Article Marketing Made Easy

INTRODUCTION

Whatever you are doing online – whether you are selling a product, selling a

service or simply giving out information – you will need to promote your

presence. It’s no good simply sitting out there and hoping someone will

come along and very kindly decide to spread the word for you to everyone

they meet.

So you need to get yourself known – and the best way to do that is through

article marketing.

But there is a right way and a wrong way to approach this task. Get it right

and you’ll be enjoying multiple streams of traffic for the foreseeable future.

Get it wrong and you will be creating a lot of work for yourself that may not

get anywhere near the kind of results you would want.

So with that in mind, let’s see how to go about it the right way.

WHAT IS ARTICLE MARKETING?

Article marketing is not just the art of writing articles and submitting them to

the article directories.

Let’s not forget that these directories hold thousands upon thousands of

articles on all kinds of subjects. With that in mind, it’s not enough to simply

write an article and submit it all over the place.

What you need to do is to write great articles that will attract attention. You

will of course get a link back to your site from every submission you make

(more about backlinks in a moment) but you still need to get as many

eyeballs on your article as possible. This is because you want to turn readers

into visitors.

So let’s go through the most important steps you need to follow every time

you put a new article together. If you become familiar with these and follow

them without fail, you’ll soon find that article marketing really can be easy.

 

 

 

UNDERSTANDING BACKLINKS

Okay, let’s start with those backlinks. What are they exactly?

Well each article you write will include a resource box at the end, and every

one will include a link to your website. This could be to a particular and more

relevant page of your site, or simply to the home page. It depends on what

the article is about and where you want your visitor to go to straightaway.

But backlinks will get you noticed by the big search engines – the very same

search engines that enable you to rank higher in the search results and be

seen by more and more people.

Now some people have said that you can no longer submit exactly the same

article to more than one article directory. If you do, Google will ignore all but

one of them and you will have wasted your time in submitting your articles

all over the place.

This is true in a sense, because those other articles will not get positioned in

the search results. But you will also find that if you submit the same article

ten times, you will still get ten backlinks to your site. And the more

backlinks you have, the more they can help your site ranking.

And once you learn how to add rewriting skills into your article marketing

strategy, you’ll be appearing all over the place in Google anyway! Read on

to find out more about this later on in the report.

WHY DO YOU NEED A GREAT

RESOURCE BOX?

Your resource box is your link to your website. Think of it like a small

classified ad. You only have a certain amount of space to get your message

across. If it is boring or dull or even just straightforward, you aren’t likely to

get much of a response – even if your article is a really good one.

It needs to speak to the reader – so reach out and grab them. Think about

the resource boxes you have read that have attracted your attention. One of

the best things to say in a resource box is that you have a freebie to give

them which the reader can get by going to your website.

 

 

 

 

If you are going to do this you should link directly to the page which has

more information about it. Don’t make the mistake of linking to the home

page and then leaving your reader to figure out where they need to go. That

is one sure fire way to lose someone for life. They’ll get annoyed and

frustrated and probably wonder why you haven’t been more helpful.

Not exactly the best way to convert an interested reader into an eager

customer is it?

Make sure you don’t waste words either. Make your spiel short and snappy,

and experiment with attracting attention in a different way by starting out

with a question. Something like this, perhaps:

 “Would you like to earn double what you do now?”

 “Are you getting all the information you need about internet

 marketing?”

 “How can you find a second income online?”

And so on. You get the picture. Draw them in and then give them a link that

will lead them to the information they want and need.

The one thing you shouldn’t do is to try and sell something from your

resource box. Once you have written it, read it through and make sure there

are no prices mentioned anywhere. The only thing you can mention in terms

of what something might cost is one word – FREE.

Everyone likes getting something for nothing, and since a free report or

eBook is easy to make available with no actual cost to you, it’s a no brainer

to include one of these as an offer in your resource box.

The other thing to make sure you do is to make the link to your website

clickable. This does take a little more work, but it is worth doing because

you are making more work for people if you don’t do this.

Think about it for a moment, because understanding this tiny aspect really

does make article marketing so much easier for you. If you write something

like this – “visit my website, www. Mywebsite.net now and grab your free

report!” – people will have to copy and paste the address into their address

bar.

Now I know that only takes a moment and it’s not exactly difficult to do, but

it will put some people off doing it. You will actually lose out on visitors

simply because you haven’t made that address clickable.

