By
admin on August 30th, 2007
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
By: Robert Paul Williams
People access the internet seeking free information and they expect that information to benefit them in some way. Useful free information can lead to purchases by your website visitors. It is in your best interest to provide such information.
Know that this type of informational marketing must be done with well-written, relevant, and optimized content articles.
When you provide free information to your customers you are providing a sought after service. Additionally, you can demonstrate that you are a well informed source on the topic matter at hand. When applied properly, your articles will place well in the search engines because your articles are considered relevant to search inquiries. Keeping your content fresh will get the continued attention of the search engines. It’ll keep your customers coming back too.
Websites that offer fresh, constantly updated, relevant information optimized for key words usually rank high with the search engines. This is how the search engines are designed to work.
Consider that search engine spiders are constantly seeking new information. They index and catalog what they find adding anything new they discover as they collect data. They utilize the information on your site to determine how relevant it is to the search inquiries they serve which is reflected in your website’s page rank.
In simple terms, the search engines will catalog and index the pages on your site for commonly mentioned words and phrases. Please note that these words and phrases are scrutinized according to percentages. Redundant keyword or phrase use is considered key word stuffing and results in a penalty. It’s a kin to spam. The search engines like naturally occurring organic use of keywords and phrases.
When an inquiry is made for a search term, such as “quick and easy gourmet dinner recipes” for example, the engines will reference their database for websites containing that particular phrase and display what they consider to be relevant results.
A website that exclusively features “quick and easy gourmet meals”, contains volumes of information on this topic and is constantly updated with fresh subject matter content gets the competing edge over other websites offering similar information. Remember, the content must be relevant and useful to your visitor and distinguishable to the search engines without over doing it.
Many website owners make the mistake of creating content for the spiders that are crawling the website for data. They do not take into consideration that most visitors will determine within 5 seconds whether or not the information presented is worth reading.
People are attracted to ease. Make Your website experience easy for them. Pages should download fast. Information should be easy to find. It should also be easy to comprehend in addition to being useful to them.
Keep you information fresh. Keep your paragraphs short. Avoid distracting graphics. Use bullets and make your information scanable. Help your customer find what they are looking for easily and quickly.
Remember the most valuable customer you have is your repeat customer. Give them a reason to keep coming back. Constantly added new information will do wonders for you and your customers. You want to avoid the “been there, done that, next” response on the part of your website visitors as well as the search engines.
You can also use reciprocal linking in your website content. Considering that most people surf the web going from one interesting link to another. You can get “lateral” traffic by creating a mutually beneficial linking arrangement with other topic related websites.
Let’s say your website specializes in “quick and easy gourmet dinner recipes”. Could you contact a webmaster who owns a website that specializes in “fast low calorie desert recipes” and arrange to make some of the content on each website refer to the other? In essence you would be serving your customers better and helping each other increase website visits.
As you can see, providing useful information to your website visitor is what the internet is really about. Utilize this principle to help convert more of your website visits into purchases and repeat visits from your customers and the search engines.
Article Source: www.articlecontentprovider.com/articlesubmit
Robert Paul Williams is the Editor of Work At Home Business Website. Come Browse Our Free Article Library. Stay Informed with the Latest Legitimate Home Based Business News, Success Tips & Strategies.
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By
allen on August 20th, 2007
Posted in Copyright/Fair Use | No Comments »
There is some confusion with regard to plagiarism and what constitutes fair use online. Some people are so afraid to violate copyright laws that they miss great opportunities to see their work expanded.
The blogosphere has its own rules, but those rules don’t discount traditional law. Stealing is still stealing, even on the Internet. But allow me to dispel some copyright infringement myths:
- It isn’t stealing if you attribute the source
- Copyright infringement does not entail using another person’s work if you add content of your own that creates new value
- Fair use entails adding enough content of your own to sufficiently prevent your content from consisting primarily, or only, of another individual’s content
If these guidelines seem a bit vague, it’s because they are. When it comes to fair use and copyright infringement, there are a lot of gray areas. However, there is still enough black and white to draw some lines in the sand.
