By
allen on September 16th, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | No Comments »
I just love articles that make outlandish claims. Claims that make no sense. Claims that are easily refuted. Claims that can’t be backed up by the facts or with logic. Why do I like these articles? Because I don’t write them, but my competition does.
I found an article online about article creation software and, of course, the author is extolling the virtues of such software. Word to the wise: This kind of software has no virtue. Seriously. None.
Besides the fact that article creation software doesn’t work the way it promises to (I’ve never seen one that could write half as good an article as the worst human writer - unless that writer is Trent Dixon), there are other problems with Trent Dixon’s article on the subject. Firstly, don’t get sucked into the false claim that article creation software will save you time. If you have an ounce of self respect, it will cost you time. Otherwise, you’ll be distributing the crappiest articles online.
But take a look at this claim and tell me what you think is wrong with it (besides bad grammar):
Article creation tools is certainly and probably the best software that I have bought. Downloading and using article writing software to automate the writing and create unique content is easy. This software is reducing my research time and effort by at least 1000%.
Really? 1,000%? See, how much would that be, exactly?
Let’s suppose it takes me 1 hour to research an article. It doesn’t. But let’s pretend. If I reduce that 1 hour by 50%, I’ve now spent 30 minutes researching the article. If I reduce it by 75%, I’ve now spent just 15 minutes researching the article. If I reduce my research time by 100% (the maximum allowed by law and common sense) then I’ve effectively reduced my research time to 0. But what if I reduce it by 1,000%? Let’s see, what’s 60 X 10? 600. Subtract that from 60 … figure … think … figure … think … double-check math … yes, that’s right … a whopping negative 540. So Trent Dixon spends -540 minutes - that’s 540 minutes below 0 - researching articles? Wow. Sign me up now please! I’d love to have a product that not only saves me time, but gives it back to me as a rebate.
Do you want to buy Trent Dixon’s software now?
Don’t make outrageous claims in your article that anyone with a brain can figure out are ridiculous faster than it takes you to write them. You’ll just look like an idiot.
By
allen on September 15th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Author Resource Box, Reputation Management | 1 Comment »
Article marketing is about building links, traffic, and reputation. If you do those three things well then you’ve got it down pretty good. But what pages on your website should you focus on for links and traffic?
One rule of thumb I like to keep in mind is to send people to the nearest page to where they will actually make a purchase. In other words, get them straight to your landing page with a “Buy Now” button if you can. That takes care of three things:
- It kills buyer frustration before it begins. No one wants to look for the “Buy Now” button. If you send traffic right to where you want it to go without anything in the middle then you are more likely to close sales.
- You build links to your most important pages and that increases their PageRank. Build those inbound links to your most valuable pages because that will make them rise higher in the search engine rankings and you’ll end up getting more organic traffic.
- Builds your credibility. When you make it easier for your customers to buy from you then they will trust you more. They will know that you know how to market your product and will be more likely to trust you and make a purchase.
Article marketing is pretty simple. Build links, trust and credibility, and traffic with carefully places anchor text links in your resource box.
By
Bill Platt on September 14th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article SEO, Article Submissions | 1 Comment »
As a professional article marketer and someone very interested in winning the Google ranking game, i pay real close attention to what Google likes and dislikes. I pay attention to their mouthpiece Google Guy, Matt Cutts says; I read Google’s blogs; and I read blog posts and news stories posted about Google.
As with any industry, it is important to be well read and open to all viewpoints relative to the work you are doing. When one is interested in getting good google rankings, it is generally very wise to absorb everything that can be learned about the inner-workings of Google. In gaining knowledge about your industry and your adversaries, you are better prepared to meet the challenges you will face.
Article marketing is a promotional method that when used well, is a very powerful tool in the search engine ranking challenge. There are of course right ways and wrong ways to use article marketing to build traffic to your website and to improve your website’s ranking in Google’s search results pages (SERPs).
But, when one takes the time to work article marketing in the way that is was first developed, then the sky is the limit. The way article marketing was designed was to create content that people would want to publish, and then to give people the right to publish it for free, provided a bio and link is given back to the author of the article.
