end of each article that will serve as your advertisement space.

The resource box my seem small but when used correctly it can be very effective compared to those obviously promoting in their actual article content.

Try to be as brief as possible while still getting your message through. As a rule the resource box should not be more that 10% of the size of your article and should contain no more than two self serving links.

3. Get to the point.

Do not waste time beating around the bush and keep in mind, articles are written to be informational but not boring. Try to be as clear as possible, while keeping it interesting for the reader. You should also take into account the varying knowledge level of the reader.

An article that appears to be boring to you may be exactly what your target audience is looking for. You should develop a style of writing has a smooth flow and is easy to follow. Nothing turns a reader off more than an article that bounces around or is unclear.

Creating a quality article is not hard. Consider your content, your target audience and the publishers and you will be well on your way to becoming a successful article marketer.