I’m not an attorney, but these guidelines work for all forms of content online - blogs, articles, website content, etc. Christopher Alan Jennings of the American Law Division wrote a report for Congress titled “Fair Use on the Internet” (this is a .pdf document so it may load slowly) and he said that courts weigh four factors with regard to fair use, whether online or off line:
- Purpose and character of work in question
- Nature of copyrighted work
- “Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole”
- Effect of use of the work “upon the potential market”
In the blogosphere, it is considered acceptable to trackback to another individual’s blog or borrow from their blog and add comments of your own. If you engage in this practice, and you should, then do the right thing and link back to your sources. This is the online equivalent of citing references in your print or off line material. Your link back to the original source constitutes proper attribution. Of course, you could go a step further and identify your source by name, but it isn’t necessary.
An example of proper attribution would be the above link to the “Fair Use on the Internet” report. By linking back to the original source, you give your readers a chance to check your facts to see if you got them correct but also to see if you are interpreting them correctly. You let the readers be the judge. This will go a long way toward increasing your credibility.
Before you use material from another website or blog, ask yourself these questions:
- Does this material add value or provide new understanding to my readers?
- Would my own comments regarding this topic benefit without this material?
- Am I willing to link back to this source?
This is not elementary and there is more to each of these questions than simply answering them without contemplation.
If the material you want to copy and paste adds new understanding to your topic and provides value for your readership then go ahead and use it, but be sure to give attribution to your source.
If your own comments will stand alone without the material you want to borrow, ask yourself if it is really necessary to borrow. If not, then leave it alone, or paraphrase it. If there is no way your own material can stand alone without borrowing someone else’s material then maybe you should reconsider your own knowledge of the topic. You want your own material to be able to stand on its own. Consider the other person’s work much like graphics on your web site: It is there to enhance, not to be the primary focus.
Thirdly, if you are not willing to link back to your source then don’t bother using the material. Linking back is essential as an act of attribution and if you are not willing to do this then leave it alone.
Allen Taylor is the operations manager for NameCritic, Inc., which includes Article Content Provider, SEO Service Provider, and Blog Content Provider. He writes the News and Media Blog and survived as a newspaper editor in his off line past. He is not an attorney and never has been.
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By
admin on August 11th, 2007
Posted in Website Content | No Comments »
by Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
With Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher, having people click onto more pages helps your revenue immensely, but how do you get them to read more than one page when they visit your website? Here are a few tips.
1. Create pages within the blog that contain reference material you refer to often in your posts. These static pages will also get crawled and indexed by the search engines and as you write posts about your topics you can refer people to these static pages as references to what you are posting about.
2. Use articles as static pages. You can reprint articles on any topic for free by visiting one of the many article directories like http://www.articlecontentprovider.com/articlesubmit/ Then refer people to read the articles that relate to the post you are making. You could even add one article as a new page every time you make a post.
3. Refer to other posts you have made on your blog or on another one of your blogs while posting. This gets the reader to click over to previous posts. You can even decide your posts by browsing previous posts and deciding which one to follow up on. Those archives are not to be lost and forgotten. Its great material, (you wrote it right?), so use it.
4. Create a page that links to your favorite posts that are timeless. You browse your old posts, find posts that you want readers to find easily, then build a links page with those posts directly linked. Then add a link to that page from your front page. Call it favorite posts or whatever and you will benefit by those that click through and follow those links.
5. I’ve posted here before about the “more” tag. You write your post as normal, then decide where you want to break the post up onto a new page. You put the more tag in and readers have to click to a new page to read the rest of the story.
6. Write once per week special projects. These are a series of articles on a particular topic. You will be offering it once per week giving readers a week to comment on it, then have them hanging on for next weeks special post in the series. Each time add links to previous posts in that series.
7. Using your content from your other websites or blogs is also a great way to get more pageviews for all of them. Use the target new tag and refer to material on your other blogs and websites. It will open a new window leaving the current blog open while they visit your other website or blog. You can quickly double up your pageviews while also introducing your readers to your other websites and blogs.
