Thursday, May 8, 2008

Article Marketing and Your Resource Box - You Better Check Your Links if You Want the Full Benefit

Article writers get their articles kicked back for review all the time over this. I've even had some kickbacks when I've not been paying attention and not checked a link that I thought was good, and it was not. Something had just gone wrong in the last day and I didn't know it, so I was sending somebody to a link that was dead.

Make sure the links you put in there to your websites or blogs are live. Even if you've just been on that site that morning and you're writing an article in the afternoon, check the link.

It used to be that I taught that you want to have a clickable text link in your resource box, called an anchor text, like "Click here to..." or "Article Marketing Minute" would be highlighted.

You can still have one of those in your resource box, but what we've found is that many of the folks who have websites, newsletters and blogs that are using articles are not savvy enough to take the HTML code to make those clickable links back to their website, newsletter or blog and use them correctly, so it winds up a dead link. You don't want that.

You want to have at least one, maybe two, of what's called an 'absolute URL' in your resource box. Here's what an absolute URL is. It starts with http:// -- all the way to .com or the end of the domain and file name. So an absolute URL is the whole thing - http all the way to .com

Now that you know what an absolute URL is, and it's kind of a funky sound to it, 'absolute URL' - take it to the next party and see how many people know what an absolute URL is. It would be great conversation. Yeah, right.

And now I would like to offer you free access to 2 of my Instant Article Templates when you subscribe to my free Article Marketing Minute, a 52 week audio/video newsletter on Article Marketing. You can get your instant access at http://www.ArticleMarketingMinute.com

From Jeff Herring - The Internet Article Guy & the Great Article Marketing Network

Profitable Article Marketing - Latest 3 High Powered Methods to Breakthrough with Article Marketing

The online business market is getting more and more competitive. In order to drive quality traffic to your website and get your fair share of online visitors, you must have a real edge over the rest. For this, I recommend that you give people what they really want - information. This can easily be done by writing and distributing your articles online.

Here are the 3 high powered methods to breakthrough with article marketing:

1. Offer valuable content. The information that are included in your articles are your strongest tools in article marketing. When you are able to provide good content, people who are looking for information that they can use on their blogs, lenses, websites, and portals will surely pick up your articles and republished them. This can boost the number of your inbound links that can lead to improved search engine ranking and increased page views.

2. Share a slice of your expertise. One of the main reasons why you are marketing your articles is to gain the trust of your readers so they will consider doing business with you. One of the best ways to do that is to establish your expertise and share some of your knowledge to your readers that they will find helpful and valuable to their lives. When you are able to help people, they will be most likely to return the favor.

3. Do a keyword research. This is the most effective way of driving qualified traffic to your website. You need to know the search terms that are being used by your potential clients when they try to find specific information online. These search terms, when found on your articles, will instantly bring your potential clients to you.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Article Marketing Secrets That Sell

Article submission to article directories is one of the most effective ways to promote your business. Article marketing is free and can attract targeted traffic to your website.

Internet marketing articles need to have an attention grabbing headline that contains your keyword. Articles need to be informative and relevant to your targeted audience. It is also helpful to optimize your articles for search engine rankings by writing in keywords. The keyword density that should be used is open to debate. Originally, webmasters found that a 6-7% density worked well to attain a high search engine position. However, the writing was generally appalling with this type of density and often web pages were nothing but a form of spam that offered nothing of value to the reader.

Since then, search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated in an effort to catch out these poor value websites. Now, some SEO marketing professionals recommend a keyword density of between 3-4% while others recommend a density of only 1-2%. There is also a strong movement towards organic writing that doesn't bother with keywords at all. This movement is supported by Google's latent semantic indexing algorithm. Latent semantic indexing (LSI) looks for words and expressions that have a similar or connected meaning to the main keywords used in an article.

When people provide genuine information and write naturally, they tend to use a variety of related expressions. They are therefore likely to be considered by search engines to be high value, genuine sites. One of the most successful, organically written websites is stevepavlina.com. His traffic and business has risen exponentially over time and he has not used SEO strategies at all. For article marketing, you may want to test your market by writing with a low keyword density and include expressions with a similar meaning to appeal to Google's LSI algorithm. Test your results by monitoring website traffic numbers. You can also write some articles that don't use SEO and compare the results.

Articles need to be written in plain English. If English is not your first language and you are unsure of colloquialisms and grammar, consider paying for a freelance writer to write your articles for you. This does not have to be expensive. Try to keep your paragraphs and sentences relatively short. Some longer sentences are fine but generally speaking keep it simple and to the point. Most article directories have word limits. Try to keep your articles under five hundred words. If you cannot do this, the article can be separated into two parts with links to the other part of the article.

The keys to successful article marketing are to write well and write often. You cannot simply write one or two articles and expect them to make a difference to your business. They are a great way to generate free website traffic but you have to submit articles regularly. The result is exponential. A good rule of thumb is "an article a day will make articles pay." Having said this, make sure your resource box is written well and has links to relevant pages on your website. You won't get any visitors from article marketing if your readers aren't enticed to click on your link.

