One of the goals of EzineArticles is to provide quality informative article content to readers and promote a good user experience for all Internet users. Because of this we do not allow the promotion and inclusion of the following topics:
Selling Term Papers or Essays - Students who are seeking an education should not pay to have someone else do their schoolwork for them, as most educational institutes consider it to be cheating and a form of plagiarism. We do not allow any articles or links containing content that advocates selling or purchasing any form of academic writing, including but not limited to:
- Dissertations
- Essays
- Book reports
- Theses
- Research papers
- Application essays
Offering general writing tips or providing format templates is acceptable.
Promotion of Email Safelists - An email safelist is a list of email addresses of individuals or companies who agree to receive email from anyone else on the list. These safelists can be paid or free to use, and are often promoted as tools for email marketing. However, using email safelists is not a good practice for promoting your business or website as these lists are not targeted to your niche, and they often promote spam. There are more advantageous and efficient ways to grow your traffic, such as installing an opt-in on your landing page.
Bulk Email Spamming - Bulk email spamming (also called "unsolicited bulk emailing") is the unethical practice of collecting email addresses without the users' permission and sending waves of mass emails promoting products, websites, or services to those addresses. These email addresses are often taken from safelists or lifted from forums by bots. This practice provides a poor user experience for everyone on the Internet. Spamming is against the Acceptable Use Policies of almost all Internet Service Providers and is illegal in several countries. We will not accept content promoting the spreading of unsolicited emails on the Internet.
Closely related to email spamming is Ad Swapping. This practice involves trading email lists with other marketers and/or sending offers to members of a list that does not belong to you. We do not allow promotion of this practice, as it encourages spam and destroys trust between the marketer and the members of their list. It also results in your potential customers having to wade through a cascade of offers or "freebies" that they are not interested in.
Advocacy for Paid Auto-Surf Programs - Auto-surf programs are a form of automated traffic exchange that artificially brings a large volume of traffic to a website, and often have business structures similar to Ponzi schemes. Using a paid auto-surf program is using a program to commit fraud. It is manipulating results to make more money from fake "visitors." This also does not promote a healthy Internet community. These programs include, but are not limited to:
- Paid-to-Click agreements (PTC)
- Mechanical Turks
- Sniping (auto-bidding on sites such as eBay).
EzineArticles.com does not allow promotion or detailed discussion of any form of auto-surf programs.
Traffic Exchanges - Traffic exchanges are a form of artificially increasing visits to a website. Websites connected via a traffic exchange program have users who agree to manually visit each site in the program for a short amount of time (usually less than 20 seconds) before moving to the next site. These "unique" visits manipulate the websites' search engine ranking. Essentially, they are a manual form of auto-surfing and are deceptive to both search engines and Internet users. We will not accept content discussing or promoting any artificial or incentivized forms of traffic generation.
Advocacy of Click Fraud - Click fraud is the practice of artificially inflating the click rate of online advertisements, either manually or via a bot. This practice of creating invalid ad clicks inflates the cost-per-click for advertisers and costs those advertisers money because the fraudulent clicks will never result in a product purchase. Deliberately clicking on any online advertisements for financial gain is fraudulent and unethical and content promoting such practices is prohibited at EzineArticles.com.
Advocacy of Creating Made for AdSense Sites (MFA) - An MFA site is a landing page which has no redeeming value and exists only to entice visitors to click on ads (usually AdSense). These sites offer nothing of value to visitors and create a poor user experience. EzineArticles will not promote or advocate creating websites for the sole purpose of placing ads on the landing page.
Black Hat SEO - Also known as "spamdexing", Black Hat SEO is the practice of intentionally misleading search engines into ranking a website higher in search results than is justified by the content of the website. We will not accept any content providing information on Black Hat SEO or any material relating to the deliberate manipulating search engines. This material includes, but is not limited to:
Artificially Inflating Social Media Statistics - Using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be a great marketing tool, but some marketers aren't willing to put the work in to organically building their social media presence. Cutting corners by participating in programs that manipulate social media sites and artificially inflate statistics is unethical and deceptive to other users. This practice includes, but is not limited to:
- Buying Twitter followers
- Purchasing Facebook fans or friends
- Auto-follow or friending programs that violate the Terms of Service (TOS) of a particular social media site.
We do not allow promotion of these practices or products that encourage them.
Promotion of Fraudulent or Deceptive Link Baiting - Link bait is any content on a website that is designed to gain visitors and encourage backlinks. Link baiting is a powerful form of marketing when properly used. It ideally provides new and interesting content to Internet users, usually in the form of:
- Videos
- Text content
- Images
- "Freebies"
However, some marketers use link bait deceptively for their own gain, which is unethical and creates a poor user experience for the individuals who visit their site because of the link bait. Unethical link baiting practices often include stuffing a landing page with link bait unrelated to the content on the rest of the site. We do not accept content advocating any form of deceptive link baiting.
False Designation of Origin (FDO) - FDO is a form of "Bait and Switch" tactic that involves intentionally concealing the origin of a product or service, often in order to deliberately misuse an established brand in order to steal Internet traffic. E.g. Creating an article which reviews a brand name product, using the brand name in the title and throughout the article body, but then ending the review with an invitation to buy a replica product. This is an unethical practice of capitalizing on another company's branding efforts. It also misleads readers. We will not accept any attempts at FDO.
Any Products/Programs Relating to Unethical Internet Activities - This includes any product or program with features relating to:
- Black hat methods
- Article spinners
- Email/link harvesting
- Spamming
- Auto content creation
- Illegal downloads
- Artificial traffic generation
- Any other Editorial Guideline violation
The Author Terms of Service state that authors agree to not purchase or utilize PPC (PayPerClick), PPV (PayPerView) traffic, safelists, or traffic exchanges to artificially inflate traffic stats. Doing so may result in your account being terminated.