8. Make a list of 10 previous posts and the links to those posts. Make a post in your blog about 10 things you want your readers to know and read in case they have not done so before. At your suggestion they will at least go see if they have read those posts before, increasing your pageviews once again plus bringing old material to new readers. That also lets them know they should browse the archives for things they have missed.
9. Using that same list of 10 posts or a new one, visit other blogs on your topic. Find posts that talk about something similar to one of those 10 posts, then instead of adding a link in your signature to the home page, make a comment there and refer to the post that is similar and that contains helpful information to that blogger and their readers. You will also be increasing your link popularity while doing this. Do not spam the link. Make sure it actually contains useful information. Don’t be trolls or spammers and you will end up with new readers and more page views for your blog.
10. Do not stop being creative. Use the tips in this article, plus invent some of your own ways to interlink your blogposts together. Create pages. Don’t just post and forget. That content is valuable, use it. Do not make people search your blog. They are lazy and busy. Bring it to them. That is just good customer service.
I hope this article helps you learn there is more to blogging than just writing a post once in awhile or even daily. If you employ the tips I just gave you into your blog I guarantee you will increase your pageviews which in turn will increase your revenue if using an ad program in your blog.
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By
admin on August 6th, 2007
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
By Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
I was inspired to write this article by some people who are doing article marketing or whom at least THINK they are doing article marketing. I go to rentacoder.com, getafreelancer.com, and other freelance websites and I get emails for bid requests where people are looking for article writers. Some of the bids would amaze you.
Example: “I need high quality articles of 500 words or more each written with SEO in mind. I am willing to pay $1.50 per article.”
Some go on to say they want 2.5% keyword density while another will say 6% keyword density and others have other density requirements. The Bottom line is, that tells me they are the ones who are dense. They read some EBook, or whatever, that told them what the proper percentage is for keyword density. No one can give you an exact percentage. Those that do give out advice on that and quote a specific percentage are almost as dense as the people who believe them.
You are not going to get high quality articles written for $1.50. I run an article writing service and my prices are on the low end of the scale at $15 per article. That is extremely cheap for well-written articles. Anything less than that price is likely to be keyword-stuffed drivel that is not worth the time to submit anywhere.
But many people who think they understand article marketing don’t really care about quality. They want a large number of articles with that perfect keyword density they read about.
Here are 10 things you need to understand about article marketing. Obviously, there is a ton of people out there doing what they believe is article marketing who do not have a clue.
1. If you target the American Market for your products and services, then having someone who does not understand how to sell products to Americans and who doesn’t write like an American write your article is just totally worthless.
2. Everything on the Internet is permanent. If you are hiring a ghostwriter then your name is going on these articles with links to your company website. When readers read the poorly written articles that are stuffed with keywords and look like a boob wrote them, they are going to think you are the boob that wrote them and your company’s image suffers.
3. Having articles written and submitting them to directories is not what article marketing is about. This is where most people’s understanding of article marketing stops. Article Directories are there to provide quality content to webmasters who want to use articles in their websites. The tradeoff of giving a link back to the owner of that article is the price they pay for the use of the content.
4. Just submitting articles to article directories does increase your link popularity a little. However, these directories are not websites that are related to your topic. Websites that might use that article are likely related to your website’s topic. Therefore, unless the articles are good enough that people want to re-post them on related websites then you are missing the whole article marketing boat.
5. Buying a bunch of cheap articles and doing mass submissions will not give you the long-term value, which article marketing, can and will do if done properly. A well-written article submitted to just one website can give you more link popularity and direct traffic than 100 poorly written articles that are mass submitted.
6. High quality articles have a snowball effect that lasts for a very long time. As more and more websites use the article as content you will see your link popularity, grow. Each of them becomes a related website linking to you.
7. It takes time to see the real effects of good article marketing. The longer your article is out there, the more it is used by other webmasters and the more your link popularity grows. It happens a little at a time just like the search engines like for a websites link popularity to grow. Getting 1000 links to your website overnight can get your website punished rather than benefited.
8. If the writer of your article does not know how to sell product or make a rational point that leads a reader to WANT to click the links in the footer, then again you are missing part of the value of article marketing and are wasting your money. Article marketing can drive traffic directly to your website if they are written properly.
