You may have gotten into the habit of thinking of your article marketing as just one article here and another article there, but it really helps to approach your article submissions with a big picture view.
Submit just a few articles, and you probably won't see drastic results, but submit a handful of articles every month for 12 months and you will see what marketing momentum can do for your site!
Consistency is key with submitting articles as with any online marketing tool, and creating and implementing an article marketing strategy can inspire that consistency.
I use an article marketing strategy myself that is comprised of a series of simple steps.
Last time I told you about Step 1: Establish your baseline.
Today we're moving on to Step 2, which is: Establish the baseline of your competitors.
Why in the world would you want to look closely at how your main competitors are doing?
1) Well, for one thing, trying to get to the top of the search engines is not something you do in a vacuum–your success depends on how other sites are doing in relation to you.
If you're at number 50 in the rankings for your keyword in Google, and the site that is ranked #1 is also working hard to market their site and building links each month and gaining PR, then you will have a clear idea as to what you're up against.
2) Competition will spur you on. Think of article marketing and SEO as a race–you do best when you have competition. If you're just running by yourself and someone is timing you, you probably won't make your best time.
But, if you're embedded in a flock of speedsters running their hearts out, you will most likely run harder too.
Keeping track of your main competitor's status helps remind you that you're in competition with other sites, and how well they perform with SEO influences how well you perform.
3) Keeping track of your competitors can give you insights and be consoling when the road gets bumpy.
Ask anyone who is consciously and consistently staying on top of their website's progress–it's not always uphill every single month. Sometimes your site may take a dive in an area for completely unexplainable reasons. When this happens, the tendency can be to overreact and think, "What did I do to deserve this?" and then not knowing if the sudden change had anything to do with you at all, you start making changes out of desperation.
But when you keep track of your competitor's progress every month, it's like you're running with a pack.
What affects you may very likely be affecting them as well, and that can ease your mind that whatever the reason for the unexplainable change in your site's backlinks, ranking or whatever, that it was across the board and not just affecting you, and that with some patience things will go back to normal.
4) Why not learn from your competitors? If a site is sitting at #1 in Google, they are there for a very good reason. You may find that your competitors are doing some things that are benefiting them greatly that you may be able to incorporate into your own marketing plan.
Those are the reasons why I track my main competitors and why I advise others to do so as well.
Let's go over the steps on how to do this:
How do you know who your main competitor's are?
It's simple enough to tell–type each of your keywords into Google, and see what site comes up at #1. The site at #1 is your main competitor.
When I started my article marketing strategy last year, I focused in on 3 keywords, so for each of those keywords I have a main competitor.
What info should you track for your competition?
Mostly the same info that you are tracking for yourself as we discussed in Step 1: How To Create An Article Marketing Strategy
*The search engine ranking for the keyword. (And of course for at least the first month, that search engine ranking will be #1, since that is how you determined that they were your main competitor.)
*Number of backlinks. Here's a tutorial on how to do a back link check.
*The Google PageRank–you can find the PageRank (PR) by installing the Google Toolbar and looking at the PageRank indicator. Remember, the web page that you will be keeping track of is the web page that is at #1 for your keyword term. Sometimes this is not the top level domain of the site (http://www.theirwebsite.com), but rather an inner page (http://www.theirwebsite.com/page2). When you're doing your checks each month, just be sure that you're consistently checking the same web page for your competitor. It helps to write down on your spreadsheet the exact web page that you're checking so that you can remember each month.
And that's it–on the same day that you do your stats check for your own site, also do the stats check for your main competitors.Some months you'll notice that they did increase their backlinks, some months you'll see that they lost backlinks, and other months you'll see that they just stayed the same.
This info will give the stats for your own site a whole new dimension. It will be encouraging to you to see your site making advancements in backlinks or PR or search engine ranking, and you can sort of see yourself on a horse galloping up from behind getting closer and closer to overtaking the person out in front–at least that's how I like to think of it!
If you're aiming for being #1 for a keyword and you're way back in the rankings, you can still see how you're making progress each month. Really galloping up the search engine rankings is not something that happens overnight, and sometimes it can be one step forward two steps back, but over time you will see a trend of steady improvement.