From the inception of Google (the college thesis that explained how Google would produce better search results), the focus has always been on organic inbound links to a website. From the beginning, the founders of Google knew that a website should be ranked according to how many people create links to it, and the ranking should take into account the quality of the page presenting the links.
When done correctly, article marketing can generate links from websites of all sizes, from around the world. When your work impresses its readers, you can find your articles translated to Italian, Russian, German, and many other languages. How much did it cost me to get my articles translated into these other languages? Not a dime. The people who did the translation liked the content so much, that they did the translation for me for free, just so that they could share my message with their readers!
Your articles will end up on domains from around the world and .ORG, .NET, .EDU, all from websites of various topics and sizes, and from webistes in dozens of different countries including the UK and the Philippines. Some sites that will print your articles have hundreds of thousands of articles on every topic, while others have two dozen pages on just a few specific topics. You may even find your articles on College Websites that have dot com domain names.
When you write great articles, people of every class, race, location, business model, and domain type and location will publish your articles, as demonstrated by the links in the above paragraphs.
I truly believe that this is what Google wants to see, when they see us using article marketing as a link building procedure. They want to see your articles published a little bit of everywhere. When they see that, then they know that what you write has value in the eyes of many, so therefore, the links from your articles deserve to be given real merit. I wrote another article that described this in much greater detail, as seen here and on dozens of other websites.
Some people are willing to argue that article marketing is a promotional method looked down upon by Google, as described here. But frequently the people making this argument are the ones who make a half-assed attempt at article marketing, and when they have done their article marketing badly or in a lazy way, they prefer to blame the technique, rather than to look in the mirror for blame.
The people who have “bad luck” with article marketing are frequently those who either write really bad articles, with poor grammar or no real value for the reader, they use some cookie-cutter system to distribute their articles, or a combination of both.
Cookie-cutter article distribution systems are those that send all of the articles they distribution to exactly the same websites, every time they process an article. When the article is cookie-cutter distributed and the article has no real value to its readers, then every article by that author will have the exact same footprint in the linking portfolio as the next article. Google has always complained about and tried to wipe out the value of any cookie-cutter linking system.
Over the years Google has been successful at wiping out many cookie-cutter link building systems. Do you remember the FFA craze (Free-For-All pages)? It doesn’t work anymore. Do you remember those “paid link” services? Most of those offer no search ranking value anymore. Do you remember those paid blog post services? Yep. We have been advised against those too.
I believe that cookie-cutter article distribution services are coming to the same end, if they have not already lost their value in the algorithms of Google.
Does that mean that since I own an article distribution service that I am quaking in my shoes? No - I am not worried. Why? Because my article distribution service has NEVER been a cookie-cutter service. By design, we do not force feed articles to article directories. (If you want your articles placed in article directories, then we suggest you also use Isnare.com in addition to our service.)
Our article distribution processes rely entirely upon the publishers’ democracy of choice. When one puts an article into an article directory, one must hope that a web publisher happens to be browsing the article directory where your article is published. In our approach, we strive to send your articles directly to the publishers / webmasters who are most likely to want to publish your articles.
We have established long-running relationships with publishers going back to 2001, and we are recognized as a company that consistently sends its publishers the most appropriate content to meet their desires. We have been complemented frequently for only sending content to publishers that they want to reproduce.
Because we hand select which publishers / webmasters we feel would appreciate receiving and publishing your articles, no two articles will have the exact same footprint in the algorithms of Google or any other search engine.
If you want to rely upon a cookie-cutter system for the distribution of your articles, then that will be your choice to do. But, if you are looking to also use a non-cookie-cutter article distribution service, then you should seriously consider also using The Phantom Writers for your article distributions.
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My name is Bill Platt and I would be happy to serve you for your article distribution needs. I have owned and operated ThePhantomWriters.com since its inception in 2001. I also operate the Links And Traffic Pay-For-Ranking Organic Link Building Service.
By
allen on September 12th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
I hear people saying article marketing is free all the time. But is it? Not if you count your time as money.
Think about it. Someone has to spend their time researching and writing articles then submitting them to the various article directories. How much is your time worth? Chances are, if you are like a lot of busy professionals, you are spending valuable time doing some of your marketing tasks when you could be doing something that will actually make you money. It’s time to outsource.
