We hope these guidelines will help you when creating article submissions to be included in the 123ArticleSoup.com database.

Please familiarize yourself with our editorial guidelines PRIOR to submitting articles to our database. We thank you for your cooperation.

1.  Article Qualification Criteria

a.  The article you submit must be something that you wrote OR an article for which you own the copyright. Ghostwritten articles are acceptable as long as you hold an exclusive license to the submitted material.

b.  PLR articles and items taken from the public domain are not welcome here. If you hired a legitimate ghostwriter to create your articles, make sure you hold an exclusive license to the material content.

Articles submitted from article packs you purchase without exclusive content rights will be rejected. You should NOT put your name on articles unless you WROTE them or have EXCLUSIVE rights to them. We want only ONE copy of an article in our directory. Please write your articles or hire a legitimate professional ghostwriter, and know your exclusivity rights prior to submission.

c.  Your article must be useful, helpful, and informative. Be sure to include tips, techniques, opinions, strategies, and so forth that share your knowledge and expertise. Please limit direct quoted material to 4 lines or less, and be sure to note the source.

d.  We do not accept article content that is intended to be an advertisement, promotional sales copy, press release, or self-promotion material. Please reserve your promotional push for the resource box.

e.  123ArticleSoup.com seeks quality articles. Proper English is required, along with proper spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure. We do not accept articles with excessive keyword usage. It is better to create valuable content rather than try to "make" content around keywords.

f.  No spaces before a period, comma, explanation point, question mark, semi-colon, etc. Please do not use punctuation to "flair" the article content.

g.  We do not publish any articles that contain pornography, adult material, hate, violence, racism, group advocacy, excessive profanity, tonal degradation, obscenity, or otherwise insulting and unfavorable material.

h.  We do not publish any articles that advocate: terrorism, hacking, bomb or weapon creation, radicalism, religious fanatics, illegal drugs and/or illegal drug paraphernalia, steroid use, gangs, gang weapons, or any other questionable content that is offensive to others.

i.  We do not publish any articles that violate any law, are defamatory, libelous, or any content that can be considered an infringement on the legal rights of others.

j.  We do not accept a resubmission of an article that you already submitted. Changing a few words in the article body does NOT constitute a new article. If you engage in this practice, we reserve the right to cancel your membership account and remove all of your articles.

k.  We do not accept articles that include a reply to a personal email address, letter, etc.

l.  Please limit bolded text to headings and subheadings. Excessive bolding within article content is annoying to the reader.

2.  Article Formatting Editorial Guidelines

a.  Author Name: 

i. Include a first and last name for the article author; first and last name must begin with a capital letter.

  ii. An initial is acceptable in either First or Last name, but not both. Example: C. Brown is acceptable; C. B. is unacceptable. 

iii. URL's, business names, email addresses, numbers, special characters, descriptive text or words, and so forth are NOT acceptable as parts of the author name. 

iv. Multiple accounts are acceptable. The system requires one unique email per author name. This allows unlimited pen names.

b.  Article Title: 

i. Titles are to be upper and lower case with each major word capitalized. Words such as "a" "the" "to" "in" "on" and so forth can be submitted with or without beginning caps. 

ii. Quotes are not allowed in the title. Do not begin and end title with a period.

iii. Microsoft Word smart quotes are not allowed. If you type your articles in MS Word, be certain to turn smart quotes OFF when creating articles. 

iv. No excessive or repetitive punctuation allowed in article title. One exclamation point or question mark is acceptable. 

v. No HTML code or tags of any kind are allowed in the title of your article. 

vi. Article title must be left justified; do not begin title with any space(s). 

vii. In the article title, do NOT include: author's name; website url; repetitive keywords; prescription drug names; profanity; slang; any other "questionable," "insulting," or "libelous" material. 

vi. Article Titles must contain at least three unique words. Your article will be more SEO friendly, however, if you target a quality well-structured title. 

v. The article title must be relative to the article content.

c.  SEO Friendly Keyword Targeted Titles 

i. Your articles will receive more traffic if you use well written keyword targeted titles. 

ii. Place your well chosen keywords at the front of your title rather than in the middle or end.  
   Example:  Six Ways to Get the Most out of Article Marketing (BAD title)        
       Article Marketing Strategies - Six Ways to Reach Your Traffic Goals (GOOD title)

iii. Article title should not exceed 115 characters.

d.  Article Body Format 

i. Minimum article size is 250 words. Maximum article size is 4000 words.  Recommended article size: 450-795 words. 

ii. Do not include author name or title of article at the top of the body. It will already appear from data entered in those specific fields.

iii. Copyrights and reprints rights statements must be at the bottom of the article. Do not place them at the top.