Some websites will have their own ways of entering a clickable address so be

sure to read the terms, conditions and guidelines for each and every article

 

 

 

directory you use to be sure you are doing it right for each one. Don’t

assume it is always done in the same way.

But this is what you want to have:

“Visit my website, www.mywebsite.net, to grab your free report now!”

Notice the blue clickable link? It may show up slightly differently online but it

has exactly the same function. You will usually find it has blue lettering but

the line underneath doesn’t show up. The main thing is that people can see

it and click on it to be taken to your website. No copying and pasting

required – perfect.

And here is how you do it. The red words will form the clickable part of the

link, so to get the above example here is what you would do:

“Visit my website, <a

href="http://www.mywebsite.net">www.mywebsite.net </a> to grab your

free report now!”

Now it can be made so much better too, because we can make the red words

(the clickable part) into something other than the address. It will still be

clickable, but it will be a clickable part of the whole sentence, rather than

being the address itself.

Notice how the red words change:

“Visit <a href="http://www.mywebsite.net">my website</a> to grab your

free report now!”

This gives you the following sentence – “visit my website to grab your free

report now!” – which is far smoother, cleaner and still very much clickable

and easy to use by the reader.

And that is exactly what you want to have at the bottom of every article you

write. All you need to do is reword it as desired to make it perfect for your

own specific needs.

THE POWER OF A STRATEGY

Article marketing can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it. If you

want to take the easiest route imaginable – and who wouldn’t – then you

need to have a proper strategy for getting the best possible results.

 

 

 

As we’ve said already, you can’t just write a single article and expect to get a

deluge of visitors to your website. You need to do more than that – much

more. If you visit Ezine Articles, one of the best known article directories of

all, and look up some of the most published authors on there, you’ll see that

they have articles ranging in the THOUSANDS.

Now before all the blood drains from your face at the thought of having to

write so many articles, don’t panic. There are ways to make this task much

easier, and I’ll reveal the best one a little later on.

But as a starting author you should focus on getting those first few articles

up and running. Regular effort is what is needed here, and once you get a

system in place you will find that the number of articles you have out and

about for people to view can soon swell to impressive numbers.

So – first of all, get yourself a small notebook than you can use as an ideas

notebook. Why should you do this? Well, regular article submissions to

these sites mean writing articles on a regular basis. And if you are going to

do that, you need to be able to do something every day if you can. It’s no

good having a target to write a dozen articles a week and leaving it until the

weekend to get everything done.

So why the notebook? Well, it makes things a lot easier if you can simply

grab a ready made idea and start writing about it straightaway. If you have

to spend some time sitting there thinking what to write about you will find

the whole task much more tiresome.

Keep that notebook handy and jot down ideas as and when they come to

you; if you do this you’ll find you will never struggle for ideas and building up

those articles on the sites will be a whole lot easier as a result.

Moving on, is there any set number of articles you should be writing every

day?

The answer is ‘not really’ – it all depends on how quickly you want to build up

a significant body of articles on the article directories, and how much time

you can devote to writing them each day. But even if you only write one a

day you’ll still have thirty of them doing the rounds after just one month, so

make the time wherever you can. The results are worth it.

 

 

 

 

 WHAT KIND OF ARTICLES

SHOULD YOU BE WRITING?

This is where many people struggle, but it is the easiest thing in the world to

find subjects for your articles when you have a certain amount of preparation

in place beforehand.

First off, think carefully about your subject. Ask yourself the following

questions:

 What is your website all about?  What products do you sell?

 What do you want to draw attention to?

 Do you have any free gifts you want to give away?

 What is the nature of those free gifts?

 What type of people do you want to attract?

 What do you really want to let people know more about?

These should give you a head start for some good article ideas. What you

need to do now is to come up with some ideas for specific angles to write

about – without promoting any part of your site whatsoever.

This is where a lot of people make mistakes. If you have a website that sells

toys, don’t talk about selling toys. People don’t want to know about that.

But they would be interested in hearing about other aspects of toys. Here

are some typical ideas that would be good to work with:

 Why do some toys sell better than others?

 What are the benefits of wooden toys?

 Say no to electronic toys and go for old fashioned ones again

 Toys of yesteryear

 Which toys are making a comeback?

You can see that this is just touching the tip of what you could write about as

well. Think about all the different angles you could use for your particular

area of interest, and generate as many ideas as you can. Use that notebook!

Once you get your brain going you’ll soon find you have more ideas than you

could comfortably use in the near future.

