By
allen on February 29th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing | No Comments »
EzineArticles has implemented a diagnostic tool that tells article authors when they have broken links in their articles. At first thought, this seems like a useless tool for an article directory. After all, article marketers ought to know their URLs and ensure that every link in their articles and resource boxes are not broken.
I agree that article marketers should be careful. But if you write a lot of articles and you update your website at some point then you could end up with a few broken links. This is probably more prevalent among local business owners who may move their website from a free host to their own domain and then forget to go back and update the links in their articles. Just think what that could do to your traffic, to forget about updating the links in hundreds of your articles at several article directories.
This tool is good and it’s these kinds of innovations that keep EzineArticles in a leadership role in the article marketing arena. I don’t know of any other article directory that is doing this. None. And this is just one more reason that EzineArticles will continue to be a leader.
The diagnostic tool will prove valuable to article marketers. If anything, it will get article marketers who have abandoned their EzineArticles accounts back to EzineArticles to perform some maintenance on their articles. I’m sure that is badly needed. When you think about all the small business people who write 10 articles then give up on article marketing because they don’t see it working within the first month then it all makes sense. Even then, it should be a useful tool for veteran article marketers as well. If you do, by some cosmic mistake, upload a new article and mistype an URL in your author resource box then you have a tool that will point it out for you. No longer will you have articles with broken links circulating around the Web not helping you at all. After all, there is no benefit to article marketing if your resource box links are broken.
By
allen on February 28th, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | No Comments »
Even if articles don’t appear on your website they are, and should be, considered SEO. Yes, you write them with keywords, but that doesn’t necessarily make them SEO - for you. After all, unless you put those SEOd articles on your own website then those keywords don’t really help, or do they?
Articles actually do help you in a number of ways, and not always because of the SEO. But the fact that they are great SEO tools is icing on the cake. Your keywords are important. For one thing, those articles sitting in the article directories that you submitted them to will draw Google juice. Someone searching for your particular topic by the keywords in your article could find your article in the article directory. Not only that, but that person could be a publisher within your industry. Wouldn’t it be great to have your article picked up by an important publisher within your industry?
Another way those articles benefit you in terms of SEO is when a publisher picks up your article and publishes it on his website or in his newsletter. The links in your author bio pointing back to your website will give you added SEO juice. That’s why it is very important to choose your anchor text carefully. Because you never know when your articles will be picked up by someone important and deliver additional SEO juice for you.
By
allen on February 26th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories | No Comments »
Not many article directories allow you to upload images. Articles Base posted on its blog this morning that it now allows images with its articles. You can’t upload the image, but you can hotlink it if you host it on another website. You just use the following code:
< img src=”http://www.mysite.com/myimage.jpg” alt=”My Image” / >
I know of only one other article directory that allows images: Articles.pn. Someday, it will likely be a common occurrence to upload images and videos at article directories. But for right now, you have two choices and that’s better than none.
By
allen on February 25th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories | 3 Comments »
Article directory submissions is a necessity in today’s online marketing arena. But how many directories should you submit to?
If you listen to Chris Knight at EzineArticles.com, you should only submit to one article directory. Naturally, his. Others will tell you to submit to every article directory you can find so that you can maximize all of your article marketing opportunities. I disagree with bits of advice and I’ll tell you why.
EzineArticles is not the only article directory that e-zine publishers and editors use. There are hundreds, even thousands, of article directories online and a few article submission services as well. On the other hand, once your article has been picked up by about 100 e-zine publishers and webmasters then you don’t get that much benefit from it any more. So which ones should you use?
There are two things you can do to market your articles through article directories. The first of these is to choose a submission service like iSnare. ISnare claims to send out your articles 40,000 or so directories and websites, but most of them aren’t going to be interested in your articles. You send send your articles out to their list for a few dollars per article and it’s worth it for the most part.
Before you do that, however, I recommend that you select a few article directories - 5 or 10 - and manually submit your articles to those directories under your user name. The benefit you get by doing this is you get to see your articles appear under your account name whereas iSnare submits all of its articles under a generic account name. This makes tracking those articles impossible. But if you manually submit your articles to 5 or 10 directories then you can track your articles in those directories and see how many people are publishing them. Once an article reaches its maximum effectiveness - you see more than 100 downloads of that article - then you can take it out of the directories, rewrite it, and recirculate it. You’ll get a lot more mileage out of every article that you do that with.
Learn More About Article Directory Submissions
By
allen on February 22nd, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Writing | 1 Comment »
Do you write articles on more than one topic? If so then you should seriously consider publishing your articles under an alias. Actually, you could call it a semi-alias.
