I have written an article, and got it published in an article directory … now what? First rule is don’t publish in just one directory. Publish in as many directories as you can. Remember each of those directories are links back to your site. There are services that will submit your article to multiple sites for you, saving you a lot of time and aggravation. Once that is done, it’s time to track your article, and make sure everyone is linking back to the recourse, or to you via the resource box.

In a perfect world everyone would follow the publishing guidelines and have your links intact. This aint a perfect world, and many will try to use your article as content for their sites, and stoop to tricks to avoid the out-bound link. It is up to you to police this. You will not be able to stop all of them, but, you can limit the “content thieves”.

Step One: Go to Google, MSN, and Yahoo, type the title of your article in the search box surrounded by quotes. Example: “SEO Article Writing- Get Your Credit” . It is best to wait about a week after your article is published to start this, and then repeat once every two or three days for about a month. You will see the sites using your article grow each time you check. Hooray! The Search Engine Optimization is working! Not so fast. Now it’s time to keep them honest. Without the links, the article is useless as a search optimization tool to you.

Step Two: Use the cached link to view your article on the site it is being published. You don’t have to worry about the article directories, they will be complying. Check all other sites to insure they are following the publishing guidelines. Is your resource box intact? Are your links click-able? Have they inserted other links inside the body of the article? Have they changed the content of the article? Click your link and make sure it’s not being re-directed. Teasers with links back to the article source are acceptable, they are increasing your articles popularity.

Step Three: View the source of the page. You can do this in Firefox, or IE by going to view–> view Page Source. A box will pop up revealing all the html of that page. Check the meta tags, insure there isn’t an “index, no follow” description in the robots meta tag. Check the link itself to insure there are not any no-follow rules applied. You will find that most do comply with the rules, however, you are going to find some that do not. Step Four: Getting the site to comply. Once you have discovered someone trying to cheat you out of your well deserved link, DO NOT fire off a mean and nasty email. You will be e-mailing them in a polite and assertive manner, after you take a few other steps. Take a screenshot of the offense if possible. Record the date and time your are viewing the web page, and the exact url of that page.

Step Five: A professional, polite, and assertive email. In most cases this step will stop the offender. Very few will require you to take further action. Your email should be specific, short, and require action be taken. An example e-mail might look like this:Submit article
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