By
allen on October 22nd, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
Article marketing is more than just some passing fancy. It’s not the slick marketing brochure of yesterday’s washed up Internet marketing guru who has retired after his first $50,000 splash into the great unknown. Article marketing is time-tested and proven marketing strategy used by thousands of successful entrepeeneurs across many industries and niches online. But that doesn’t mean that just because you engage in article marketing that you are assured instant success.
One of the many mistakes that article marketers make is to make their prospects jump through hoops to get to the final click. Have you tried buying from yourself? How long does it take to get to your Buy Now button to make a purchase?
It shouldn’t be more than one click.
That’s right, your prospects should be able to read your article and when they get to the end they should be able to click on a link and go right to your sales page. There should be nothing in between. No popups, no “check out my bio” then “click the link”. Just, click the link and buy. Right from your article.
Make it easy on the prospect. Don’t give them any reason to abandon your site before they buy, because they will. Click here for more expert article marketing advice.
By
allen on October 21st, 2008
Posted in Article Directories | No Comments »
If you are an article directory owner, we’d like to partner with you. I’m not talking about some cheap here today, gone tomorrow partnership. I’m talking about a real live long-lasting partnership. Something that will be mutually beneficial and not require too much commitment on your part. We know your time is valuable and you are busy.
First, know that Article Content Provider is run by well known, knowledgeable, and competent article marketers. Chris McElroy aka NameCritic, the CEO of the company, has been involved in Internet marketing since 1995. He is well known among members of ICANN and frequently addresses issues of importance with ICANN and other Internet issues. He has so many websites that he doesn’t know what to do with them all and is giving some of them away, but he still finds time for article marketing.
Allen Taylor is the operations manager for the NameCritic family of websites and runs Blog Content Provider. Allen (that’s me) is an expert organizer and manager with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a background in creative writing, professional business writing and journalism.
Article Content Provider is managed by Allen’s wife, Theresa Taylor, is the only one among us with a marketing degree. She spent five years at IBM working with small businesses in IBMs small business partnership division. She knows the article marketing process backwards and forwards and deals with all of our clients regarding their article marketing needs.
In addition to the three of us, we employ many freelance article writers who assist us in the daily activities of writing and distributing articles for our clients.
What Kind Of Partnership Are You
Thinking About, Allen?
Good question.
I’m a firm believer in partnerships. Before I hooked up with Chris to run his business, I was a struggling freelance writer making ends meet by bidding jobs big enough that only I could handle. But since Chris and I have teamed up together we have found that both of us can do more than either of us could do single handedly before we met. Many of the jobs we now get are so big that there is no way that either of us could handle them on our own and we find it challenging sometimes to do it together, if you can forgive the honesty. Still, we love what we do.
Let me assure you that the partnership we want to establish with you will not require a huge time or money commitment on your part. We would ask you to help us write our blog - a simple guest appearance once a week is enough. We will even link to your directory from this blog for helping us create unique content. Your expertise in article marketing would be a welcome addition.
But that’s not the extent of how we want to partner with you. That’s just one way. If you’ll take the time to contact us through our contact form and let us know you are responding to this blog post, we’ll get back with you privately to discuss the details. Please give us a phone number and an e-mail. Thank you.
By
allen on October 20th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 2 Comments »
This is a good question: Can you use articles to perform geographical link building and off-site SEO? I think you can. Though it seems the most likely industry for this kind of geographical link building is travel and tourism, that may not necessarily be the case.
What you need to keep in mind is that webmasters and e-zine publishers first and foremost look for quality articles. So if you write good articles within your niche then it doesn’t matter where you are located. Publishers will want to publish your work. Secondly, it is even better if you are a non-competitor to the publishers who publish your articles. After all, no one wants to promote the competition.