I’m not talking about an article that just promotes your website or product. Webmasters will not use those and article directories will not accept them. However, if you wrote a guide to filing a patent and in the article advised they consult an attorney, then you have written an informative article that puts the idea in the reader’s head that they need a lawyer to file a patent. In addition, the links are right there in the footer to your legal services. How convenient!
9. If the person writing the article does not really understand SEO, then you are again missing a major part of article marketing. There is no set percentage that your keywords should appear. They should be mentioned where possible but not in a way that detracts from the quality of the article itself. Reader first, SEO second. Some writers really know how to do this and it is second nature to them to write this way. Webmasters who might want to use it as content do care that it contains the right keywords, but they will not use an article that is written poorly and that is an obvious attempt to spam the keywords into the page.
10. Good writers who understand sales, SEO, and know how to write well deserve to be paid well. If you want quality articles that you are not ashamed to put your name on, then you have to pay for it.
Some of you out there that might read this article really don’t care what they put their names on. In that case, this article is not written to you. Go and keep doing your thing out there. When you decide you really want to try to be successful come back and read this again. Bookmark it where you found it right now, read it in six months, and see if you understand it then.
For those of you who do want real quality and want to have all of the advantages that article marketing can give you and who do care what their name gets attached to, just remember that good writers need to be paid what they are worth. I hope this article has helped you understand what article marketing is really all about.
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By
allen on August 3rd, 2007
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
There has been much ado about keywords. But what are they? Do you need them? If so, how much?
First, I think they’re a little bit over rated. But I can understand why. It has a lot to do with supply and demand. It has everything to do with some hyped up little song and dance.
Everyone knows what a search engine results page is. It’s the page that comes up when you perform a search on your favorite search engine. You look for your favorite topic and up pops a list of web sites that supposedly deal with that topic. Right?
Or something like that.
I write articles for a living. The other day I had a client say she wanted an article about sexy lingerie and the words “sexy lingerie” had to appear in the article with a 6% keyword density. It was only a 500 word article.
“Six percent?” I asked. “Isn’t that a bit much?”
“Nope,” she said. “I want to ensure that people looking for sexy lingerie will find me and not my competition.”
“Lady,” I said, giving her body a good looking over, “no one’s going to have any trouble finding you.”
Once I pulled my foot out of my mouth, I gave her the low down on what’s up about keywords. Bottom line: You need ‘em, but not too much. That sexy little vixen didn’t want a shake; she wanted a playboy bunny malt and I didn’t have any milk.
Well, I guess you know what I’m saying. Her request was a little over the top.
But I gave her what she wanted, any way. The customer is always right, right?
Uhmm, in a word, no. Sometimes the customer is so wrong she makes wrong look right. But I held my tongue. It does strange things around sexy lingerie.
So, what’s all this business about keywords? You need to understand that searchers don’t look for keywords. They look for subjects, ideas, topics, items - you know, things. It’s like when you go shopping at the mall; you don’t go window shopping for widgets, or units of production, do you? Of course not, you have a specific thing on your mind and that’s what you want.
That’s the way it is at the search engine mall. Searchers look for things. Their things. The things that are on their minds. And tonight, I’ve got sexy lingerie on my mind. So when I go up on my favorite search engine and type in what I’m thinking at the moment, the web sites who are most like what I’m looking for (I hope) are going to be at the top. At least, that’s what all those search engine gurus tell me.
Try as I might, I can’t make a sexy lingerie out of a slippery buttercup. I mean, there are times when I get all kinds of gobbledygook when I search for something. I looked for real estate and got some guy named Dave down in Florida who runs an antique hub cap shop called “The Real Wheel” and he mentioned in his blog that he had settled his father’s estate.
So what’s the big deal about keywords? You tell me. Six percent is too much; zero percent is not enough. Isn’t there a happy medium?
Good night, ya’ll. I think my wife’s been shopping (wink, wink).
NOTE: As a professional article marketer, my business is built around keywords. But I realize there is no optimal keyword density. The best mix of keywords is the mix that makes your articles flow naturally when read. It will vary from article to article. Just write and it will be evident what your keywords are if you do it right.
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