Almost every article directory allows you to set up pen names under your accounts. It’s not hard to do and your pen name can be a variation of your real name, or publishing name. In other words, if you publish your articles under the name of Brandon Joe Knapp and all of your article directory accounts are set up in that name, you can publish your articles under variations of that name.
Let’s say you are an auto mechanic who writes about car maintenance tips, but you also are a hobby gardener and woodworker and you write articles about gardening and woodworking. That’s three topics. You can write all of your car maintenance articles under your real name and articles on gardening and woodworking under a “semi-alias,” which is a variation of your real name. You can count the variations that Brandon Joe Knapp can be broken into:
- Brandon Knapp
- Joe Knapp
- B.J. Knapp
- B. Joe Knapp
- B. Jo Knapp
- Brandon J. Knapp
- Brandon Jo Knapp
- Brandon Joe
- B.J.K.
- B.J.
- Bran Knapp
- Bran J. Knapp
- Bran Joe Knapp
- Brand Jo Knapp
You get the idea. The possibilities are endless. And you can add pen names, or aliases, as necessary for tracking purposes.
Let’s say you want to write about a sub-niche within your specialty area, or one of your hobbies. You write car maintenance articles under Brandon Joe Knapp, gardening articles under B.J. Knapp because you don’t want to be categorized as gender-specific, and woodworking articles under Brandon J. Knapp. You get the idea to write articles on woodworking targeted toward a female audience - “Woodworking for Women”. You can continue to write general woodworking articles under Brandon J. Knapp, but you can also start publishing articles on the topic targeted specifically for women under the pen name Jo Knapp.
By writing and publishing articles under pen names this way, you allow readers at the various article directories a way to search for your articles by name without watering down your brand. An e-zine editor or webmaster searching for articles by Jo Knapp (because she likes your writing style) can search for articles by that specific author and she won’t find your gardening or car maintenance articles. You can maintain a consistency of brand for each of your author pen names and niches more easily and be a more effective article marketer.
By
allen on February 21st, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
Dianne Ronnow understand article marketing, which is enlightening because so few people do. She narrows the process down to four steps, which is a bit simplistic, but she does have a good point. Here’s what she says:
- Step 1: SEO your website
- Step 2: Understand what search engines like
- Step 3: Write a keyword-optimized article
- Step 4: Submit to article directories
It makes sense. Start with SEOing your website. That means search engine optimizing. If your website isn’t optimized then nothing else matters.
It will also behoove you to understand search engine algorithms and what it is that search engines look for. If you take the time to understand what search engines want then you are more likely to provide it. If you don’t know then you can’t. And that’s about the long and the short of it.
Of course you’d write the article, right? But do you know how? Article Content Provider can help you write your articles for as low as $20 per article. We will optimize your articles for you around your keywords. All you do is provide the keywords and we’ll do the rest. But if you want to write your own articles then you can do that too. Just make sure you optimize them.
You can submit your own articles to the directories but it is a time consuming process. Because it is time consuming it prohibits some people from actually doing it. But you don’t have to tackle every directory in one day. I like Dianne’s way of doing it: Add a new directory each day. If you can’t submit your own articles, don’t worry. We’ll do that for you too. But even if you submit one article to one directory each day, that’s better than nothing.
It always helps to follow those who have been successful. When it comes to article marketing, follow Dianne Ronnow’s advice:
Article marketing is now considered one of the top methods of choice for web marketing. It’s one of the best ways to get top placement with the search engines and to drive traffic to your site. It has worked well for me!
Order your articles from Article Content Provider today.
By
allen on February 20th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
BlogCatalog recently added a Social Dashboard to its functionality. It isn’t direct marketing, but you can promote your articles through BlogCatalog just by submitting them to your favorite article directory then Digging them. In fact, you can run every activity you perform through Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious through BlogCatalog so if you bookmark your articles at any one of those three social bookmarking sites then your friends on BlogCatalog will see that activity. It’s just another way of promoting your articles and keeping them viral.
I recommend doing this in phases to make the most impact. Write an article and post it to your blog one week. It will filter through BlogCatalog. Wait about two weeks then send it out to article directories. It will filter through BlogCatalog. The next week, stumble your blog post and it will filter through BlogCatalog again. One week later, Digg the article in an article directory and again it will filter through BlogCatalog. In another week or two save the blog post again (or the article in an article directory) at del.icio.us. Again it will filter through BlogCatalog.
