Sunday, May 25, 2008

How To Overcome The Nightmare Of Article Marketing

Yes we know writing articles is a great website marketing strategy that can ramp up any online business. Look at all the positives - more web site traffic, better visibility for your business, increased link popularity, repeat visitors, free advertising and a gaggle of other good stuff. All of this is true. However, if the thought of sitting down at your computer and cranking out content on a regular basis makes you break out in hives, than article marketing is a nightmare.

The reality is that doing business online requires web content. You have probably seen a few sites that contained nothing but an advertising banner. These sites do not last long. Why? Because people want useful information not a sales page and search engines want content. It's tough to build a customer base and get referrals if people have nothing to go on. The key to online success is to give both groups exactly what they want.

However none of this changes the fact that you would rather watch television test patterns that write articles. So what can you do?

1. Hire Someone. There are many writers who for a certain fee will crank out articles for you. There are also a number of article writing companies online. You tell them the topic you are interested in, agree on the price and they will write a set number of articles for you. Many of these places are of top quality but you should understand one thing: No matter how much you discuss it with the writer, there is only one person that can give you exactly what you want one hundred percent of the time and that's you. Still, hiring someone to write remains a viable option.

2. Free articles If you can think of a topic, the odds are someone has already written about it. Start perusing some the major article directories. Most of these sites will indicate that it is okay to use the articles on you website as long as you follow their guidelines. This usually means ensuring you give the author credit, not modifying the article in any way and including the author's resource box or byline at the end of the article.

All of this should go without saying. Plagiarizing or not giving the author credit only leads to negative (and totally unnecessary) ramifications for you and your business. You are trying to build credibility. Once you throwaway trust it's hard to get it back so do the right thing. Also as a courtesy if the link in their resource box does not work do some investigating and activate it. Who knows? Someone may do the same for you down the line.

3. Other webmasters

Find site owners in your niche who write their own content and invite them to post on your blog web site. It's not only a good way to get instant web site content but you can also establish potential link and joint venture partners. Getting free articles from other webmasters has great advantages. Unfortunately, the downside is the article links are pointing toward their website.

That's just another reason to write your own articles. The more websites that link back to you without requiring a reciprocal link, the better search engines will rank your site. By all means if your budget allows it hire a proven writer or article company to provide web content. Outsourcing (the good kind) is an important component to growing your business. You should also use the free articles that are available online to build your website.

But start writing. Providing original information gives search engines and visitors something unique that only you can provide. Seeing your business grow by leaps and bounds will overcome any lingering nightmare about article marketing.

Daryl Campbell is a full time online business owner and internet marketer. Get more free tips, video, step by step coaching, tools and up to the minute internet marketing news to grow your business the right way at Internet Marketing Guide

Linking - Quality vs. Quantity

When it comes to back links to your website there really are just two basic kinds. The first kind is links of quality and the second kind is those that are not. Quality links come from Authority sites that are relevant to your websites content.

As an example: If your website is real estate related, you preferably want links to come from real estate related websites. Links within related content or categories scores higher in relevancy to your sight and are weighted heavier in the search engines. Plus, relevant links from sites of Authority are weighted heavier in the search engines.

Back links to your website are really just like votes in an election. With just one little twist, high quality links count much more than poor quality links. As a reference point, one relevant link from an Authority site could easily be worth thousands of poor quality links.

So what is relevance? Relevance is how closely the content between the two linking websites relates to each other. You can get relevance in a couple different ways. You can go to the webmasters of those sites working in the same niche as you and request links. Just keep in mind that these are probably your online competitors. Another way to get relevant links is by submitting your site to directories.

Directories place links to websites within category structures that are highly relevant to the content of the listed websites. They do this by using keywords, category descriptions and meta tags within each category to match the content in each category.

There are directories that require a fee for reviewing your website prior to listing it and there are free directories. The difference between the two is the difference between quality and quantity. If you decide to go with free directory submissions, be prepared to submit to thousands of free directories before you get the return of one quality Authority directory.

There are some methods to getting back links that you should be careful to avoid. Those are purchasing text links from brokers and reciprocal links. Both of these methods are getting more scrutiny from the search engines and being devalued.

A good link building campaign does take time. Dont expect to put in a days work and be done. You should expect to allocate time every week to build links to your site for an indefinite time period. At least as long as you own and operate the website.

There are several additional on topic articles published at the Authority Web Directory. Visit today and while you are there you can submit your websites' listing at Authority Directory Submit page.

Almost Criminal Technique To Build A Highly Responsive List For Free

I am very sure that if you have spoken to any successful internet marketer they will tell you that the big money is in building a big responsive list. Now there are many ways that you can do this.

If we take a look at the most common ways these are ppc, ezine advertising and coregistration. If you are a newbie chances are that you simply do not have a dollar to pay for a new lead as this is roughly what the cost will be. Also you probably will not know how to treat the lead very well to maximize your sales.

In this article I would like to go over the the technique that I use to build my list that generates leads that are up to 10 times more responsive than leads from other sources. Another big advantage is that this is completely free.