If you are running a commercial website, you realize the importance of a high amount of traffic and visitors is to the website. Network marketers realize that traffic can be converted into critical leads needed for success.
This is why it is important to take the right steps in order to expand the amount of traffic you are receiving. There have been a number of ways to promote this concept over the years. Some methods have lost their effectiveness and this drives the need for compelling new strategy. One such new strategy is utilizing giveaway events in order to increase traffic and leads.
As the name implies, giveaway events involve providing something for free in order to attract a large number of visitors and potential leads. This strategy has been employed in the real world for centuries as a way of boosting sales. It should not come as a surprise that the concept has moved into the online realm.
There are multitudes of ways one can devise an online giveaway event. Here is a brief overview of one way it can be done. Of course, you can tweak and modify as much as you like based upon your particular needs.
Setting Up a Giveaway Event
- It is important to pick what you want to give away. Obviously, it would be beneficial to give a gift away that relates to what your primary business is related to. For example, if you are involved with the health and fitness field, it would be best to give away something related to health and fitness. For example, coupons that offer discounts on health drinks would be a solid giveaway.
- Set up a date for the giveaway event. Since the giveaway will be intended to draw a large number of people together for an interactive event, a specified time and place is important. The place will be a website community and we will delve into that component soon.
- A website must be set up to promote the event. The website will have a public and private area. The public area will announce the specific giveaway you will be offering. It will also announce the time and place. More importantly, it will have a section where members have to register. This is so they will receive a password to enter the private area during the event. Of course, the information you acquire in the sign up process will eventually be used to compile your lead list.
- Of course, you will need to promote the event. Traditional strategies such as optimizing the giveaway site for the search engines and promotional blogging are helpful. However, setting up a social networking site (or several social networking sites) can pull in a lot of people in a short amount of time.
- It would also significantly help your give away event if you allowed the advertising to go viral. In other words, you should suggest anyone interested in your giveaway event to tell their friends contacts about it.
- The actual giveaway event should take place in a private section of the website. Live chat rooms and message boards should be integrated into the private section. Games and contests could be r un in order to add to the fun environment of the giveaway event. Of course, during the event, you could introduce and promote you MLM business while solidifying a relationship with those potential network members that have taken part in your giveaway.
In Summation
Giveaway events have the potential to build lists and expand traffic to a commercial site promoting MLM or other online ventures. It is not difficult to set up a giveaway event. Simply planning out all the steps in advance can increase the odds it will run smoothly and effectively.
Link by Link
Ranking of websites can only be achieved by the analysis of how popular your links are on your site, and is an integral part of a successful SEO Campaign
The more popular your links are, they higher your ranks will be. The higher your ranking is on a search engine, the more traffic your site will attract, and that should have a direct correlation to the success of your business.
Where should you start with our Link Building?
Firstly, there is no point in having creating a website to promote your product if nobody on this earth can find it. The leading search engines today are reputed to be Google, MSN Search and Yahoo and are most commonly used for searches, world wide. But before your website can even start to feature you have to have a good position in their result pages.
For your links on your website to be thought of a popular, you need to have a number of them pointing to your website, from other sites. The more links to your site, the higher your rankings should be and it is then that your site is considered important in the world of search engines
Link Building and Page Rank are considered to be ‘off page’ factors which comprise part of your SEO marketing campaign and should be not ignored or taken too lightly. Building ‘link popularity’ is critical if you want to optimise your SEO campaign to the fullest extent. Link building improves your Page Rank. The higher your Page Rank the higher up you will appear on the search results pages. Search Engines also look at Page Rank of the pages that link into your website, especially the relevancy of them compared to your own product. If your have links coming in from sites which have a higher Page Rank than yours, and they are relevant, your site will gain a higher value.
Link Building is a process, the advantages
The process of link building involves creating incoming links to your website; there are a number of ways you can do this. Some of the ways are to establish reciprocal links or you can establish a link in an e-zine or a newsletter and even a directory. If you decide to link into a directory you will receive three types of traffic. The first is ‘click through’ traffic who will see your link when they land on the directory page. The second is that directories start to index your pages once they find links to it, bringing traffic with them as they do. The third way directories help is by increasing your rankings and you can also create and establish links on a search engine.
