Guide to make money online!

I was telling you recently how it really helps to think of yourself as implementing an article marketing campaign rather than just writing article by article and seeing how it goes.

You need to take a long term perspective with article marketing (as with any online marketing tool) , and I know that's the area where we struggle–most people want to see results yesterday!

I know it's hard to plug along not knowing where you're going or where you'll end up, and that is why creating an article marketing campaign can make all the difference in your results.

I have been article marketing for years and years, but just last year I started a new campaign that has created tremendous results for my sites. I did something a little different and it really paid off.

I thought it might be helpful to you if I shared exactly what I did so that you can get an idea in your head as to what is possible if you implement an article marketing campaign and stick with it over the long term. 

I'm going give you Step 1 today, and this is it:

In order to know how you're doing, you need to know where you're staring from. Each month you will measure your results in the following areas, and after several months you'll be able to see definite progress.

This was exactly my first step with my campaign that I started a year ago, and without doing this, I don't think I would have had the success I had over the past year. 

It's simple enough–Here is how you determine your website's baseline:

So, type Keyword #1 into Google.

Where does your site appear in the search engine results listings? Is it #5, #50, or 105–whatever your ranking, make a note of it.

Now, repeat this by doing a search for each of your keywords and see where your site turns up in the rankings. 

Then, after you've finished searching in Google, hop on over to Yahoo and do the same searches. 

(It's worth it to set up a spreadsheet to track this info.)

Here's a tutorial on how to do a back link check:

Enter that number in your spreadsheet for both Google and Yahoo (or whichever search engines are important to you). 

PageRank (PR) is the ranking that Google assigns to each page on the internet as a reflection of the website's authority. The ranking scale goes from 0-10, where 10 is the best. 

Now, you do not need to achieve a PR10 to be at the top of the search engine rankings for your keywords–you may be able to have a PR of only 2, 3 or 4. So, a super high PR isn't everything, but it is one indicator that can help you track your website's progress. 

How do you measure your PR? The Google Toolbar has a PageRank indicator on it. Just download the toolbar, then hover your cursor of the PR indicator, and you'll see the PR of the web page. 

You probably have some sort of stats tracking system set up with your site that will tell you your website traffic each month–that's what you would use to tell you what your traffic is. Just whatever your website traffic was for the month prior to the month you're currently in, add that to your spreadsheet.

Now–please note: Any one of these indicators may not reveal much.You may be building links and are due for an upgrade in PageRank the next time Google adjusts their rankings, but you won't be able to tell that if you're only measuring website traffic. Remember–there is a delayed reaction in the search engines and with traffic to a site, so that the efforts you exert today in marketing your site will show their results several months from now.

This is why it's so helpful to track multiple stats–you can see changes in some areas while other areas are still trying to catch up. 

Here are some FAQs you may have after gathering this information:

You may rank highly for one keyword in Google and be completely off the charts in Yahoo, or vice versa. This is not unusual–each search engine has it's own way of measuring results so the results are different. By implementing an article marketing campaign, you can 'even things out'. When I first started my most recent article marketing campaign, my site's rankings in Google were much higher than in Yahoo, but now a year later my site ranks at the top in both search engines. 

That's fine–this is why you're doing article marketing, so that you can jump up the rankings! Everyone has to start somewhere, and if you're just starting to market your site it's not unusual to not see your site listed at all in the rankings when you do a search for your keywords. You are taking steps to change that.

It could be that your website is brand new–if your site has not yet been indexed by Google, when you do the PageRank check, you will see something like 'no ranking available'. That counts as a PR0. If your site is brand new, you will need to wait for your site to be indexed and for the incoming links to be evaluated, which can take 4+ months.  If your site is not brand new, then likely you are just starting to marketing your site. Don't fret if you have a PR0–PageRank can go up if you build links and market your site!

Please see this post on When Can I Expect Backlinks To Show Up For My Articles? to understand the reasons why your site may not be showing backlinks yet.