This kind of phased in article marketing will keep your article circulating through the BlogCatalog community for several weeks. The rule of thumb is people must see something 7 times before they act on it. Let’s count: Your blog, StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us; that’s 4 times. If you use Twitter, that’s another time that you can hit even though Twitter isn’t a full blog post. You can just leave a comment like “Saved article at such-and-such directory” with a link to the article. That Twit will filter through BlogCatalog. If you Twit each bookmarking activity as well as your original blog post then that’s a total of 9 times that one item filters through BlogCatalog. Any friends that don’t catch it on the first go round will catch it on the next one. Every time an item filters through BlogCatalog you increase your chances of getting another page view and driving traffic to your website.
How’s that for viral marketing?
Article Content Provider
By
allen on February 19th, 2008
Posted in author resource box | No Comments »
Do you know what information you should include in your article resource box? It’s OK if you don’t. Many new article marketers have no idea. Here is a list of items that you absolutely must include in your article resource box in order to have an effective article marketing campaign:
- Your name - It’s amazing how many people leave out their name. No one wants to read an article by a company. They want to read an article by an individual with a name. Be sure to include your name in your article resource box.
- Your title - If you are a CEO or a Senior Marketing VP then let your readers know. A title can add credibility like nothing else.
- Your company name - Yes, you can name your company. But name just your company. People do want to know your affiliations, however, and the most important of these is your company.
- A link to your website or landing page - You don’t want more than a couple of links. One is better in many cases. But you are trying to send traffic to your website through article marketing, so include a link or two. Your link should be to the page that is most appropriate for the information in your article. If you wrote an article on the health benefits of seafood, for instance, don’t send traffic to your vegetarian food substances web page. Send the traffic to your halibut recipes web page instead.
- A call to action - Be sure you invite your readers to visit your website. Statements like, “Visit the All About Halibut Recipe Page” or “Ready Why Vegetables Are Your Salvation” are good calls to action.
Remember that you are trying to get visitors to your website with your article resource box. Don’t bore them. Be concise and let readers know what you have to offer.
By
allen on February 18th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | No Comments »
Are articles sales tools? It’s a loaded question. The answer is yes and no.
Yes, your articles are sales tools. No, you should not use your articles to “sell.” Don’t call that a contradictory statement yet. Read on.
Article marketing is about teasing your audience to make them want more. It’s about seducing them to your website where you will close the sale. If you come on too strong in your articles, which are off site marketing tools, then you stand a good chance of never getting a would-be visitor to your website. That’s why you want your articles to be a “soft sell” at most.
That “at most” is a key component. The best articles are information tools more than sales literature. You don’t want a strong sales message in those articles. You want to provide useful information that people can use, but you don’t want to give away the whole farm. Otherwise, tell them too much and they can do it themselves. Why do they need you?
Article marketing is based on the principle that if you give then others will give back. You really want your information articles published as far and wide as possible. By providing useful information that people can use, you build yourself up as an expert in your niche. Then, if people want more information, they will click on the link in your bio, or author resource box, and visit your website. That is where you will close the sale.
Think of it as an infomercial that is more info than commercial. You’ve seen those late night TV commercials that are 30 minutes or 1 hour long? You know they are paid-for commercials because they include order information that flashes on the screen, the actors are selling the benefits and hyping the product - but, they also provide you with information about a particular topic. The health and fitness machine guys talk about how you can improve your health and fitness and why you need to get your heart rate up and how science backs up their claims about their product. What you want to do with your articles is provide that kind of information, but leave out the commercial. You want the information to lead people to the real commercial, which is on your website. And that’s what article marketing is all about.
By
allen on February 13th, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | 1 Comment »
Do your titles shine? Do they get the click? Do they make your competition mad? If not then you need to rewrite your titles and re-distribute them.
A good article title should do three things:
- First, it’s got to spark an emotion. Your article readers should read your title and laugh, cry, scream, fall out of their chair, or be evoked into some action - hopefully to click and read the article.
- Secondly, a good title gets the click. Why else would you write a title? You’re not showing off your pet poodle at the county dog show. You’re distributing articles so that you get readers and visitors to your website. The attraction starts with your title.
- Thirdly, it must give you some link juice. Search engines love keywords. Put your primary keyword in the title of your article. It will do more than any other SEO strategy to get your article ranked for the keyword that you are targeting. That doesn’t mean to stop there - optimize the article too, but good article optimization begins with the title.
If you do those three things with your article (spark an emotion, get the click, and rank high for your keyword phrase) then your competitors will get so pissed off they’ll ban your website from their employees. Breaks your heart, doesn’t it?
Just keep in mind, when it comes to writing damn good article titles, it’s as easy as 1 - 2 - 3:
1 - Emotion
2 - Click
3 - Keyword
And your competition will develop a bad case of title envy for which there is no cure.