So who do you outsource your article marketing to? Well, you should outsource it to the people who know how to do it the best and will save you money in the process. In other words, you can spend too much on a service and you can spend too little. The folks you spend too much with may be very good at it, but you’re overpaying. The folks you spend too little with are probably not as good as you need them to be. It’s time to find the right article marketers at the right price.
By
allen on September 11th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 2 Comments »
Did you know you can Twitter your tweets from EzineArticles. It’s true. Every time you upload a new article into EzineArticles they will send out a tweet to let others know that you have an article. To take advantage of this unique benefit to article marketing just log in to your EzineArticles account and click on Profile Manager then click on Bio. Enter your Twitter URL, ID, and password and EzineArticles will do all the work.
EzineArticles will also notify your Facebook friends if you add your Facebook profile to the EzineArticles Profile Manager.
If you’d like, Article Content Provider can start an account at EzineArticles for you and manage the account. Every time we upload a new article you can have it go out on Twitter and Facebook.
By
allen on September 10th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article SEO, Article Writing, Author Resource Box | 4 Comments »
Some folks are still under the false impression that keyword density is important. It’s not and it never has been.
The Definition Of Keyword Density
Keyword density is defined as the percentage of targeted keywords to your total number of words in content. So if your targeted keyword is “bacon bits” and you write a 1,000-word article using the targeted keyword 20 times, your keyword density will be 2%. Many gurus say the optimal keyword density is somewhere between 1% and 7%, the optimal varying depending on which guru you speak to, but 1% is the low and 7% is the high end of the advice given.
There are several problems with this approach to article writing:
- No. 1, if you write naturally then any well-written article will fall within that range of keyword use
- The focus on keywords seems wise because search engines rank pages for keywords
- Note that search engines rank pages for keywords, not according to keywords - not a semantic delineation
- Search engines give weight to a number of factors on a page and off-page and the weight given to each of the factors is different and could fluctuate from one day, week, or month to the next
- No one knows the weight given to all the factors on any given day
In short, search engine ranking factors are a mystery. No one knows what they are completely. We can guess what they are based on past experience, but since the search engines are always changing their ranking algorithms we can never fully know the complete picture.
On ranking pages for keywords vs. according to them, when you type “bacon bits” into the search field at your favorite search engine and get a list of web pages for that keyword, you will likely get results that are close, somewhat close, and not even close to what you are looking for. Even a web page about interstellar space travel could show up on the results page if the keyword is used on the page. Inbound link anchor text is as important a ranking factor as actual keyword usage and all you have to do is Google “About Us” to see this in action.
Click on the search results for PCWorld’s About Us page. There are 279 words in the body content of that page. Exactly 0 of those words are the phrase “about us”, yet the result is the fourth from the top on the Google search results page. If I use the browser find function for the phrase then I’ll find only one usage of that phrase on the page and it’s on the bottom menu bar, which means it will appear on every page of the PCWorld website. This page’s keyword density is - drumroll - 0. Pretty important, huh?
So How Does Keyword Density Apply To Article Marketing?
So how does this relate to articles that likely won’t appear on your own website. First, you have to understand the goal and importance of article marketing. The goal is to promote your website, building inbound links, and drive traffic to your site. You are not building on-page SEO benefits. Furthermore, your link building benefits do not exist within the article itself, but in the author resource box at the end of the article. This is where you’ll put your inbound links.
Let’s assume you write a bang-up author resource box with one good anchor text link to the page that you want to benefit. Does that mean the rest of your article is not important? No, not all.
You want your article to be well-written and reader-friendly. That is, you want readers to be able to get some benefit out of it. Otherwise, it’s a pretty useless article. It can be SEOd to the hilt and have perfect keyword density, but if readers within your niche don’t find the article of any value then it’s a perfectly useless article. The article, above all, must have value. Even an article with sub-optimal keyword density can drive traffic to your website and build you solid inbound links if it provides real value to readers within your niche.
