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Article Submission Guidelines

You must abide by the following guidelines when submitting your articles. Note: Please refer to these instructions each time you submit an article, as our guidelines may change without notice. | |

General Requirements

The articles that you submit must be your own work, and the content must be unique -- You may not submit articles written by other authors as yours. If you submit an article on behalf of another author, you must create a Pen Name(Author Name) [see details below] for them, which must also be reflected in the Resource Box. Re-branding or rearranging words in one article and then submitting it as a unique article is prohibited. Articles written by a ghost writer are perfectly acceptable as long as they are being used only by yourself.

Do not submit multiple copies of the same article using different titles or with slight alterations. It constitutes Duplicate Content and Spamming of our directory. We will not hesitate to terminate your account and delete all your articles if we catch you doing so -- Remember, we read each and every article deposited in our directory.

Do not submit multiple articles at the same time - spread them out over a reasonable period of time. We suggest one article submission a day. We will decide what is blatant and what is not -- for example if you submit 10+ articles at the same time, and they look suspiciously similar, we will delete them without notice. We request that you give us time to learn and "bond" with your style of writing.

Articles must be Spell-checked and Proof-Read for grammatical errors prior to submitting - Do not submit articles filled with spelling errors, bad grammar and poor sentence construction -- This is one major mistake many authors make. One sure way of turning your readers and potential publishers away is submitting an article with grammar, spelling, and/or style errors. When articles have errors, their credibility plummets. Proof-Read your article(s), including titles and descriptions, and use your word processor’s spell checker. Better still, have someone Proof-Read your article(s) for you. We do monitor article submissions and we will reject content that doesn't meet this requirement.

A minimum of 500 words is required. Shorter articles will be deleted without notification. To be on the safe side submit an article 520 words or more. Please use the Word Count Utility to ensure that your article is of acceptable length. An article length between 700 to 2500 words is desirable. Break an article into two parts(articles) if greater than 2500 words. Please DO NOT pad your article with irrelevant or repetitive words to achieve the 500 word limit. Use short paragraphs (3000 characters maximum) - Long paragraphs are a "tedious read." Use our Character Count Utility when necessary.

You must be the sole copyright holder for each article you submit.

Starting November 15, 2006 articles related to the following subjects will be subject to extra rigorous scrutiny:

Gambling

Nutritional Supplements

Prescription Drugs & Pharmaceuticals

Loans & Credit Cards

Authors submitting such articles have a tendency to abuse our directory and will be held to a much higher standard during the review process.

Sexual enhancement or similarly questionable articles are prohibited.

Your article must not be an advertisement -- Articles which have a primary focus of promoting a person, product, or service are considered advertisements. The best practice is to write an article on a topic related to your product or service and promote it in the Resource Box (Author BIO Box).

By submitting your articles to Afro Articles, you grant us the right to publish your articles -- We may publish your article anywhere on our website, blog, or syndicate through RSS. We may also change where it appears, including the category, at any time.

By submitting your articles to Afro Articles, you grant others the right to publish your articles - Other Afro Articles users have the right to publish your articles on their websites, in their newsletters or ezines, and more as long as the article is left in the original state. This includes the Resource Box which provides you credit as the author of the content.

Submitting your articles to Afro Articles does not entitle you to financial compensation of any kind - You will not receive compensation from AfroArticles.com or the users of our directory for articles you submit.

Submitting an article in no way guarantees inclusion in our directory - We reserve the right to reject an article submission for any reason.

Article Formatting - Afroarticles.com requires specific formatting guidelines for prompt publishing of your articles. When these guidelines are not followed, the publishing of your article will be delayed or it will be rejected. We have provided the instructions below to help you with formatting. Please refer to these instructions each time you submit an article, as our guidelines may change without notice.

Author Name (a.k.a) "Pen Name"

Make sure your article author name (Pen Name) matches the author name in the Resource Box. If need be, create another Pen Name to submit the article with. Your author name MUST be in the form: "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME". No initials, No company names, No slogans, No website URLs or names, No FAKE or REAL titles, No multiple names within a Pen Name (Co-Author names belong in the Resource Box).

If you have any TITLES, for example if you are a PhD., a Medical Doctor or a Reverend etc., please restrict your TITLES to the Resource Box where you are free to quote your titles in this manner: FIRSTNAME LASTNAME, PhD. etc.

