Article Marketing 101 -

How to best use Articles to promote your business.

What is Article Marketing?

Article Marketing is that kind of advertising or marketing which uses generally free and informative content published via free article directories on the Internet.

Article Marketing How To

What is Article Marketing?

     There are many ways you can promote your web-site offering a product or a service. Or maybe you are just trying to make money via click through campaigns like AdSense.

        If  you get most of your visitors from Search Engines, one way to get more visitors is to achieve a good ranking within the Search Engine Result Pages. One of the best ways to achieve high rankings is by having high number of quality inbound links.

Here are few of the other reasons you should consider Article Marketing:

     *    One of the cheapest ways to get new traffic.

     *    Minimize need to provide reciprocal links

     *    Much better value as compared to banner ads.

     *    Article Submission Sites are indexed by the search engines on a continuous basis. When the spider finds a link to your page, it follows the link to your web-page and indexes it.  

Why is it worth your time? 

     Article Marketing is one of the fastest ways to get your web-page indexed by Google ( or any other search engine you care for).

    When you submit your article to different article directories, you not only see them providing a link back to your web-page, you also see the articles being picked up by other directories for publication on their sites.

    Many article Directories have a high Google PageRank often above PR6.  A link pointing to your site from a high PageRank site, improves your ranking manifold.

Now that we've established the importance of article marketing, let me show you how easy it is to do this.

Decide your purpose.

    First of all, decide the purpose of your article marketing. Are you trying to promote a product or a web-page or a service?  Everything that comes after this will depend on your purpose. 

One thing to note though : your articles are most effective when they give information without appearing to sell. They should not be promoting anything. Your articles should be as informative as possible. Give away free information and people will come for more.

Narrow your subject down.

     Very often the subjects that are closer to your  heart are easier to write about. If you are passionate about a particular idea or matter, your passion will shine through in your writing and you will get more responses.

     Let us say you are selling information products. One product that gives you great returns is your e-book on "The breeding of flying guinea pigs for pleasure and companionship." OK, I picked a very far-fetched subject. Even if your subject matter is not quite frivolous, you can use articles to market your product.

     Select a chapter in your e-book and write an article about that. Then, at the end of the article, you will have the occasion to provide a link back to your sales page.

    In general terms, the better your article and the rarer the information you provide, more people want to get more information.  This leads to more people coming to your web-page.

Once they are on your web-page, it's just a matter of conversion.     

Decide your format. 

     What is the format of your article?  Here are a few common formats:

1) Lists

2) Reviews

3) Frequently asked Questions

4) Replies to Comments (previously made in a blog post)

5) A comment on another blog post made by someone.

Different authors, of course have different preferences. Sometimes, the matter at hand will also dictate the format that will afford the best returns.   

  For technical subjects, it is easier to use a list format while Reviews go better when you are discussing a product.  

Write down your keywords.

     Create a list of keywords you are going to use for this article.  The page that this article points to on your web-site should be optimized for the same keywords as this article. Preferably, the keywords should appear on the Anchor Text leading out of the article as well as the Title Page of your article.

     Use the Google Adwords tool for keyword research. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Write a catchy title using those keywords.

    The title of your article will decide how many page-views your article is going to get. If your headline is hard-hitting or inquisitive or even conspiratory, it may generate more inquisitiveness or curiosity. Such a title almost always wins over the everyday matter of fact titles.

    Your title is bound to be like an advertisement for your article. If you sufficiently arouse the curiosity of the reader, he may read the rest of the article.  

     When you publish your article, the title is published in the Categories page or the index page of most directories. When the publishers search on the title, it will be opened for reading only if the title is catchy and the title has your keywords in it.

          If you are a marketer, you already know the importance of the headline in your sales copy. The title of your article commands at least as much importance and respect.

That is all great, but I can't write!

    I believe that almost anyone who can think can also write. Having said that, everyone who can successfully put together a business idea must be able to write enough to convince someone that he has a good business idea.

    Also you must be passionate about something that is relevant to your business; passionate enough to be able to explain to someone about it.

And if you can explain verbally, you can write an article too.  I will show you how easy it is to write articles about your favorite subject.

         Here is how you can go about writing  a very effective article on your favorite topics.     

    * Create a list of individual bullet points of stuff you want to write about. 

    * Start with a summary paragraph

    * Put it in some sort of order.

    * Add tools and resources.

    * Offer examples

    * Offer Tools & Resources.

    * Create a resource box.

    * Create an html resource box.

    * Create a short description of your subject matter.

    * List out the keywords. 

    * Promote your Article.

    * Use article submission software to submit to directories.

There are various modes of article creation. You do not have to write all your articles yourselves. You can also hire someone to write an article or a number of articles for you. There are professional writers as well as ghost writers who can do a decent job of writing for you. 

     The Resource Box

    One of the most important tools in the article marketers tool box is the Resource Box/ Signature Block. This is the location where you, the marketer gives a short Bio of yourself. Describe yourselves and what you do in the third person.

e.g. Dave Janardhanan is an expert Internet Marketer and Search Engine Optimization expert who offers help with revamping or setting up of your Internet Marketing Campaigns.