So if you have a business that is geographically situated and you write about a particular niche then you are really opening the door of opportunity because you are narrowing the competitive playing field for your potential publishers. Consider a nursery operator in Dover, New Jersey. If you are a nursery operator in California and you write bang up articles then the guy in Dover will have more of an incentive to publish your articles than another nursery operator in Dover, NJ. You’ll have a leg up.
But what about the traffic? If the guy in Dover targets his newsletter to people in his area, that won’t help you much, will it? It depends. If his newsletter is web-based and he uses your author bio then you’ll get a link back. That’s almost as good as payment. It builds your link popularity, which has the potential to increase your search engine rankings for you key terms. And if you are geographically targeting your anchor text then it will be even better. If your search rankings go up then it is likely that your traffic will go up too. So the guy in Dover just may very well be helping your business after all.
By
allen on October 16th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 1 Comment »
Peter Nisbet makes some great points with this article:
Article Marketing is Better for Your Website Than SEO
Author: Peter Nisbet
Article marketing is better for your website than SEO. That is a fact. How many visitors do you get to your website? Hundreds every day? If so then you must be in the top 10 results on Google for your keyword on at least one of your pages.
The vast majority of people get nowhere, and give up before giving themselves a chance, simply because they rely on organic search engine listings for traffic. Even their blogs get few visitors - if they get any. If that is you, then there is way out of this, and an easy way to get masses of visitors without having to rely on search engines. Article marketing.
This applies to the following forms of web page:
* Traditional website pages
* Blogs
* Squidoo lenses
* Facebook pages
* Myspace pages
* Any other online page that can be accessed via a URL or web address
If you have a need for visitors to any of these pages that you run or own, then Article Marketing is your answer. You can forget search engine optimization and trying to get your web page seen on other blogs or forums. You should write articles or have them written for you. Website traffic is so easy to get using article marketing.
As a professional article ghost writer I have a very deep understanding of how many different people use articles in many different ways to promote their products, services, websites, blogs, lenses and WEB2 pages, and from the amount of money that many of them pay me to write literally dozens and dozens of articles, they are doing very well from it.
Their pages are not listed in the top 100 pages on Google for their keywords, let alone the top 10, yet they make masses of money from their sites. Why? Because they get traffic from their articles. How do they get that traffic? Forget the lies and the hype. I have read it all and most untruths come from those that don’t believe in article marketing because they have never tried it. Here is the truth of the matter.
READERS
People read articles on article directories. If you write an article, or pay to have them written, and then submit them to directories, then they will be read by visitors to these directories. I have read ignorant people write that nobody reads articles on article directories, but they are talking nonsense. People do read them. I get an average of about 200 people reading each of my articles on each directory per month, and I submit two articles a week to over 50 directories - work it out for yourself.
No, on second thoughts I’ll work it out for you. That’s 80,000 readers a month. I get about 20% of readers clicking through to my website - what if you wrote one article a day (300,000)? Would that be good for you, or do you want to pass?
CLICKS
I get links to my website from each directory. Readers can click on my article and visit my website. Readers can copy my article to their own websites, and they do, and I get clicks from their websites to mine.
LINKS
If links are important to you, you get a link to your website from each directory to which you submit your article. You also get a one way link for each article that somebody else copies to their website as content. This happens quite frequently. For each article I write I get about 10 one way links from each of at least the five main directories I keep checking up on each month. That’s 50 backlinks a month per article. I write 2 articles a week for each of my websites. Work it out.
ADVERTISE YOUR WEB PAGES
When you write articles you get to advertise at least one link, and often three, in the ‘Author’s Resource’ section of each article directory to which you submit the article. Mine go to at least 50, though generally around 400, each time.
You can use any page in any website you want, or a Squidoo lens, or any of your blog pages, a Facebook or MySpace page or any other web presence that can be accesses by means of a URL (http://www. - - -). No matter what type of web page you run, you can use article marketing to drive traffic straight to it.