Link building helps you attract high quality traffic to your site from other relevant sites; therefore it is a valuable source of potential business. It creates awareness and visibility of your site, as well as helping your create and maintain credibility. Link building will help your site gain more exposure in a wider search engine audience.
Link building will go a long way to helping you get your website indexed and are worth money today, you can sell and buy links. Link building is possibly one of the most important steps to achieve for all website competing in the SEO arena.
There are some really great Search Engine Optimisation Tools available that make doing SEO easier and can actually be fun. Some of these tools are available for free, while others come at a price. You can have fun experimenting and testing them until you settle with those you feel most comfortable with and those that benefit you the most. Tools can be a real fun experiment and you learn a lot as you go along.
There are many interesting Search Engine Optimisation Tools available on the Internet and new tools are constantly being developed. Search engine optimisation is an integral part of any website and these tools give a welcome helping hand.
Paid submitters
The digiXMAS article submitter tool software comes free and you will be charged for the submission per article, but it is worthwhile as your articles will be submitted to roughly 1000 article directories and you will be registered to the directories.
This program is semi-automatic and works fast and accurately. DigiXMAS directory submitter, which is a link submitter, has two modes to choose from. The free mode is not completely automatic, works slower and you have to manually check each directory, do a check and then submit. On the other hand, the paid mode will cost you per website and do all the work for you. This is a valuable tool for creating back links for your website.
Checkers, analyzers and suggestions
You can learn some interesting things about your web traffic and ways to improve your optimisation with tools such as a back link analyzer, a Keyword Suggestion Tool and a page rank checker. Two good keyword tools are Hit-tail that will report on what keywords browsers use that lead them to your website and give tips on improving your website.
The other keyword suggestion tool will point you to links on a monthly basis that report on most popularly used search words and search volumes. DnScoop is a statistical tool that reports to you about the SEO status of your website as to inbound links, Google page rank, stats about your domain name and age as well as a report on your domain IP. Page Rank Predictor is a fun program to use and you might learn interesting things about your website. This tool gives you a prediction of what kind of PR your website has.
Browsers, Plug ins, social networks and blogs
Firefox offers two plug-ins; when you do a search, SEO for Firefox will display information under each search result such as links and page ranking. With Firefox Live page rank you will have the Google Page Rank of that page displayed in the right hand bottom corner of your screen. The Blogosphere carries weight online and tools from Feedshark, Ping o Matic and Pingoat will get you listed in the biggest online blogging directories.
There are social bookmarking tools such as Social Marker and OnlyWire that submit your link to many other websites taken from the URL and title information of your web pages.
Did you know that online spending is predicted to increase by 14% this year? Therefore, it's a good time to grow your affiliate business despite the current economy is entering into a downward trend. Online business still predicted to continue growing this year as more people are turning to purchase online. If you are earning online through affiliate marketing, you can make 2009 your richest year ever. Here are some tips of doing it:
1. Selecting The Right Affiliate Products Are Crucial
What are the hot sell products in year 2009? This year has been a bad year for many people as the world is stepping into a recession and most countries are facing negative economy growth. In addition, the stock trading market is fluctuating & currencies for many countries are at the unstable stage.
People are looking for solutions on issues such as how to outlast the recession with alternative income sources, how to trade the stock in profitable level at the unstable trading market, or how to profit from Forex exchange market when the world's economy is at Yoyo situation. These are the areas where you find hot sell products for your affiliate marketing. There are high market demands surrounding the niches such as make money from internet, stock market investment & Forex exchange trading.
There are so many affiliate products available for you to sell, but not all products are profitable, you need to spend some time to find the right affiliate products that are wanted on internet. Selecting the right affiliate products is crucial because it will determine the success or failure of your online business.