"Dr. FIRSTNAME LASTNAME" or "Rev. FIRSTNAME LASTNAME" is not acceptable as a Pen Name -- we will accord this privilege only to authors whose credentials we can verify.

The PenName and Author Name in the Resource Box MUST match.

If a PenName is already in the database, you can add a period at the end of the LASTNAME to allow you to create it, or just add a middle initial as in "John A. Doe"

Your PenName must not be in ALL CAPS and there should be no "Comma" in between your FIRSTNAME and LASTNAME -- For example: "John Doe" is acceptable while "John, Doe" or "JOHN DOE" are not acceptable.

To revise[Edit] your PenName, please do as follows:

1. Login To Your Account

2. Click on "Add Pen Name"

3. Select the Pen Name you would like to edit by clicking on the edit image:

4. Make the necessary changes -- [Note: If you get the message "Pen Name is already in use" add a "." or any other character you desire to the current Pen Name, save it , then repeat steps 3 and 4 again -- Repeat as many times as is necessary. Adding a middle initial to your Pen Name may be a quick solution.]

5. Save changes

Article Category

Do not submit an article to multiple categories. If you do so we will delete it summarily.

Always try to submit to the relevant category.

Article Title

Article titles should be in Capital Case, not ALL CAPS.

Avoid using "Double Quotes" in your title. If you have to -- Use 'Single Quotes'.

Write a title that is relevant to your article.

Do not CAPITALIZE the first letter of every word in your Article Title unnecessarily - Use proper judgment.

Try not put (") (') (/) or any HTML Special Characters in the article title. Also avoid inserting Special Characters anywhere in the BODY & SUMMARY of your article. Special Characters can interfere with the RSS Feed(s).

If you are writing about cats, it's good SEO Sense to include "cat" or "cats" in your title at least once - Do not force it!

Do not put a full stop (period) at the end of your title.

Use "snappy" titles to attract attention. Long and winded titles tend to bore the reader.

Your title should make sense and must not be stuffed with unnecessary and repetitive keywords.

Absolutely no HTML tags or URLs are allowed in the title of your article.

Do not include your "Author Name" in the article title.

Article Summary

Absolutely no HTML tags or URLs are allowed in the summary of your article.

Do not repeat the article title in the Summary Box.

Article Body

Do not repeat the article title in the Article Body.

Do not "Key Word Stuff" your article to raise your KeyWord Density. Keyword Stuffing may work in the short term, but search engine algorithms will detect this "Black Hat" trick in the long run and will penalize this directory -- We are constantly on the lookout for this violation.

Break article content into sub-sections using sub-headings(sub-headings make your article easily scannable), and use "bold" and/or "italic" tags for sub-section titles and for emphasis - Do not overdo this as too many "bolds & italics" might make the article look cluttered and untidy.

Do not put any author contact information or details in the body of the article. Again, only use the Resource Box for this information.

Do not write a sales pitch. Absolutely no Promotional Copy in your article body and article summary. Promote your stuff in the Resource Box only.

Do not use or tags for paragraphing in the Article Body. A hard return(s) is sufficient. Hit return(enter) twice to create a paragraph -- a single linefeed should separate paragraphs, and there should be no linefeeds at the beginning or end of an article.

Otherwise the article text should flow continuously and wrap naturally. You must therefore "Un-format" any pre-formatted articles before posting.

The most Basic HTML tags are allowed: , , , <li>, <ul> and <blockquote>. Any other tags are not allowed. Additionally do not use tags to "BOLD" URLs in any section of your article. If you need to emphasize(Bold) any other item in your article - please do so conservatively.

No affiliate links! - The BODY of the articles that you submit to Afro Articles should not contain affiliate links. "Raw" Affiliate links are only allowed in the Resource Box. It is acceptable, however, to mention the URL's of helpful sites or your own website which redirects to the recommended affiliate product in the Article Body -- Keep this to a maximum of 3 links. We do not guarantee that we will accept any or all links that your place in the article body -- We will decide what is blatant and what is not. If you need help on how to create redirect URLs, please post your topic in the support forums.

Links to "Questionable" websites will be removed - these include pornographic, adult, hacking, racist, intolerant and anything else that is fraudulent or infringes on the legal rights of others.

We will not allow links in articles (including Resource Boxes & Author Profile Pages) that lead to websites that engage in "Unethical" SEO and/or other activities that we deem flagrant.