To do it successfully, however, you have to know how to go about it the right way. You need to know the little tricks and tips that the internet marketers like to refer to as ‘Secrets’. It can be a lot more powerful that using SEO - in fact it generally is - but must know how to do it properly if you want to be successful. In used to pay $97 plus for SEO books or to find out how to get traffic. I do so no longer - I only need the one way, even though I can my sites listed in 2 days and get them in the top 10 these days almost at will.
Article marketing is better for your website than SEO - it’s also better for your blog, your lens your . . . Check it out.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/article-marketing-is-better-for-your-website-than-seo-587564.html
About the Author:
For details on how to use article marketing properly to drive masses of traffic to your web page, blog, lens, etc. visit Article Czar where you will find all the information you need to succeed online - and a lot more, including a few free gifts just for visiting.
To learn more about article marketing, visit Article Content Provider.
By
allen on October 15th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 1 Comment »
Blog Content Provider wrote a post today about using your blog to blog outside of your niche and engaging in a little untargeted marketing. Can you do the same thing with articles?
Generally, no. Articles are the perfect targeted marketing tool, but I wouldn’t recommend you use them for untargeted marketing. The very nature of article marketing is to use it as a targeted marketing tool.
The reasoning behind this is very simple. Articles rely on the use of keywords to achieve high search engine rankings. Based on those keywords you’ll attract the target audience you want to reach. You then drive them to your website with links in your author bio. If you write about non-niche topics then you’ll attract people looking for information on whatever it is you are writing about. They won’t be interested in your niche. You’ll essentially be wasting your time.
A blog is different, though. With an article, it’s a one-time shot. An article is one page and one topic. A blog can attract people in a non-niche area to read what you have to say in a few words then, if you interest them, they may stick around to read another blog post. Either they’re interested in your niche or not. If not then they’ll leave an no harm is done. They at least got a good read on one post while they were there. But if your blog actually covers a topic that they do have an interest in then they could stick around to read more blog posts or subscribe to your blog. They’re already on your website. Since articles are found somewhere other than your website, there is no incentive to visit your site if it’s about something other than what your article is about. You’ll waste your time and your readers’ time.
Learn more about article marketing from an article marketing consultant.
By
allen on October 14th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 1 Comment »
The single most important thing to remember about article marketing, and the one thing most article marketers aren’t doing, is to provide valuable, unique actionable information in every article your write.
That bears repeating:
provide valuable, unique actionable information in every article your write
When you provide information in your articles that people can’t find anywhere else, where you drill down deep and give your readers explicit information that they can use right now, today, in their businesses and in their lives then you’ll be successful with article marketing.
Your information must contain these three characteristics:
- Relevance to your niche - If you write outside of your niche then don’t expect your articles to be read or published. The point is to get published so you can drive traffic to your website. Writing off topic won’t make you an authority in the niche market you are trying to reach.
- Authority - You must present yourself as an authority on your subject without looking as if you are patting yourself on the back. The way you do that is by writing about your topic intensely, with passion, and accurately on a level that your competitors are not able to reach.
-
Search-engine optimized - The better you are at optimizing your articles the more likely you will be to get them published.
When you become a recognized authority in your niche because you are able to reach your market through articles then you’ll be well ahead of your competition.
By
allen on October 13th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | 1 Comment »
Here’ a unique topic for article marketing I don’t read about every day. The sense of person. Do you write in first, second, or third person? Which should you write in? Listen as Asher Aw tells you how to avoid a costly mistake.
Article Marketing - Common Mistake #1 That Loses Money
By Asher Aw
Article marketing is a great way to get semi-qualified visitors to your site and it only requires a certain amount of research. If you’re wondering why you have an article that you expected to bring you lots of revenue totally bomb, you might be committing a common mistake that often goes unnoticed. I am going to show you what this common mistake is and what you can do about it.
There are essentially three “voices” in article marketing and they are first person, second person and third person. When you are speaking in first person, your article will have sentences that resemble something like “I think it’s better if you do it this way instead of that”. When you are speaking in second person, “You can do it better by implementing this”. And speaking in third person would be like “Get more information by going to this site”.