iv. Reprint statements must be in accordance and comply with our Publisher Terms of Service. Please do not contradict the Publisher TOU with conflicting reprint statements.

v. No hard sells are allowed in the article body. Reserve any pitches and promotions for the RESOURCE BOX. Self promotion articles will be rejected/refused. 

vi. Article teaser text is not allowed. Do not type a few lines of text in an article with a link luring the reader to another site to benefit from the promised content. When a reader clicks on an article based on the title and abstract, the promised content must be in the actual article itself, not offsite.

vii. Please remove excess vertical spaces at the end of the article content. Do not enter HTML line break code to force extra space at the article end.

viii. All articles are to be single spaced, double spaced between paragraphs. Please separate large text blocks into paragraphs for easier reading.

ix. It is highly recommended that you copy article text from a text editor to paste into the article content box (i.e. Notepad). Copying and pasting from software like MS Word can cause a variety of formatting issues and cause your articles to be rejected.

e.  HTML TAGS Article Body 

i. Allowed HTML Tags in Article Body

• <u>underline</u>
• <b>bold</b>
• <xmp> and </xmp> use to show HTML code but not interpret it.
• <blockquote>indent a paragraph</blockquote>
• <strong>strong</strong>
• <i>italics</i>
• <em>emphasis</em>
• <br> to force a hard line return. Please use in moderation. Excessive hard line breaks may cause your article to be rejected. Hard line returns <br> are useful for formatting short lists. Allow other text to wrap naturally with vertical spaces.
• <pre> and </pre> use to format text tables.
• <ol> for ordered or numbered list </ol> <ul> for unordered bullet point list </ul> within the lists, use <li> and </li> for each item in the list. These list tags are optional. It is perfectly acceptable to use a left justified list using asterisks for bullets; actually the asterisk bullet justified option allows for easier reprinting.

Whenever you open a tag, BE SURE to close it. This is very important for proper article formatting.

ii. HTML Tags NOT Allowed in Article Body

• <p> and </p> tags are not allowed. Allow your articles to wrap naturally.
• <javascript> is not allowed.
• <img src> image tags are not allowed.
• Font and color tax are not allowed.
• <H1> style header tags are not allowed.
• <hr> horizontal line tags are not allowed.
• Microsoft Word Smart Quotes are not allowed.
• Excessive <br> tags are not allowed. They are acceptable for formatting short lists.

f.  Email Links

A link to your website is recommended in the resource box section for article marketing and promotional purposes. However, if you place an "email link" or a "mailto:" link in your resource box, spammers will take advantage and abuse it. Instead, include a website URL and let browsers find your email contact information on your website.

g. Keywords You will receive more traffic to your article by entering relative keywords for your article content.

i. A keyword research tool is recommended to help you determine the best commonly searched keywords for your articles.

ii. Enter keywords as follows: keyword,keyword,key word,key word,keyword with no spaces after the commas. If you enter keywords differently than shown, we reserve the right to make format modifications as necessary for the meta keyword section of your article.

iii. Keywords must be relevant to your article content.

iv. Include a minimum of 4 keywords. Maximum 100 characters total.

h.  Article Abstract

i. Include an article summary for each article in the abstract summary area. Include 2-5 sentences describing what your article is about. You can use the first few sentences of your article, but you will receive more traffic if you enter information constructed to attract readers to your article.

ii. No HTML is allowed in the article summary.

iii. Self promotion and/or advertising are not allowed in the summary.

iv. Article summaries may not contain business names, author names, website URL's, or email addresses.

i.  Links/Website URL's

i. Two (2) non-self serving website url's/links (active or inactive) are allowed in the article content to website(s) you do NOT own, control, or manage. These must appear below paragraph 3.


ii. Two (2) self-serving links are permitted in the RESOURCE or BIO BOX to a website you own, control, or manage OR to a website that offers additional value and benefit to the article itself.

iii. Self-serving links must be in the RESOURCE box.

iv. Link format should be:

correct: http://companyname.com/
incorrect: www.companyname.com

v. Links cannot contain a downloadable file.

vi. Duplicate links within the same article are now allowed.

vii. Anchor text links are limited to 4 words or less. Anchor text links must add value to the article topic.

viii. Links to adult oriented sites such as pornography, explicit sexual content, and so forth are not allowed.

ix. Website urls in links must be active websites that have content. Do not link to websites "under construction."

j.  Article Categories

i. Please select the most suitable category/subcategory for your article content.

ii. Our editorial staff reserves the right to shift an article to a more suitable category if they deem it necessary.

iii. If you are unsure of the article category, make your best guest and submit your article.