Any article that is deemed a quality article by e-zine publishers, bloggers, and webmasters within your niche may be used by them. Every time a publisher uses your article you’ll get a new inbound link. If your article is SEOd well then the publisher will get the benefits of on-page SEO. You, however, as the writer, will get the benefit of off-page SEO. Neither on-page nor off-page SEO is more important; they must work together to achieve the same benefit for your website. Obviously, on-page SEO must come first or any off-page SEO you strive for will be in vain. Article marketing uses the age-old principle: Help yourself by helping others first.
That said, you should write articles that provide publishers with the best on-page SEO benefits as possible. If you do that then they’ll use more of your articles. You’ll get more links to your website, their readers will get the benefit of your knowledge, and the publishers will get the benefit of highly optimized web content. But what does that mean?
What Highly Optimized Article Content Means
Remember those ranking factors? You aren’t trying to build inbound links to your articles so forget about link building for a moment. A highly optimized article is good “on-page” SEO. That means keywords are important - very important - but not the most important thing. You also need to think about your article title - which is critically more important than keyword density - as well as subheadings within the article, ordered and unordered lists, and font characteristics (bold, italics, etc.).
You don’t want to bold or italicize your keywords just for the sake of adding characteristics that you think the search engines will love. You want to do so when it’s important to the reader. For instance, I like to bold the first sentence of long bullet points in my lists. Or, if I list bullet points followed by an explanation of each point, I like to bold the list item before the explanation to make it stand out to the reader more. While doing that I like to see if I can squeeze a keyword into a couple of those bullet points. Just a strategy that I’ve found that works.
Bottom line: Keyword density is a fake panacea for article optimization illnesses. It is infinitely more important to write an article that is beneficial to the reader, but while doing that it is important to look for ways that you can increase your on-page (ie. internal article) SEO. Density is a small measure for that goal and one that won’t give an accurate telling.
By
allen on September 9th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | No Comments »
Rarely do I ever agree with everything in an article I find at an article directory. But this article is pretty doggone good (and, yes, it IS one ugly website):
Article Writing - Writing Great Content When You Don’t Have Anything to Say
By David Hardin
So, you would love to write great articles, product reports and e-books, but you don’t have anything to say?
Don’t worry about it!
The “talking heads” on TV earn megabucks giving us more news than we can handle and they don’t know anything. They are reading words written on a teleprompter, probably by someone just like you.
So, how do you write an article, report, or product review without really being an expert? Do what reporters do.
- Ask questions.
- Find the answers.
- Write them down.
I am not being silly here. I am dead serious. On any given day, reporters on every newspaper in the world face this same dilemma. They must cover stories on subjects they know nothing about.
They have to:
- gather information,
- separate fact from fiction,
- put the facts of the story into a logical sequence,
- write the article so a sixth grader can understand it,
- submit that article before the deadline,
and do it all over again the next day.
How do they do it?
First year journalism students learn about the 5 Ws”
- Who?
- What?
- Where?
- When?
- Why?
Answer those five questions and you will have written a terrific article, review, or report.
Here is exactly how this applies to your niche market.
Information seekers - and that includes pretty much everyone online, are not looking for eloquence. They are looking for easy to understand answers to their questions. Don’t try to dazzle them with your vocabulary, just talk to them in plain English.
If you are writing to your subscribers, ask them what they want to hear. That may sound obvious, but a lot of marketers seem to have ego problems, or insecurities that will not let them admit that they don’t know everything.
You can ask your subscribers what they want to learn, even if you have a list of thousands. You don’t have to go to each one, individually. Send an e-mail broadcast to some, or all of them, asking for their help.
Another, even better way is to send them a survey. There are several survey programs available including an excellent, FREE one on GOOGLE docs.
Just type in http://docs.google.com . Not only can you ask your subscribers questions, you can analyze the results, just like the big boys do.
Your subscribers will respect you for it. They will appreciate the fact that you are interested in them as real people, not
just names on a list.
Here is what you will probably find…
You will find that about 50% of the people will all be asking the same question. 25% will have another question and 10% will have a third. The remaining 15% will be coming from left field, but will still have some interesting questions.
Now, go to work. Do your homework. Research the top question and respond to your subscribers. Then research and answer the second question and then the third.
By answering your subscribers questions, you will look like a genius. You will build incredible loyalty among your followers.
