Article Surfing Archive

When you open an account with an article directory, you are almost always asked to create an author name. Most people put their real name, but this can be a mistake in some situations.

Why You Should Use Alternating Author Names

Regardless of what, when and how you write, you must keep one thing in mind * your audience. When you use articles to promote your site, it is vital that you remember you have two audiences. The first is the group of people that will be reading the article when it is republished on other sites. Equally important, however, is a second audience * the webmasters looking for content in the article directories.

By their nature, webmasters are hurting when it comes to time. There simply is not enough time in the day for most to get what they need done*well, done. When they come to an article directory site, the tendency is to try to find articles they can use AND identify an author they can trust. If you can fill this niche, you are in like gold.

I handle the search engine optimization for a site that sells outdoor products. I was always hunting for articles involving travel and the outdoors. I was pretty disappointed with most of the content I found, but an author named Steven Gillman came to the rescue. He wrote good stuff and more than a few articles were funny. Perfect! I started snapping up his articles and republishing them without even reading them. I did this because I knew he generally did a good job and the articles were on subjects I needed content for.

There was, however, a problem. He also wrote about other subjects such as real estate that I didn't need. I would have to hunt through his stuff. It wasn't difficult, but it took a little bit of my precious time. The real estate articles were written well, but they really didn't fit on my site about the outdoors. This is exactly why you should use alternative author names.

In my opinion, you should use one author name for one subject. If you are promoting sites on real estate, beauty products and traveling, you should have three separate names that correspond to each subject. This makes it easier for webmasters to pick up articles from you, which is the purpose after all. They can just pop on to the directory in question and pull your latest stuff. Nice, simple and quick!

As directories have become more sophisticated, there is another reason to use alternative author names. Many directories have instituted RSS feeds by author. A webmaster can now place a feed on their site for you, the author, if they like your stuff. Every time you submit, the article appears on their site. Alternatively, they can use the feed to simply get notice whenever you publish something new. This is a tremendous opportunity, but there is a problem. Webmasters are only going to pick up your RSS feed if you write about one subject area. If you are moving from travel subjects to real estate to beauty products, they are going to balk because the feed doesn't solve the problem. Again, you are better off sticking with one subject per author name.

If you are promoting more than one site, you should always use alternative author names. If you are only promoting one site, don't worry about it.