Think about what people actually want to know about as well. Now that

might sound really obvious, but when you think about it it’s easier to come

 

 

 

 

up with lots of ideas for articles… but it’s not so easy to select which ones are

likely to get a bigger audience than others.

Some of this will be figured out more easily when you start to actually write

and submit your articles. Most if not all article directories have author

statistics pages which you can view once you log in to your account. Keep an

eye on these and you will soon be able to see which articles are being found

and read more often.

Look at what subjects and angles these articles are on, and see if there is a

theme. Of course you also need to look at your titles and other aspects of

each piece, because those could also have a bearing on why certain pieces

are being read, but it does give you a head start.

HOW LONG SHOULD THESE

ARTICLES BE?

Aha… the million dollar question. The answer might seem to be to take a

look at what is already being published on the article directories, but

although the right answer is there you will also see lots of wrong answers.

What do I mean by this?

Quite simply, don’t make it too short. You will see lots of articles on these

sites that are barely three hundred words long. That means you will be able

to read the whole thing on your computer screen without scrolling.

That might seem to be a good thing, but believe me when I say an article

that short won’t have any meat in it at all. If you want to write good articles

– and I mean GOOD ones that people want to read – then you need to stick

to around 500 words at the very least. I would say 500 to 600 if you can.

This is a nice length because it allows you some room to tell people a little bit

about the subject. And yet it isn’t enough to tell them everything. The idea

here is to whet their appetite and make them want to click through to your

website to find out more.

Think of your article as the appetizer. To get the main course – i.e. more

information – they will need to go to your website.

But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to learn something worthwhile

from your article. No matter how good your writing is, a fair proportion of

people will not click through and visit your website.

 

 

 

 

But if they like what you wrote and they notice your name, they will

remember you when they come across you again. And we all know that

despite its size, the internet can be amazingly small at times. If they see

you again, they may well decide to follow your advice and visit your website

then.

So go for a reasonable length of article and think of it as an investment into

the future of your business, as well as hopefully getting a good result now.

You won’t regret it.

 FIGURING OUT WHERE TO

SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLES TO

It’s up to you whether you want to submit your articles to as many sites as is

humanly possible, or whether you want to focus on just two or three.

If you subscribe to the theory that Google penalize all duplicate articles and

you don’t want that to happen, then submit each article to one site only. You

will then need to rewrite each one for each separate directory you want to

target.

Since you need to create a new account at every article directory you want to

submit to, it can actually be quite a task to get started with more than a

couple anyway.

It’s up to you which sites you want to focus on, but there are a few you

absolutely should not miss out on. The first is Ezine Articles.com, which is

undoubtedly the most popular one as far as Google is concerned.

Buzzle.com is another good bet, and Search Warp.com would be my third

pick. If you start with these three, you can then add more as and when you

feel able to.

But these always tend to rank rather well in the search engines, and if you

want your articles to receive the best possible degree of attention, you’ll

want them to be on page one of those results and no lower down if possible.

Don’t dismiss the thought of using article directories that are dedicated to the

specific subject you are writing about though. For example, there are a few

medically related article directories out there which only publish articles on

those subjects. You will find that these directories tend to attract less in the

way of traffic, but the people who do use them have a definite interest in that

 

 

 

 

subject, so you are more likely to get more interest in what you have written

as a result.

And possibly more click throughs to your website as well.

To find these sites, simply go to Google or another search engine of your

choice and type in something along the lines of “[subject] article directory”,

replacing the [subject] part with your choice of subject. Try it with and

without those quote marks too.

If you can add one or two specialist directories to the mix like this, you may

well get even more impressive results.

REWRITING YOUR ARTICLES

FOR MAXIMUM EXPOSURE

Okay so we’ve pointed out the fact that while duplicate articles will still get

you backlinks, they probably won’t appear lots of different times in Google.

But this is easily solved if you spend some time rewriting each and every

article you write.

What you do is take the article you have just written and rewrite large

portions of it – adding in a new title as well – so that it isn’t seen as a

duplicate of something you have already had published online. This might

sound like a huge task but once you get the hang of it, it actually becomes

rather easy – and certainly much easier than writing fresh articles all the

time.

Here is what you do.

Firstly change the title – it should still say the same thing as far as the

meaning of it is concerned, but you need to find a different way of saying it.

So for example, here are two ways of describing the same article which has

been rewritten to avoid duplication penalties:

 “What is the best way to make money online?”