Then, organize all of those questions and answers and you will have the basis for a lot of good articles and product reports.
Put those articles and reports into PDF format and you will have an e-book entitled “The Answers To Your Top 10 Questions”, that you can sell, or give away.
Everything you write can be recycled this way. You don’t have to start from scratch every time. You can even “steal” from other sources.
Here is how I do it.
I do a lot of Google research. I don’t read every word on every page. If the information looks promising, I highlight, copy and paste it into a word document.
I do this until I think I have enough information to write my article.
Then, I go to the page where all of the clips are stored. I start moving the segments around until they are in a logical order.
Then I rewrite, using my own words. It is easy. Try it, you’ll like it.
Free web design, free audio/video programs and free list building tools are some of the subjects David Hardin covers in his “Write Yourself Rich” program at The Ugly Web Site at http://www.davehardinonline.com Go sign up for his FREE “Not Just A Sales pitch” newsletter.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Hardin
Our ghostwriters employ these same techniques to write articles for our hundreds of clients every day. If you don’t write your own articles then we’d like to write them for you. Find out how to save yourself oodles of time by having a ghostwriter write your articles for that ugly website of yours.
By
allen on September 8th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Video Articles | 1 Comment »
I see people more and more creating videos and posting them online. And they’re not all on YouTube. Can you do article marketing with video?
Well, it’s a difficult question because technically every video of someone talking about a topic could be considered a video article. But that’s not likely what most people think about when you mention video articles. My idea of a video article is where you take an article you’ve written and turn it into a video. That is, you can read from the article directly in front of a video camera or you read through an article with paraphrases as you speak - in other words, not a verbatim speech.
OK, so you can talk in front of a camera. What can you do with these video articles? Well, you can post them to YouTube, but you can also post them on other video sites as well: Google Video, Yahoo Video, MetaCafe. You can also post them on your own site. I’ve seen videos that were uploaded to someone’s website and that were not embedded from YouTube or Google. You have to have a particular type of plugin or embed device to do that, but it’s possible. And it is additional content for your website.
One strategy that I like to consider is taking your article and reading that article in front of a video recorder then uploading the article and the video of you speaking to your website. This gives your readers a chance to read your article while allowing others to watch you reading or just listen to you read while doing something else.
Video articles haven’t really taken off yet. But they will.
By
Bill Platt on September 7th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
So often, I hear people say that they do not have the talent or skill to write their own articles. Yet, they speak the English language fluently and can convey a message in a way that not only makes sense, but it is also very convincing.
People seem to make the mistake of believing that writing is somehow different than speaking. It is not.
Where most people make their mistake when trying to write is that they seem to think they need to add a bunch of fancy words to their written words, but it just ain’t so. (smile)
If you write exactly as you speak, then you can be a writer too.
If you can organize your thoughts in such a way as to convey a message to another, then you can be a good writer.
Even if you can’t spell, Microsoft Word and many other applications have built in spell-check. Use the software with the Spell-Checker and you can be sure to sound like you actually can spell.
The worst case scenario should be for you to do your own writing, and then ask someone to edit your work for you.
In the end, the only reason you should consider having someone else do your writing for you would be because you don’t have the time to do it yourself, or you find yourself constantly at odds with writer’s block, unable to decide what story to tell.
If you decide that you simply need or would prefer someone else to do your writing for you, then consider hiring the ghost writers that you can find at both http://www.articlecontentprovider.com and http://www.thephantomwriters.com . These two companies are competitors, but their owners are friends. Both could do you a nice job if you are interested in having someone do your writing for you.
Bill Platt, Stillwater, Oklahoma
Read more of what Bill has to say, by tuning into his other blogs: Karma SEO Blog or The Phantom Writers Blog.
By
allen on September 5th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
In a word, short articles are much more powerful than longer articles. Why? Because few people will read the entire article. Online, most people scan instead of read. That’s why you should keep it short and use subheads and bullet points as much as you can.
That’s not to say that a long article can bring you business. It can. But when focusing on article marketing you should try to write as many articles and distribute them as widely as you can. Give your readers a reason to contact you. Give them a reason to visit your website and sign up for your newsletter.
Short articles will get you more readers and keep them reading longer.