2. Web Contents That Are Monetized Make The Different
During the old days when less competition in the online market, if you have a website with averagely good contents, it will sell. But, in today's highly competitive online market, web contents that are not able to attract the attention of the visitors will fail to monetize and lead the visitors to a cash generating page. Therefore, you should also focus heavily on your web contents. Creating a web contents that are monetized and trigger the "Want to Buy" impulse behaviour of the website visitors will make the different on whether you will good money or make zero penny from the affiliate marketing efforts.
3. Implementing Effective Marketing Campaigns Are Key To Success
The demand for online purchase has increased lead to more online business opportunities. It also means more people will try to make their fortune from internet. The internet business will become more competitive, only those who successfully implement effective marketing campaigns will lead the market and share most of online market's pie. How you drive the internet surfers to your targeted selling page and convert them to become the paid customers is the key to success to your affiliate business.
Summary
Online business is predicted to continue growing this year as more people are turning to purchase online. So, for those who are making money through affiliate marketing, year 2009 could be your richest year ever if you put some efforts and commitments to grow your online business.
The Internet has opened up vast avenues for business that did not exist prior to the creation of the Internet. This has mushroomed into a global giant where there are millions upon millions of web pages where people advertise their products and services. So what exactly are your expectations of what a search engine can do for you? Most people answer straight away that they want the search engines to rank their business in the top 10 on their search results pages.
Since up to 60% of your online business could be generated through search engines, this is not a realistic wish; the problems come about if you do not understand how search engines work and what your responsibilities are with your search engine optimisation marketing.
A tool to be used
Search engines can be used as an extremely powerful tool, depending on where you lay in the search results ranking. If you are too low down, searchers will not even bother to scroll down far enough to see your URL. To be able to utilise search engines fully, you must understand how they actually work for until you do you will not be able to make full use of this tool to bring you traffic from your targeted audience.
They work in three major ways; by indexing the webpage, but not the entire website, by indexing everything on every page of a website and by continuously crawling through external links. This last way literally means the crawlers never stop crawling; they visit these external links until they have gone through every single website on the Internet, and then they start all over again.
Different ways of working
Search engines do not all work with the same criteria when someone does a search, so the search results will vary what different search engines show in their search results pages. This means you have to use search engine optimisation in different ways to appeal to the different search engines. It is important to understand that search engines regularly change their algorithms and this will influence your search ranking listing.
Besides the giant search engines such as Google, there are also META search engines. The way they work when they search is by doing simultaneous searches through multiple search engines. Your ranking by a META search engine follows the calculation by combining your ranking by the multiple search engines used for that search and your ranking is thus the average of that. With META search engines there is no need for submission of your website as they use the results from other major search engines.
Go with a professional
To many an entrepreneur this can be a headache and most people do not have the time to learn all of this in detail. That is why it is so much easier to make use of the services of a professional SEO consultant. It is his job to understand how search engines work and what keywords appeal to the search engines and how to optimise your entire marketing campaign to bring you that much needed web traffic through being highly visible in the search page ranking listings.
Search engine optimization is clearly important in this day and age. An entire industry has arisen around the quest to get to the top of the search engines, with black and white hat SEO witches battling it out to stay in the top five positions.
It sounds like a scene out of dungeons and dragons doesn't it? However it's a serious business when hundreds of thousands of visitors are lost because rankings disappear, which equates to hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
In a previous article I discussed how to select keywords to help you to start planning a targeted campaign. When you get to the end of this article I hope you should have a fair understanding of the importance of the HTML Title tag with regard to search engines and far more importantly with regards the humans, the people, the guys and gals that you want to get to your website so that they can buy your goods and services.
Firstly, what is the title tag?
The title tag is an element in the header part of an HTML page denoted by two tags. For instance you might have . That would mean that the title would read (as a link on search engines like Google for instance "Using Title Tags to Improve SEO & Website Conversion". Setting yourself some simple guidelines to help you write your tags is a good idea.
Guidelines are good but not set in stone
There are no hard and fast rules for writing titles but there are some guidelines you might want to follow. W3C say on their website that ideally a title should be 64 characters or less and that titles may be truncated if it's longer than that. Google show 66 characters in their search results listing, Yahoo allow listings up to 120 long. What I would suggest is that you bear these sensible limits in mind when writing the contents of your title tags.
