As a complete beginner I was very keen on getting my content out and published and did not give sufficient attention to making sure my articles did abide by the rules and guidelines. For all you beginners out there, it may be worth reading the things I've learned over the last few weeks so that you too can improve and progress to Platinum level fast.

First and foremost, there is no excuse for spelling mistakes and bad grammar. There is a spelling checker in the preview option! Use it! Having such mistakes makes your submitted article unpublishable and it will have to be corrected before it can be published. This isn't a big deal but it does waste your time.

Secondly, you've got to have fresh content. You cannot copy and paste other people's work and you cannot try to republish the same article over and over. You will be rewarded for supplying fresh, unique and quality content since it will be published quicker and allow you to reach platinum status in no time. Platinum status is desirable because your submitted articles will be published in less time; within three days and so you can get more content out more quickly.

The next important point is to ensure you have the right number of links to other sites. A good place to put these links is in your resource box. You are only allowed to have two external links to your own sites or sites which you will benefit from linking to. You can also have two links to other sites which are not deemed to be in your interest. You should also be weary that you are allowed to have at most four words in your anchor text for these links.

If you are trying to optimize the ezine for a particular keyword or phrase, you should make sure the density of that keyword is between one and two percent. Anything higher will be rejected by EzineArticles as it will be deemed as excessive. Stick to using the phrase twice for every 150 words or so to get a good density.

If you are trying to rank your ezine high on search engines, you should write more ezines pointing to the original one after it is published to build back links. These act as votes for your article and tell the search engines that the site is important. You can also use things like social bookmarking or syndicating your content using RSS feeds. But this may be better left to more experienced users.

I hope this overview will help you submit content in the right way and also help you learn from the mistakes I and many other people have made. Good luck!