When creating your article, be sure to take note of what voice you are applying. Too many article marketers make the mistake of using the third person voice in an attempt to sound like an authority and then suddenly going into first person somewhere in the article. This would cause your attempt to appear as an authority to your readers to fall through straight away. And it happens a lot!
A simple tip to fix this is to re-read your article before posting it, making a mental note what kind of voice you are using for the particular article.
When you are using a third person voice in your article marketing, think of newspaper articles. They’re informative, unbiased and to the point. Pure information that’s given to the reader.
When you want to use a second person voice instead, think of magazine articles that feature a certain expert. If it’s a fashion magazine and there’s an interview for an expert, he’s going to be sharing tips in a way that sounds beneficial to the reader and at the same time, not as dominating and authoritative as the third person voice.
First person voice in article marketing has to be done carefully because it’s most likely done in a form that’s like writing a letter to your friend. It can get quite personal and that may or may not be the best voice that you want to use depending on the article subject
Visit http://MoreMoneyToSpend.com/Blog to learn and discover the methods, strategies that the “gurus” aren’t willing to share in order for you to start making an income for yourself from home - without relying on them! Learn to make money working at home now
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Asher_Aw
For more information on expert article ghostwriting, contact Article Content Provider.
By
allen on October 10th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Submissions | 2 Comments »
Some owners of article directories would have you submit your articles to them and no one else. But is that wise?
Consider this: If one article directory goes under or loses all its content and that directory is the one where your articles are located then you’ve just lost all your valuable content. You’ll have to start over.
I don’t think it’s wise to stick to just one directory. Diversify. That’s the rule of thumb in business economics and it should be the rule of thumb with article marketing. Don’t just rely on one article directory. Submit your articles to several. That will increase your chances for success.
By
allen on October 9th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
Hans Bool has an interesting article on the cultural differences between article marketing in the U.S. and article marketing in The Netherlands. Thank you Hans Bool.
The US Versus Dutch Article Markets - A Cultural Impression
By Hans Bool
Article markets over the world show some interesting cultural differences. As many markets, the US article market is one of the largest, if not the largest and best developed. For a good definition of article markets I mean the free article markets and not the professional articles from scientific areas (medical, law, tax, science in general, etc). These are highly regulated and moderated by companies (like lexus-nexus).
But there are many in other countries. The Dutch article market is distinguished by a few characteristics. This article is focused on the management article domain.
In the Netherlands.
First of all there are two separated markets; the free market and the not-free, or the regulated market.
The regulated market is operated by a panel of specialists and is preceded by a consultant / professor. Writers’ articles are checked by the panel and only if they agree to publish the article it will go ahead. Certain rules must be followed in order to get accepted in this regulated area.
The other area is free. Everybody can write about a variety of topics. There is hardly any screening…
There is less transparency in the Dutch market, compared to the US markets. There is no insight in the number of views which makes it hard to evaluate the impact of the article. Number of writers may be deducted, but the number of articles is hard to estimate. This is all much more transparent in the US.
The U.S.
The main characteristics of the US markets for articles is not the transparency but its freedom. Anybody can write, if you have a PHD or whether you have no academic background, the market is open. And articles get appreciated according to their impact (number of views, most read, highest rating, etc) The mechanism to rate article is another difference between the two markets. In the US it is important, in the Dutch market not too relevant. The implicit rating is done by the editors of the domain.
The Netherlands is a relatively “flat” society like its countryside. Yet knowledge is one of the area where this is not true. The knowledge market is highly hierarchical. Do you want impact and change, start influencing the academics. They are the elite. In the US if you want change, just write a best-seller-article. Anybody can do that (although I cannot prove this … yet).
© 2008 Hans Bool
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hans_Bool
Find out how you can hire a U.S. article writer to help you increase your reputation and drive traffic to your website.