If you need a long title make the first 66 characters Google friendly and use the rest up for Yahoo. In order to learn how to effectively use these 66 characters you should know how titles are used online.
Online uses of titles
1) Titles are used by website resource librarians, directory editors (such as DMOZ), and other webmasters (such as strategic link partners) when they link to your website. 2) The title is displayed in web search results by the vast majority of search engines to help you target and attract your visitors. 3) Nearly all the major search engines use a title tag in order to rank your page. Search engines deem the title one of the most important pieces of information when determining what the content of your website is. 4) The title is displayed in the visitors browser window usually at the top of the viewable part of the browser screen. Browser screens, search results, editors, why is this important?
Firstly, by carefully crafting your website title you make it more accessible to resource librarians, editors and webmasters. If you have a nice simple title link which they can add to their pages both relevant and understandable they are far more likely to link to your website. If they link to your website using a hyperlinked title relevant to your target audience, you get targeted traffic from simply writing a good title tag. More relevant traffic means much higher conversion.
Secondly if Google or Yahoo crawl your website and find that the title tags you've written are relevant to the page on which they are written it means there is a much greater chance of a good ranking on the engines. A good ranking on the engines for your selected keywords means that you're more likely to be found by your target audience. This again means that you attract the people that you want to your website, the people who are looking to buy your product or service. The title tag becomes your search engine listing. Think of it this way, in a similar way to the classified ad you write for a newspaper, the title tag listing is your online advert, so make it as attractive and relevant as possible to attract the right visitor.
Thirdly, the browser window is affected by the title and it's convenient for the visitor to your page. How many times have you had five or six Internet browser windows open? A good title tag means that a quick scan of these titles shows the reader which page is which. The first couple of words in the title it could be argued for this reason alone are the most important text you will ever write for a web page you want to be read.
In summary you want your web page to be read by your desired audience
That's all. Your title tag is the first step toward achieving that goal. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you have eight hours to chop down a tree, spend 6 hours sharpening your axe." The title tag is your web pages axe, it's the part you should refine so that you get the most from the search engines. Of course there is more to SEO and website conversion than simply the title tag. In the next article we'll discuss the next important point to sharpen, the headline, or rather the tags that should be used in conjunction with titles to be even more search and conversion friendly.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a highly valuable tool to any online business. It’s a relatively process improve your search engine position and grow your business. Yet optimising your website to improve its ranking in search engine result lists is not a quick fool-proof task. You’ll need to understand search engine guidelines and how to optimise your website so it falls within these regulations. Apart from working within ethical SEO guidelines, it helps to know the most common SEO mistakes made, and how to avoid them.
Spelling mistakes
Sometimes unethical SEO methods include purposely misspelling words, like for example ‘airfairs’ instead of ‘air fares’. Search engines discourage this in SEO strategy. Poor grammar and spelling mistakes give an impression that your website’s not trustworthy.
URLs without keywords
Have an accurate description of the page content within your URL, these are picked up by search engines and also give online users a more specific description of the webpage.
Non-standard title format
Include a couple of your website’s keywords within the title, try to avoid using your business name as search engines pick up the titles but gives little consideration to business names. Avoid adding too many keywords into your title as this will be recognised by search engines.
Keyword stuffing
The use of keywords is vital in SEO, but you shouldn’t have more than five to eight sets of keywords that are relevant to your business. Thread these keywords around 15 to 20 times in the content of each webpage. Avoid placing a keyword on every link in every webpage; it won’t produce the results you’re aiming to achieve.
Inaccurate image descriptions
Overloading your images descriptions with keywords may harm your rankings. Try to avoid this and provide a relevant image description.
Irrelevant keywords
What phrases or keywords can you think of that are specific to your website? Try to vary keywords on each of your pages, and drill down to the essence of what each page offers. The more specific your keywords are, the easier it will be for an online user to find you. Regularly check your keywords and update them to reflect your products, services or information.
Static content
Regular content updates are important to main high ranks in search engine results. Instead of making vast changes to your website, gradually update areas of content to maintain the website’s appeal and relevance to users. Consider refreshing content at least once a week (or month at a stretch), by adding further engaging nuggets of information.