Link-Backs to sites that are banned by Search Engines is prohibited.

You may not link directly to file downloads, such as MP3’s, executables, etc.

Hyperlinks must link to a valid web page which does not return a "page not found" (404) error.

You can re-direct your hyperlinks in the Resource Box using a redirection service, but only when the URL is extremely long and takes up too much space in your Resource Box. Sneaky unethical re-directs are prohibited.

The Resource Box

Your full name (FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME) must be the first item in your Resource Box. You can precede it with: "About The Author:" or "Author:" if you like. See the samples below for ideas on how to construct a proper Resource Box. Note: Just stuffing your Resource Box with numerous links and items irrelevant to your article will depress the value to your article. Remember that the purpose of the Resource Box is to sell yourself to the reader in an attractive and "crisp" manner - If you don't, they will not bother to click on any links leading to your website. So, identify "Who You Are" first, then present the reader with a link(s) to your website - 2 to 3 links max! These Resource Boxes represent what we require yours to look like: | Sample 1 | Sample 2 | Sample 3 | Sample 4 | Sample 5 |

We don't encourage posting your email address in the Resource Box - Spam Bots routinely harvest email addresses from web pages. If you have to, post your email address in this form: myemailname[at]domain.com, and instruct your readers to replace the [at] with @. That may fool the Spam Bots but there is no guarantee. Your best bet is to link to a "Spam Fortified" email form OR a JavaScript encrypted "MAILTO" link on your website.

If you are posting an article on behalf of someone else please create another Pen Name to match the Resource Box.

If you possess any titles, degrees, certifications or other qualifications, please post them in the Resource Box only, and do not include them in your Pen Name.

The Author BIO & any Copyright messages belong in the Resource Box and not in the Article Body. The Author Bio must always be written in 3rd person – never refer to yourself as "I," always refer to yourself as "Jane Doe"(your name). Give a brief description of qualifications AND/OR information about your area of expertise. Sell yourself to the reader!

Do not put a period (.) at the very end of a URL. It will make the URL link un-clickable.

All your URLs must begin with: http://, a URL without the "http" protocol specification attached to it will not be clickable.

Do not enclose your URLs with tags: e.g. http://www.myURL.com - These too are not clickable. The best way to include a URL(s) in the Resource Box is to use the HREF attribute as follows: <A HREF="http://www.mywebsite.com">my website</A>

or simply: http://www.mywebsite.com

Do not include more than 3 links in the Resource Box -- Your BIO should entice the reader to go to your website -- A Resource Box stuffed with too many links is counter productive.

Do not use tags to emphasize your URLs in the Resource Box. You can emphasize your "Author Name" only. You may use tags to "bold" the Author Name in the Resource Box but not the URLs for example: [ About The Author: Jimmy Big is the author of twenty books, including the bestseller - How To Market With Articles. ] -- is acceptable. How To Market With Articles. is NOT acceptable.

Do not use or tags in the Resource Box. The Resource Box text should flow continuously and wrap naturally.

Article Keywords

Assess the popularity of your keywords using a keyword tool. Here are three popular keyword tools: | WordTracker | Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool | The Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

When selecting keywords make sure that they are specific to your article (related to your article and can be found in your article). Single keywords are very competitive, therefore you should try "Keyword Phrases" comprising of two or more words. Avoid using highly competitive keyword phrases.

Also, stuffing your keyword box with words totally unrelated to your article body is counter productive and not Search Engine Friendly. We will reject articles with Irrelevant Keywords stuffed into the Keyword Box. The Keywords MUST be related to your article and NOT to the website you are linking to in the Resource Box. Here is a superbly written article you should read for more information: Keyword Article Writing: the Key to Your Success!

Optional Requirements

After submitting your article remember to Furl It, post it to del.icio.us & other 'Social BookMarking Websites' for extra exposure. Links to these traffic boosting services appear on the right menu-bar when viewing your article after your article is approved. Also remember to visit our blog & support forums for tips, tools & updates. Additionally, we allow limited advertisement and self-promotion in the support forums

Recommended Reading: | How to use Articles to Market your Products & Services the correct way | Tips and Tricks - Article Writing & Marketing |

Miscellaneous

Remember to save a duplicate copy of your article in your hard drive. We routinely clean up our database and rejected articles are erased during this cleanup.

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