If you are going to take the time to write and post an article you really want to make sure you are seeing some kind of return on your time investment. To ensure your article marketing is effective as possible you will want to avoid these seven deadly sins.

In other words many are putting the cart before the horse. The main purpose of article marketing is to secure backlinks to your primary blog or website.

Your secondary purpose is to establish your credibility and position yourself as a leader. Lastly you may drive some traffic to your site. However… building your blog or websites reputation with the search engines should be your primary objective. Why? Because search engines deliver free traffic to quality sites and one of the main factors they use to determine if your site it worthy is incoming links aka backlinks.

First off no one likes to be manipulated especially in such an obvious way. It instantly puts a negative connotation in the minds of your prospects never mind the fact it is highly ineffective anyway.

This also brings us back to Sin #1. Search engines are not going to start ranking your affiliate site because it has a few incoming links. Secondly, you simply aren’t going to drive the amount of traffic you need to be successful this way. You have to think bigger.

Imagine for a moment you have a website of your own that receives ten thousand visitors a day from the major search engines. Now you can direct that traffic to your affiliate programs, prepackaged MLM sites or anywhere else you like!

So your goal should always be to build a business (website or blog) that generates its own free traffic, free leads, retail sales etc…

Everyone already knows what they have to say about attraction marketing and so on… Nothing makes you look more unprofessional than being a second rate version of a true MLM Leader.

Be a first rate version of yourself! Establish yourself as a leader by being uniquely you, sharing original ideas and expressing yourself genuinely. You bring something to the table…find YOUR voice. Develop your own business plan, marketing strategy and business philosophy.

If your spiritual than own it and incorporate it into your message! If you’re aggressive, sarcastic, critical… just be yourself. You aren’t going to become a leader by just being another follower of the “gurus” in this industry.

Seriously you can learn all the HTML you need to know in about fifteen minutes anywhere on the Internet. White space is beautiful. You can only hear sound against the backdrop of silence. It is the same thing with reading.

One huge block of text is like an assault on the eyes. The only response you will ever get is the dreaded backspace button.

Effective article marketing is designed to be informative and valuable to its readers. Unfortunately no one cares about your opportunity. I know, I know…that’s all you really want to talk about but you do want to eventually make money at this right?

At least attempt to disguise your pitch as valuable content. Even better…deliver real content that helps your reader! In fact if you can truly deliver excellent information there will be no need for a pitch at all. Your prospects will ask you for information. Why? Because they will know that you are in a position to help them.

This industry is in desperate need of true leadership. Establish yourself as someone who can actually help and you will no longer need to pitch anything.

MLM’ers are a savvy bunch. They know the ins and outs of the business and most don’t want to become your “lead.” Now this goes against everything you have ever been taught but…lead capture pages are genius in most industries but in ours they might just keep you from seeing the success you are looking for.

Are you really looking for a lead or are you looking for business partners? Business partners want to contact you, ask questions, make proposals…not get a free report on MLM tips.

For example…when I come across a good article I immediately do research on the writer and check out a couple of their other articles. If I find them valuable and our business philosophies match I reach out to request an interview for my site. Free promotion for them, value for my visitors sounds like a win win.

But if all I can find is a lead capture page then this person lost an opportunity to promote their business. Therefore I suggest you ensure you’re not losing business by establishing a way people can contact you.

In business you should constantly be looking to accomplish multiple objectives at once. We already mentioned two or three of your article marketing objectives for MLM success. Your main objective should be to get your primary website into search engine results but it doesn’t hurt to get your article there as well.

In fact the higher your article page rank the more “juice” your link will have to your blog or website. Therefore you will want to incorporate a little white hat SEO into your article layout. Your article should be designed around a single keyword or select few. The title, first 90 characters, last paragraph and even link should contain your keyword as well as disbursing it throughout your copy.

Another tip would be to link one article to another article. In this way you build the credibility of the second article and the power of its link back to your home site.

If you enjoyed my you may also want to check out my article… Going Beyond Attraction Marketing For MLM Success