Using only Google
While Google’s the lead player in search engines, it’s not the only route for attracting online traffic. Don’t forget MSN, Yahoo and other search engines can also drive significant traffic to your website.
Forgetting about internal links
Creating a list of incoming links to your website is highly valuable for SEO, but don’t forget to include internal links within your website. Internal links can improve your page ranking, and they don’t have to be outweighed by incoming links (your links placed on external websites).
Website optimization can have a significant impact on your search engine rankings. However, there are common pitfalls of poor search engine optimization which can cause the very opposite to occur. Check out our top 5 tips on how NOT to approach website optimization.
Don't just use the first keywords that spring to mind without checking their usefulness to Search Engine Optimization first.
Although you may think that "Mike's bikes" is the phrase you would like to see most often in your website because that is the name of your shop, the chances of anyone actually typing "mike's bikes" into a search engine are low. However if your keywords include "bmx bikes Glasgow" there is much more chance a search engine will find your optimized webpage. There are several keyword tools online to aid website optimization.
Don't try cramming hundreds of keywords into your website's written content.
Rather than achieving good search engine optimization because you have many repetitions of the same word or phrase, this can very quickly result in the polar opposite of website optimization. The major search engines will recognise it as spam and drop you to the bottom of their list or ban you altogether. Your website will also be virtually unreadable to your customers so your attempts at website optimization will have been a waste of time.
Don't hide repetitions of your keywords behind pictures, off-screen or by making the text the same colour as your background.
This will have the opposite effect of the website optimization you are trying to achieve. Search engine spiders will read your website as spam rather than as optimized and possibly blacklist you from their results. This is not an accepted method of ethical search engine optimization.
Don't use large amounts of Flash or Javascript in your site.
Search engines prefer to read text and will look for that first. Employing good website optimization doesn't mean you can't have Flash or Javascript all, just that they are best limited to a small amount compared to text content to achieve maximum search engine optimization.
Don't think that once you have given your site a search engine optimization overhaul, that's all you will ever have to do.
Website optimization is an ongoing process. Although major search engine optimization can be carried out over a short period of time, without regular updates and changes, your website will slip down the results pages again as search engines are drawn back to new content.
Newsletters and articles. A powerful Website Optimisation technique that assists Search Engine Optimisation is to offer articles and informative writing to e-zine publishers. Links often stay live in archives for years, maintaining your website optimisation for searches.
Multiple Domains. Search Engine Optimisation can be enhanced by having multiple domains if you have a range of topics that could justify their own website. Search Engine Optimisation can result in the listing of only one page per domain for any given search. A good website optimisation tip is that you can get more directory listings by having more domains which improves your overall website optimisation.
Article Exchanges. Article exchanges are similar to link exchanges, only much more powerful, so great for Search Engine Optimisation. Giving and receiving high quality links can really help with your Search Engine Optimisation.
Titles For Links. A top Search Engine Optimisation tip is to title links using keywords and phrases as some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page. This will help to maximize your website optimisation.
Site map. Large sites need a site map to maximise Website Optimisation, linked to and from every page on the site. A site map is an excellent Search Engine Optimisation tool. It enables search engine robots to locate every page in just two clicks. The navigation bar can also act as a site map proving a useful Search Engine Optimisation technique on small sites.
Be bold. Using tags around some keywords on each page can improve website optimization. Don’t use them everywhere - this might undermine your Search Engine Optimization efforts.
Deep Linking. Ensuring as many quality inbound links as possible is a powerful Search Engine Optimization technique. This indicates to the search engine that your content is worthwhile, helping with overall Website Optimization. Having links directed just to the home page suggests the value of the site content is largely superficial, or your links were generated automatically, which is not a sign of good website optimization.
Emigrate. Look at Search Engine Optimization internationally. There are many directories for websites of companies based in other English language countries, America, Australia, Canada, South Africa for example. Could you use a business address in any of those countries to help with your website optimization?
Get Text in there First. Another Search Engine Optimization tip is to make sure text links show up before image links in the source code. Search engine robots follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page so it would be wasted website optimization effort.