 “Learn how to earn an online income in the best possible way”

You can see how the meaning doesn’t change – it’s just the way you say it.

And the added benefit of doing rewrites is that you can focus on different

sets of keywords each time.

 

 

 

Ah yes, keywords. These are extremely important no matter how many

articles you are writing. If your articles don’t have any keywords in them

then you are likely to attract a lot less in the way of readers. And that

means less chance of getting people to visit your website.

So take the time to do some research. Figure out what people who are

interested in your subject are typing into Google in order to find that

information. If you do, you will get more traffic to each and every article you

write.

You can use a keyword tool to help you do this. You should easily be able to

come up with a list of prime keywords or phrases to use, and you can then

focus on a single word or phrase for each different article.

So for example, if you are writing that article about making money online,

you might use these phrases:

 Making money online  Earning money online

 Internet money making opportunities

 Internet based work

And so on. These are just examples for the purpose of illustrating this point,

but you get the picture. By rewriting the same article and using a different

keyword or phrase each and every time, you will be able to target more

people and make sure your articles come up high in the search results – no

matter what people are looking for.

Another good point to remember when you have done your keyword research

is to make sure you add the relevant words into the keyword section when

you submit each article. You should find there is a space in which to put a

list of keywords that will help people find the piece.

Make use of it! It will help you garner more visitors.

SHOULD YOU BE GETTING OTHER PEOPLE TO HELP YOU

WITH YOUR EFFORTS?

 

 

 

This is one great way of vastly increasing the number of articles you can get

out there on the internet at any one time. Some people have thousands… so

do you reckon they all write them without getting any help in the process?

Of course not. Some might, but only if they don’t have anything else to do

at the time.

The secret to really exploding your numbers is to hire writers to help you out.

It’s easy to request small (or large) batches of articles to be written for you,

to include the keywords or phrases that your research has indicated that you

should be using.

Go to one of the big freelance websites such as Guru.com or Elance.com and

hire a writer from there. You can decide how much you want to pay – but

don’t expect to pay too low a fee, since you really do get better quality if you

are prepared to pay that little bit more. Or use a reliable independent

company like www.exquisitewriting.com.

Hiring help like this isn’t for everyone, and you should at least be making

some money from your website before you try it. If you have only just

launched your business then you will probably want to conserve your cash

and write the articles yourself to begin with.

That would be a smart decision, and it is always a good idea to do at least

some writing on your own in the first place. If you do you will be able to pick

up the essential skills that are needed before you start getting other people

to help you.

Obviously the idea here is that you can get far more articles written in a

much shorter time than you would be able to otherwise, but you should

always make sure that you are getting the quality you need. Specifying

length and keywords beforehand is all part of getting that balance just right.

WHATEVER YOU DO… DON’T

FORGET THE EDITING

Every single time you finish an article, you’re going to want to get it out

there on the internet as soon as you possibly can.

But hold on a second. Don’t forget that it’s not just there to create a

backlink. It’s there to grab readers and get them interested in your subject –

the subject that is related to what you are selling.

 

 

 

That means you need to be absolutely certain that your writing is top notch

and it isn’t going to let you down. Check all your facts, read through

everything as thoroughly as you can and make sure you haven’t thrown in

any spelling errors. It is usually worth waiting for a day or two to edit what

you have written, instead of publishing it straightaway and then spotting

errors once it is live on the internet.

Another part of editing that is very important has to do with the format of

your article. Don’t fall into the trap of using lots of long sentences or

paragraphs. When people are reading an internet page they like it to be

easy to look at. Think short sentences and break it up as much as you can.

Bullet points are great for doing this, and they have the added bonus of

drawing the eye inwards and attracting more interest to your article.

A BONUS TIP TO GET YOU

STARTED

Some article directories have a top ten (or even top one hundred) of the

most popular articles on their website. Read the top ten and see if you can

work out why they are so popular.

You can normally spot some repeated characteristics in all those articles, and

they usually include the following:

 A great title

 Easy to read, informative content

 A fresh angle  Good writing

 A good introduction that pulls you into the article itself

If you can aim for this every time you write, you might soon be on that top

ten list yourself.

One final point - don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t get the results you

want straightaway. It takes time to build up those writing skills, so start

working that creative muscle and you will be amazed at how well you can do

in time to come.

Just remember that strategy we talked about earlier and keep on writing and

submitting those articles. You will reap the rewards sooner than you might

think if you do.

 

 

 

 

Good luck and have fun!