All Entries Tagged With: "articles"

Does Your Article Content Belong To You Or Can You Control It?

One of the major concerns for many people getting into article marketing is whether or not they have control over their articles. If you submit your articles to article directories you should be prepared for some unauthorized use of your articles. It’s going to happen. You really can’t prevent it.

A lot of time can be spent looking for content thieves and people using your articles in ways in which you don’t approve. But should you be concerned?

The way it should work is like this: You submit your article to an article directory and a website owner or e-zine publisher uses it to present their readers with quality content. They use your author bio with links intact. But you’ll often see people using articles without activating the links in the author bio or by placing the articles on pages with Google AdSense. What should you do?

First, you should contact the site owner and ask them to remove your content if you don’t want it there, or you could ask them to activate your author bio links. If they refuse or you can’t contact the site owner for some reason then submit a spam report to Google. It takes a while, but Google will often remove content if it can be proven that webmasters are violating Google guidelines. This works if the site owner is using articles without authorization and using Google AdSense in ways not approved of.

Often, however, you might have to take the extra step of contacting the site owner’s hosting company and reporting them. Many hosts will not tolerate unauthorized SEO tactics because it hurts them and their other customers. Go to Whois.net and look up who owns the site and that person’s web host. But you can often spend too much time chasing people down and not getting any work done. You’ll have to ask yourself if it’s worth it in the end.

It’s Beer Thirty, Do You Know Where Your Articles Are?

Do you have a system for tracking your articles? You’d better because in today’s Internet marketing climate you can easily lose control. With spammers, scrapers, hackers, and other ne’er-do-wells lurking around every corner, you an easily lose track of your articles and forget where you’ve placed them. That’s why I recommend a system.

You can buy a fancy schmancy article tracking software for thousands of dollars or use the old trusty Excel spreadsheet that came with your laptop. I prefer the latter.

It’s real easy to track your articles. In the horizontal fields across the top of your spreadsheet, type in this information:

• Name of Article
• Where Published
• PageRank
• Date of Submission
• Approved Date
• Author Resource Box
• Number of Publishers

Some of these fields are self explanatory so I won’t discuss them here, but there are some that warrant an explanation. Here it is:

Where Published - This is not always an article directory, though it may be. If it is then list the directory. If you send your article through a submission service such as iSnare then list that service. Many times, however, you’ll submit an article directly to a publisher, either a blog or a website within your niche. Write the URL of that site down here in this field.

PageRank – The PageRank of the website where your article is published on the day that you publish it. PageRank is not as good a measure as it used to be, but it’s nice to know how your article progresses over time. If you submit to PR0 sites, and I recommend that you do, then knowing that one year later the site has progressed to a PR5 can be rather encouraging when your article is passing good link juice.

Author Resource Box – I recommend that you use more than one author resource box. In this field you’ll write the author resource box that you are using for this publisher on this date. Use a system that you understand and will remember for your author resource box organization. For instance, you might says version A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, or B3 where A represents the website and 1, 2, and 3 are the versions of your author resource box for that website. Use a system that works for you and that you’ll remember.

Number of Publishers – If you do submit your articles to article directories then you’ll want to check in from time to time and see how many times your article has been downloaded. This field will likely not be 100% accurate as some publishers will just copy and paste your article without using the directory’s script for the article. That’s OK; some publishers do it the right way. At least you’ll have an idea of how many publishers have used your article. I’d check on it every three months.

If you want to track the effectiveness of your articles then you need to know where they are at all times. An Excel spreadsheet can help you keep track of that.

Does Keyword Stuffing Work?

Keyword stuffing is the practice of adding keywords to your articles for the purpose of increasing their ranking in the search engines. It rarely works.

One of the reasons keyword stuffing doesn’t work is because the search engines have caught onto the game. The search algorithms look unfavorably upon articles that overuse keywords. Instead of trying to game the search engines by using an abundance of keywords in your articles, try putting your keywords in the most important places.

The most important place for your keyword in any article is in the title. If you optimize your article title you increase your chances of getting ranked in the search engines tremendously. You also increase your chances of that article getting published and providing you with an inbound link. It sure beats stuffing those articles with keywords. That looks funny.

Are Articles The Best Way To Promote?

Articles are useful tools. What good are they, you say? Here are some of a great uses to which you can put your well-written articles:

• Promoting your blog or website
• Building a brand
• Establish yourself as an expert
• Increase your social influence
• Search engine optimize your website
• Add additional content to your Web properties
• Build inbound links to your website or blog
• Drive traffic to your most important pages
• Earn additional revenue from AdSense and contextual links or other advertising programs

With so many great uses for articles you’d think they were the best marketing tool on the planet, right? Well, you’d be partially right. Articles are great marketing tools, but by themselves you’ll have a difficult time promoting your business. Articles are best used in conjunction with other forms of marketing such as blogs, pay per click advertising, social media marketing, and word of mouth. Just because something is useful doesn’t mean you should stop using everything else. Be smart about your marketing and articles can help you reach your goals.

How A Microsite Can Make You Money (With Articles)

A microsite is a great tool for any business. You don’t have to sell an e-book or offer a free download to profit from using a microsite. You can build a microsite for a small business, drive traffic to it with articles and profit handsomely. Here’s how:

• Build a site consisting of 3-6 pages, including an About page, Contact page, Privacy Policy, and 1-3 pages of good sales material
• Write an article a day and send it out to at least 10 article directories every day
• Do this for a full year and watch your traffic grow along with your links
• Make sure your microsite is well optimized and closes the sale
• Install analytics code on your microsite so you can track the traffic.

It’s really simple. And it’s also magical the way you can build a good list of prospects using a microsite that is targeted to a specific niche within your niche. Build a microsite for every aspect of your niche and dominate your business industry.