Not anchor text. A Search Engine Optimization tip is to not too heavily on the anchor text. It can look like automation which isn't helpful with website optimization. Search engines don’t like all your inbound links to look the same. Use your URL sometimes and your company name other times. "Seoconsult Search Engine Optimization", occasionally, "Search Engine Optimization by Seoconsult" as well, "Seoconsult Web Design and Search Engine Optimization" some other times, etc.
Over the years I've learned so much about how to do an effective article marketing campaign, so I thought it might be helpful to gather some of my best tips and just list them all in one spot.
Since you wouldn't get very far in the tips without first knowing the basics, I'll give you some preliminary info on what article marketing is and how it works:
What is Article Marketing?
With Article Marketing you write and syndicate free reprint articles via article directories, ezine editors, and announcement groups. A key element of Article Marketing is the author resource box, which contains a short author bio and a link back to the author's website. Through submitting free reprint articles that are picked up by online publishers, a website owner can effectively build links, increase search engine ranking, drive traffic to his website, and establish himself as an expert in his niche.
How does it work?
Each time an author submits an article, he includes his resource box. A resource box is a short author bio, which also includes a link back to the author's website. Every time a website owner decides to publish a free reprint article, he also includes the author's resource box. So, every time the article is picked up for publication the author's name and a link back to the author's website are published also. In this way the author builds links and increases exposure for his website. The people clicking through to his website will be doing so because they found his article helpful, and since his article is on the same topic of his website the article generates targeted traffic.
And now, without further ado, here are your tips for executing a successful article marketing campaign:
1) Be consistent with your submissions. With a consistent article submission campaign:
*The more articles you write, the more web sites will choose to publish your article(s) online, the more inbound links your site will receive that will generate long-term traffic directly as well as boost your search engine rankings over the long-term, which in itself will of course generate traffic.
*The more articles you write, the more publishers will get used to your name, the quality of your articles, and the topics you cover, and the more likely it is that your article will be selected for publication.
*The more articles you write, the more your reputation and credibility is established, which in itself further encourages publishers to publish your articles, in order to benefit their readership with your expertise.
2) Use Google to see where your article is being published. If you're ever curious about where your articles are being published, just go to Google and type your article title in the search box (putting the title in quotes). Since articles are usually not immediately published by publishers, you might want to give it 2-3 days before doing a search like this. Also, know that as time goes on it's likely that the number of publishers who pick up your article will increase.
3) Give it a chance to work. Since search engines will usually take several months to adjust rankings based on incoming links, it may be 3-4 months before you notice the impact your article marketing campaign is having on your website. Patience has its rewards–when you're first starting out, implement ways to check your progress so you'll have an objective and well-balanced frame of reference.
4) It's not just about links. Remember that you're writing for real people. Spend the time and effort to write quality articles that are useful to your target market.
5) Edit each article carefully, avoiding typos and spelling mistakes like the plague.
6) Write articles on the topic of your website.
7) Submit completely original articles (rather than PLR articles). It might be tempting to take a short cut and just buy some duplicate articles that have been prepared for yourself and countless others over which you and others have been given rights to claim 'authorship', but that's not the road you want to take. Quality publishers and your potential readers are looking for unique and valuable content, so if you're serious about article marketing you need to either write the articles yourself from scratch or employ a ghost writer to write articles exclusively for you (articles for which you and you alone are the 'author').
8) Pay attention to your word count. Try to make your articles around 700-800 words long if you can, but at the very least between 450-1500 words.
9) 'How-to' and 'step-by-step' type articles are popular, along with articles that break down topics into 'tips', for example '5 Top Tips For…' Basically any type of list article is a good bet.
10) Make your articles short, snappy and to the point (but not too short–remember, 700-800 words is optimal).
11) Use title case for your titles - this means you should Cap First Letter Of Each Word In The Title for maximum chance of publication.
12) Re-read your article several times, especially 24 hours or more after initially 'completing' it, you'll be surprised how many improvements you can make after leaving it for a while. And the better it reads, the more chance it will have of being published.
