Article marketing's core strategy consists in submitting articles to online directories in order to get them published.

The key factor of this strategy is that your article must respect the submission guidelines of each directory you post it to. If it doesn't, you're just wasting time.

Submission guidelines may vary from one directory to another, accordingly to their authority level and to the review process they pass the articles through before publishing them. Some directories may even offer paid publishing conditions with certain guidelines while for free submission more severe guidelines are applicable.

This stated, if you think about using an automatic or semiautomatic software to submit your articles to more than one site at a time, you can easily get it unaccepted, and maybe for multiple reasons. A sure way to avoid this problem is knowing and respecting each directory' submission guidelines.

In order to speed up this process, here's my advice about what you should check out.

1) HTML
Always check the allowed HTML tags, at least when submitting your article. Usually you can use italic and bold characters, as well as ordered and punctuated lists, but the allowed tags may vary form done director to another. For instance, sometimes you may be asked to use the "strong" tag for bold, some others the "b" tag for the main purpose. If you write your article including the html tags and use multiple submission software, the risk is it will not get accepted.

2) Affiliate links
Some online marketers use article publishing to promote affiliate products, including their affiliate link directly inside their article. A large part or directories don't allow this and will refuse your article. A solid strategy to avoid this is setting up a dedicated landing page for the product to direct the article traffic to. This way, your article will get published and your SEO results will be better.

3) Article length
Most of article directories ask for a minimal article length of about 300 words, which is about a page of content. Some of them, have a maximal length limit, too, and it can be of about 750 words. You can check each website guidelines, but if you keep you article length at about 400 words, you will be able to pass through almost all of them.

Follow these rules and you'll get more and more articles published with less effort.