What Makes an Article Overly Promotional (Spam)

The dividing line between good content and overly promotional/spam content can sometimes be very thin. While we realize the authors are writing here for their own benefit, we do need to draw the line somewhere to ensure that the site remain beneficial to everyone here.

So to make things clearer I am going to draw out how I determine how to keep your post from being overly promotional/spam.

First off, the article must provide some value. Having an article saying how great your services/product really are does not provide value. However including your product in a top 5/ top 10 list would be much more acceptable. Likewise, having the pro’s and con’s of a product listed provides value to the reader. You could also have your product as a solution to a problem, but you need to explain how it helps solve the problem, and it must be unbiased.

Keyword rich, not keyword stuffed.  If an article consists of too many keywords we may ask you to reduce them a little.  Google can spot when people are just throwing keywords on to a page.  Remember to include your keywords, but include them naturally within the text.

Only include at most two external links in your post, and two external links in your signature.  The more external links you have the worse your rankings for that article will be. Sure you want to get as many backlinks as possible from an article, but the article itself can earn you some cash if you put some effort in to it!  On This is Freelance you can have more than two external links in your post, but you do need pre approval. Acceptable reasons for more links include things such as Top 10 lists where you may want to link to several sources, or heavily researched articles, where you may want to give credit to your ‘reputable’ sources.

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