13) Ask yourself - would you be happy to publish your article on your web site or in your ezine? Remember, in publishing your article, ezine editors and web site owners are effectively endorsing it - is your article of a suitable quality?
14) Space out your submissions during the month rather than submitting bunches all in one day.
15) Not all publishers will acknowledge use of or let you know their intention to publish your article - you should not consider such an acknowledgement to be a condition of their use of your article, but rather appreciate the effective publicity their use of your article can bring to you and your web site. Some publishers will let you know when they've picked your article up for publication, while many won't.
16) When you submit an article, don't expect it to show up immediately at the directory(ies). Most quality publishers review each and every article to be sure it adheres to their editorial guidelines. Depending on how many articles are being reviewed and how many editors are on staff, it may take anywhere from 2-3 days to a week or more for an article to be published on a website.
17) Spend time crafting a strong resource box. Really, the resource box is just as important as the article, so don't fall into the habit of just throwing one together at the last minute. Take your time, customize your resource box to suit your article, and you'll be rewarded.
18) Limit your links in your article body and in your resource box. If at all possible, it would be great if you could have a link free article. In your resource box, I advise using a single link, since you don't have space to convince a reader to go to multiple websites.
19) Make your articles educational rather than sales oriented. This means that your articles should be written to teach readers rather than inspire them to buy a particular product.
20) Titles are important–Spend time crafting an attention grabbing title that tells what your article is about.
21) Develop a way to brainstorm article topics–you will need a steady stream of them!
22) Use your keywords appropriately in your submissions.
23) Test out your links before submitting your article.
24) Experiment with ways to increase your speed–I suggest using an article outline.
25) Use an automatic article submission service. Many folks start out submitting manually , but then after they get their feet wet they decide that using a quality article submission service like SubmitYOURArticle.com is a worthwhile investment in their marketing efforts. While you can receive limited benefits by submitting manually (just going to an article directory and submitting an article), your efforts are magnified when you submit using an article distribution service because with each article you're reaching hundreds of targeted publishers. More publishers means more backlinks, greater exposure for you and your website, and in turn more traffic to your site.
If you're teetering on the edge not quite sure if you'd like to do article marketing or not, you might start out slow and just write an article and submit it manually to a few sites. If you think you'd like to go at it full throttle, then enlist the services of a trusted article submission service.
Question for you: These are some of my best tips and info–have you any more to add?
You've probably heard folks telling you to use your keywords in your articles and your article titles, but when you're writing articles over the long term simply putting keywords in your article titles can become repetitive very quickly.
I'd really like to encourage you to go a few steps beyond just inserting your keywords in your article titles–how about trying to lure readers to your specific article?
Most of the time your keywords will be on a more general topic (the topic of your website), and then when you're writing articles you'll delve into more detailed topics under that more general one.
For example, if my keyword phrase is 'article marketing' my articles will be on specific aspects under that overarching theme. Some articles may be about writing, others may be about using keywords in articles, others may be about submitting articles–the possibilities go on and on.
So, when I'm crafting my titles, instead of just focusing on the keyphrase of 'article marketing', I can create an article title (if and where possible) to match what people are searching for using this free WordTracker keyword tool.
As an example, if I'm just coming up with a title on my own, I may want to title an article 'How To Write Articles Lightning Fast with an Outline', but when I look up 'write lightning fast' on Wordtracker, I get no results (not a good thing!).
But if I tweak it a bit and looking up 'write quickly', I get:
- how to write an article quickly
- how to write content quickly
- how to write unique content quickly
With that information, I know the most common language folks use when they're trying to search for ways to write articles quickly.
Consequently, I can craft my article title to take advantage of these search queries, so my title becomes 'How To Write an Article Quickly with an Outline'.
It's not going to be possible every time to do something like this, but it's really something just to bear in mind to see if there are any opportunities like this to take advantage of. What you can do is just with each article key in a couple of the main words related to the article in Wordtracker and then play around with it a little and see if anything comes up.
So, that's just something to bear in mind to optimize your article titles as much as possible and help ensure that people out there searching for the type of information you're providing can easily be connected with your articles when doing a Google search.
