I just had the pleasure of judging Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim Scholarship Contest, which I found a fascinating learning experience.

There were 48 entries on a wide assortment of topics. Participants submitted articles over a 4-week period. The winner each week was the one with the most unique views. So, the ones who were serious about winning hustled to get visibility and traffic to their article. (Andy Beal is a smart guy, wouldn’t you say?!)

Those 48 people who submitted did a superb job with their articles, and I congratulate them on their hard work. It takes a lot to submit an article to a contest. Each of them deserves a huge round of applause.

Then, the final 4 winners were sent to a panel of 9 judges. We were told to vote based on “theme and content.” Nothing more.

I did just what Andy said to do. I based my vote on theme and content. However, as a professional SEO who’s been in the business almost since the start of the industry, if I disagreed with what the person said, how should that play with my vote? Could I vote for an article when I disagreed on the writer’s viewpoint? That’s a tough one, isn’t it?

So what can we learn from Andy’s contest. We can learn a multitude of writing tips, but we can also learn how to be successful in “appealing” to judges, in doing research, in getting traffic to our articles (if that gets us to the next step), and more.

1. Please go Andy’s site and look at the overall listing of titles for the articles. Is it clear from the titles what the articles are about? If you, as the writer, were to publish your article, would you be pleased to have your name published all over the Net in association with the title? What would your clients think?

Is the title captivating? Does it make your reader want to read the article? Does it use muscle words? Does the title reflect the content of the article? Article titles are as important as titles of Web pages, so please give them as much time and consideration.

Some of the titles are absolutely superb. Others might need a little work. Look at the winner. His title is excellent:

“The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing”

Any time you mention a number (top 10, the five, etc.), it’s appealing to the readers. They automatically feel like the article is in bite size portions just for them. “Social media marketing,” making it a form of marketing (good idea), is certainly a hot topic these days, so that in itself is designed to captivate and pull in readers.

He could have said the five levels or five areas, but he said the five “pillars.” What a muscle word! It shows the ultimate power in those five areas, which he demonstrated by the sheer amount of traffic he pulled in to his article. In other words, he knows how to practice what he preaches.

2. Look at the 1st paragraph of some of the articles. Did they make you want to continue reading? The first paragraph of an article needs to summarize what the article is about.

Again, I didn’t judge the articles based on what I’m telling you here. However, these are all points that make up a “good” article.

3. I found some confusing aspects to some of the articles. Write to your lowest common denominator. It certainly depends on your target audience, but if your articles are trying to teach (which most articles are), you want to avoid all confusion.

4. I found that so many of the articles needed editing. Again, I didn’t take this into consideration when I judged the articles. However, when publishing articles, please consider grammar and punctuation. I’m not going on a witch hunt here. The articles were phenomenal, but grammar is and will always be important in article writing.

5. Here’s an interesting twist. If you’re writing an article in order to win a contest, wouldn’t you want to appeal to the judges? Of course you would. The judges are all professional people, and I have no doubt they would keep an open mind. But in a couple of cases, the writers didn’t do due diligence in checking out the backgrounds of the judges or I don’t think he/she would have written on the topics they chose. Judges are only human: remember that.

6. Your article needs a clear beginning, middle, and an end. Closure was missing from a few of the articles. They just . . . ended.

7. “How to” articles are extremely popular with readers. Ryan Bell’s “Instant PPC Success for the Hometown Hero” is an excellent example of a how-to article where he spells everything out with clear and concise wording, graphs, etc. Good job!

Obviously, I came into my “judge’s role” from a different perspective than some of the other judges. I’m a writer and editor, so certain things stand out to me. I’m also a professional SEO, and I’m always open to new and different ideas. I’ve been around for a long time, and I have the gray hair to prove it. I’m also a “helper,” so I can’t help but offer suggestions to writers to help make their writing stronger.

As a writer, I’ve entered many writing contests myself. I had judges who took the red pen out and graded my entries. If I hadn’t had those red marks, I wouldn’t have learned anything about how to improve my writing.

The entries were creative, imaginative, and thought provoking. Everyone was a winner, because it takes guts to enter a writing contest.

Here’s my challenge to those of you who entered the contest. You’ve written your articles, which is the hard part. Now, clean them up a little (if needed) and publish them elsewhere.

If you would like some tips on publishing articles, let me know and I’ll write them here. I’ll also give you some publishing guidelines and markets. Never waste a good article, and there are 48 good articles posted on the Marketing Pilgrim site. Article marketing is extremely powerful for increasing visibility, name recognition, branding, and more. I’ve been doing it for years.

I look forward to working with the overall winner, Ben Wills, when he attends our Search Engine Workshop, which is one of the prizes.

Robin