Then relate the resource box text back to the article.

e.g. This article is an excerpt from his latest book - The SEO User Manual which has this as well as many other discussions on how to achieve first page rankings on Search Engine Results.

Also make sure you mention about the product you are currently marketing along with a link to your sales-page.You can also use the resource box for stating your offer.

e.g. For your copy of his latest book which covers this and many other Search Optimization Techniques in detail, proceed to http://www.SEO-USER-Manual.com. This book has received wide acclaim as the most comprehensive reference manual to be published over the last few years.

Beware though, sometimes article directories pick up your article for publishing months after it has been released by you. You may have to either provide people the same offer at a later time or have some alternate arrangement in place to redirect them to another page with a similar offer.

Often the success of your marketing endeavour depends on how well you put the resource box to use. Do not use more than one link in your resource box. If you do, it dilutes the effectiveness of your link. Users are confused as to which link to click. Any confusion on the users part means lesser number of visitors to your page.  

Deep linking.

    Very often the links from your articles might point to the home page of the web-site. In fact it is better for you to also link the inside pages of your web-site. This is called deep linking.  Your web-site receives higher ranking if you also have inner pages that receive PageRank due to inbound links. 

Themed links

     Themed links means that the links pointing to a page are constructed with the theme of the page in mind. For example, if your page is about "flying guinea pigs", then your link anchor text actually includes that phrase.  It is better than the phrase "pets" or even "flying pets".

Also it is very important to have the page text that is receiving the link also have the same text in the Title. This is called theming.

Spell Check 

    This is one simple step that a lot of people fail to consider. I mean, it is free, it takes less than a minute, but the impact it has is tremendous. How much do you respect a person who mis-spells the most common words? Also, spelling mistakes often detract from the message the author is trying to deliver.

     All reputable word processing tools now come with their own spell check features. Use them. If you don't have one, use the Google Documents. Create a new document, copy your article on to the new document and then click Tools -> Check Spelling.

Article Submission Service

     There are quite a few article submission sites that offer you the convenience of submitting your article to multiple sites on the Internet. Some of these sites are very high PageRank and the benefits of submitting to these sites are tremendous.

    You may need to go around and create a login in each of these Article Repositories or Directories and then report your credentials back to the submission site. When your article is ready to be published, the submission service will send your properly formatted article to these sites.

     Of course, sites that receive your article may or may not publish it depending on their preferences and particular guidelines.

RSS or Really Simple Syndication

     Create an RSS Feed for yourselves and submit your articles to the RSS Aggregators. RSS is a very simple method to distribute your content in real-time to many publishing sites. Conversely, you can also get content from other web-sites or blogs to display on your web-site.

Q & A :

*    How do I  avoid duplication penalties on my web-site?

         If your web-site has been determined as a duplicate of another site, Google does not index your page. This behaviour may vary from Search Engine to Search engine, and also may vary over time. Here are 4 simple steps to avoid being penalized.

     1)    Add the article to your web-site and wait for it to get indexed.

     2)    Create a second version of the article using different title and Summary.

     3)    Vary your article by up to 30% before you submit to the article submission sites.

     4)    Make sure that your article gets submitted only after your site has been indexed by the major search engines.

*    What do I do when my content is used without my copyright notice?

     Publishers sometimes receive a copy of your article from third parties and post it online with our without your copyright notice. If they have not displayed your copyright notice you can contact the web-master and ask that your Copyright Notice be displayed with your link next to the article. Alternatively, you can demand that the article be removed from the web-site.

 If your request has not been complied with in some time, you can complain to the Search Engines with the offending URL. Google often pulls any ads it displays on such pages.

*  How do I protect myself against spammers who use my content without permission?

     Spamming is a bane of the Internet. The very nature of the Internet promotes free linking and syndication. IF you have syndicated your article, you do not have much choice in who displays your articles if you have been given due credit.

     The only consolation is that such occurences are few and far between compared to the legitimate sites that use your content with due copyright displays.

*   How do I promote my articles ?

     You can promote your articles in various ways. You can either use RSS as stated above or add an excerpt of your latest post to your homepage. You can also add bylines to newsletters in the same manner as banner ads. The best way yet is to identify a few good article submission sites and to submit your article to them.

What to Avoid

*    Avoid a ho-hum title. Your title has to pull the reader into reading the rest of your article.

*    Forgetting to spell-check.

*    Make sure that the article is useful to someone. If your article is on how to back your car over your motor-bike, don't expect to get any serious interest.

*    Avoid making your article feel like a sales letter.

*    Article Summary duplicated in the article body.

*    Avoid links to your web-site in the article body.

*    Avoid unnatural line breaks in the middle of your sentences. Follow natural paragraph patterns.

*    Avoid submitting to an irrelevant category. Take the time to place your article in the right category.

*    Avoid irrelevant text in the resource box. 

*    You must research your keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing.

*    Avoid submitting someone else's content. This can get you blacklisted.

I hope you have all the tools and the knowledge that you will need to start using Article Marketing as an integral part of your Marketing Strategy.

     Here is a list of Article Marketing Tools I like to use with sometimes amazing results.