My favourite method is writing articles and submitting them to article directories. I usually do some keyword research to find a high traffic keyword with very little competition and include it in the title. I submit my completed article to all the major article directories. I also include a link to my squeeze page in the resource box. If somebody reads my article and likes what I have to say they will automatically click on the link in my resource box to subscribe to my newsletter.

I have found that this is the most reliable method of traffic generation that will build your list. If you set this up correctly you will achieve much better results than other methods.

Are you really interested in driving massive traffic to your website?

Here's the answer:

Secrets Of Article Marketing - Download your free ebook now.

Mark Abrahams is a full time internet marketer who has helped others to earn a living online.

How Important Are Links?

Just over 6 weeks ago I set up a couple of new blogs. With one of these blogs I intentionally did not build in any links at all to the blog. I used blogger to set up the blog and allowed blogger to send pings. So Google would be aware of the site, but what would happen?

I've posted to the blog two to three times per week, using a mixture of articles and my own thoughts. Since then I've watched what pages Google has been showing and when it has cached them.

At the same time I also ran another blog, posted to at exactly the same time as the first blog and using the exact same micture of articles / new content. The only difference has been that this second blog has been linked to from a few other websites and blogs.

So what is the difference between them? Basically, the site with links has over half of the posts cached, which isn't brilliant. But then it's not posted to often. But on the whole, Google is caching the site about weekly.

But the first site, the one without any links, is hardly visited by Google. Since the day it went live Google has had the home page cached and quickly cached a couple of posts. For the first week the sites were treated pretty much the same. But within 3 weeks the linked site had a lot more pages cached and the difference has grown.

Now, 7 weeks since first posting and first link building to the second site, there is a massive difference. The none linked to site has not been cahced for 6 weeks, whereas the linked site has been cached within the week, and this seems to continue.

So there is a massive difference in how your site is treated depending on how many links you have incoming. Google may know about your site, but if the links aren't good, it's going to ignore you! So link building is not a total waste of time. It's not just about letting the search engines know that you exists, it's about convincing them that you are worth their processing time and getting them to visit the site to view and store updates.

Keep building links in, just make them good links.

Keith Lunt runs several successful internet marketing sites. You can contact him through http://www.janric.co.uk or follow the experiment in his daily blog.

SEO For Yahoo

The popularity of Google attracts the SEO to optimize their websites for Google. Around 30% of total traffic enters to website from Yahoo search. In some countries Yahoo and MSN are very popular. We should effort to gain extra traffic from Yahoo also.

To get top ranking you must collect strong back links from trustable websites. Google and Yahoo check the back links and unique content on the web page then decide which position is better for the website. Directory submission is very helpful to get good rank in Yahoo. Reciprocal link exchange program is also very beneficial. These days social bookmarking websites are also benificial for backlinks.

Site structure is also important factor when optimizing for Yahoo. Keep the important pages on top in the navigation. Keyword density is more important in Yahoo algorithm. For better ranking, your page must contain 6-8% keyword density. This percentage of keyword density is 2-3% in Google.

Meta tags are also important to get high rank in Yahoo. Google sometimes ignore the description if not related to page or it contains lots of repetition of a particular word. It is known as keyword stuffing and is unethical search engine optimization and Google, Yahoo and MSN will penalize the site or ban the website permanently. So use target keyword in the main heading, title, description and keywords. Do not include any word in the meta tags not related to page.

It means the major areas you have to focus for Yahoo are:

Density of Keywords
Back links or Inbound Links
Visible Site Structure

This article is written by SEO Company India, New Delhi based website design and development company.

Is Article Marketing Overrated?

OK. Here is what I mean. If you're not new to website promotion, you must have heard that one of the best ways to drive targeted, ready to buy traffic to one's website is by marketing with articles. It's free and the traffic is of high quality we are told.

In reality, a lot of new Internet marketers have used the technique without much success. They have written a few articles and submitted to loads of article directories and all they get in return is a trickle of traffic so they quit in frustration.

Article marketing still works. There is no question about that. The problem a lot of people have is their strategy. They get it wrong before they even begin. They make a lot of mistakes.

Let's discuss some of the mistakes most people make.

Mistake One: Lack of Patience

Many people hope to get a surge of traffic hours after they submit their articles. That won't happen. Article marketing is not a quick fire method of generating website traffic. It's usually a slow process that lasts years.

People can still visit your website through articles you've written years ago. That is the beauty of it. You get traffic forever.

Mistake Two: Writing for The Search Engines

When people learn about article marketing, the learn that one should write for the search engines. They learn one should write articles in such a way that the search engines will index quickly.

I do not believe in this. I strongly advise you write with your readers in mind. Teach them what you know in your article as simply as possible. This way, you will stand a better chance of generating long lasting traffic through your articles. Write for humans, not for the search engines.

Mistake Three: Not Writing Enough Articles

I've seen people write a couple of articles and sit back to watch the traffic gush in. If you think you will get traffic with the two articles you've got, then perish the thought. Article marketing is a continuous exercise.

You need to consistently churn out good contents so your readers will get "addicted" to you. When this happens, you can rest assured they will buy from you over and over again.

Article marketing remains as powerful as ever. It will remain powerful as long as contents still drive the Internet so use it.

See you at the bank.

Alan Stone

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