Learn how to promote any product, service or business opportunity using the most powerful Free Web Site Traffic method - Article Marketing.

Website Traffic - Why Article Marketing Blows Away Pay-Per-Click Marketing

It's always great to compare traffic generation strategies because you can tell which strategy is giving you results and which isn't. Or maybe both strategies may be giving you results but you want to know which is more effective in generating qualified prospects.

Two of the most popular traffic generation methods online today are article marketing and pay-per-click marketing. This article won't talk about what both methods are (there are already tons of articles on that) but will compare the two to see which strategy you should invest your efforts in.

Personally, for me, article marketing blows pay-per-click marketing out of the water. Pay-per-click marketing consists of Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Search Marketing, so that's no small statement I'm making. Well, there's a reason why I say article marketing is more effective.

Let's say that you spend $10 a day on Adwords. That's $300 a month. Now take that $300 and spend it on 100 articles written by a freelancer. Those 100 articles will bring you traffic for a long time, whereas your Adwords traffic was a temporary thing. And prospects generated from articles are way more responsive!

You'll often people willing to spend crazy amounts for cost per click on Adwords, but you won't find that many 'insane' competitors in article marketing. Although the competition has grown massively in recent years, it is still nothing compared to pay-per-click marketing.

And that's why I say article marketing trumps over Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or any other pay-per-click network. If you don't want to write, outsource your articles. You'll see some terrific results from this marketing strategy if you do it right.

Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:

"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"

Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it's gone!

Should You Consider Article Marketing To Promote Your Online Business?

Article marketing is a really powerful and simple way to get more traffic to your websites, blog and other squidoo lenses. While it is true that content is king, this traffic generation method is very slow when you compare it to pay per click advertising for example.

The question that marketers ask is "Is this worth your time?".

My take on this is that whether or not you don't think it's worth your time, you should submit articles at least once a week. Sure, one article a week is not going to increase your traffic and profits anytime soon, but at least, you get your name out there.

This is one of the numerous advantages of writing and submitting articles. And if you have the budget, you can outsource this to a ghostwriter or virtual assistant. Plus you will get top rankings in the search engines if you add the right anchor text in your bio box. Keep in mind that article marketing is not a one time "set and forget" technique.

In fact, the more articles you write, the more effective the method. If you consider article marketing as an integral part of your overall marketing plan, you need to write at least one article a day.

Anyone really serious about his online business is involved in article marketing because of the instant credibility, instant traffic and instant sales.

Plus it is a good way to add new leads to your marketing funnel. Those leads are generally more targeted than those you can get in free giveaway events or other safelists and traffic exchanges.

To learn more, download my Free Guide: "How To Earn $100K Per Year With Article Marketing".

Franck Silvestre makes thousands of dollars a year from affiliate and article marketing. Wonder what the secret to his success is? Discover how he does it at: http://www.mynetmarketingland.com/article-marketing/

30 Facts for the Article Marketing Newbie

In the course of my research on article writing, I take lots of notes and enter them into a file. I have pages and pages of facts relating to article marketing. Unfortunately, I rarely note the source of these facts. So, I apologize for not giving proper credit to the original sources. However, I thought this list might be quite helpful to those who are new to article writing. And, I've sprinkled in a fact or two to amuse the veteran writer.

Be timeless with your articles; write articles that will still be relevant in a year. Learn enough to become the expert in your field. Write short, interesting articles of about 400-700 words. They didn't come to read a novel! More people read articles on weekdays. (I guess this says a lot about our work ethic!) Fewer articles are submitted on weekends.

Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become an acknowledged expert in your field. Educate your readers. After your 300th article, business may be pretty good, but you still won't be making a livable wage. When writing an article, always keep your reader in mind. Write an attention grabbing title that compels the viewer to read further.

Always offer a free report of some kind. Your long-term success depends upon the quality and quantity of your list. Use high-ranking keywords in your title as well as your article. By 2006, there were about 2 billion websites on the Internet. The Internet is the television of future.

Article marketing is here to stay (hopefully). Your title has to jump out and grab them. For each article you write, design a targeted resource box. Longer titles trend to attract more page views. Having a website will make doing business much easier.

When you begin to bring in some money, reinvest a portion of the proceeds back into your business. You can make much, much more money by selling your own products. Create your own product as soon as possible. Buy a Domain name, get an autoresponder, and upgrade your web hosting as soon as possible. The use of pre-sale pages will increase your sales dramatically.

'How to' articles are always very popular. More links are not necessarily better. Great articles have great titles that attract readers. Always use software to check your spelling and grammar. Design a separate resource box for each article you write.

If you are new to writing articles, I recommend that you create a file for random facts like I have compiled here. On those days when I'm suffering from writer's block, my file on article facts will always come to my rescue. Even if it's a silly article like this one with no common theme. Sorry about that.

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