All Entries Tagged With: "links"
What Should Your Resource Box Consist Of?
Your resource box is the small paragraph at the bottom of your articles that lead visitors back to your website. The point of article marketing, after all, is to drive traffic to your website by being a useful resource and providing useful information to your article readers. The author resource box is your chance to ask for something in return for the value you’ve given in the article.
So what you should go into your author resource box? It is essential that you get the following information in your resource box in as few words as possible:
- At least one reader benefit for clicking the link and visiting your website. It could be a free download, a discount on your service, or anything that tells the reader what he or she will get out of clicking your link.
- A link back to your website. At least one, but no more than three. Many article directories will not allow more than three links in your resource box. Some won’t allow more than two. I personally believe that one is often better. But it should lead to a landing page that will earn you some income.
- A call to action. Don’t just assume readers will click your link. Provide a call to action and a reason for clicking.
If you give a clear benefit and an incentive for clicking your link and ensure that you provide real value on the other side of it, article marketing can pay off for you. It all boils down to how effectively you use your resource box.
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.
Article Directories: What Makes A Good One?
How do you know which article directories to submit your website to? Believe me, it’s not easy. I’d be real careful about submitting to every directory out there. Some are better than others. But there is one criteria that is often cited about article directories that I would caution you against in using as a selection criteria. That criteria is PageRank. Don’t use it.
PageRank can be deceiving. Just because a web domain has a high PageRank doesn’t mean it’s a good article directory. Maybe it has a high PageRank because it was another type of website for 10 years and just recently converted into an article directory. If that’s the case then it needs to prove itself as an article directory.
A better thing to look at is traffic. How much traffic does that article directory get? You can find out by going to Alexa.com and checking the traffic stats. This isn’t a perfect tool, but Alexa can give you an idea about traffic. Look at the upward and downward trend over the last 3 months. Then look at the raw traffic numbers. If the traffic is low and the downward trend is going down then it’s not a good site. If the traffic number is high and the trend is upward then that’s a good sign.
Another thing you can do is go to Google and type in site:http://www.nameofarticledirectory.com. Google will tell you how many pages of that article directory have been indexed. If the number is low then the directory probably has website crawl issues. If the number is high then it’s a good directory.
Also take a look at the cache option in your Google toolbar (you do have the Google toolbar, don’t you?). How long ago was the site cached? If it’s been too long then it isn’t getting updated very often.
Keep in mind that Google no longer passes link juice from article directories. That’s not to say that it couldn’t. Google often overlooks its own policies. But don’t count on links from article directories. You are submitting articles for traffic. It’s nice if that traffic comes from the article directory, but it doesn’t to. You want other publishers to use your articles. The traffic and links from those publisher websites are what you really want the article directory to do for you. If you find your articles getting published then you’ve found a good article directory.
Use Your Author Resource Box To Build Links
It seems that everyone and their pet rattlesnake has an article directory now. Here’s a new take on the article directory: AdSense share. I’m just not sure about it.
Nevertheless, this article writer understands how to put together a good author resource box.
Optimizing Your Author’s Resource Box
By Kerry Thomas
Article marketing is a very effective way to promote your web site and services. One simple article can ultimately end up on hundreds or even thousands of other sites. The links back to your site from these articles is what drives your web traffic. You can get direct referrals as well as organic search results via an effective article marketing strategy.
A very important tip for article marketing is to always optimize your author’s resource area. The author’s resource box is usually the area where you are allowed to place links that point back to your site. I’ll demonstrate an optimized resource box below.
Your Name loves to write and (submit articles) to http.//www.examplesite.com/ (actual link would have a ” : ” after the http instead of a ” . “)
My example is a very short bio, but in this case it shows how I have made the article resource links work for me. In this example (submit articles) would represent the anchor text of my link. I would hyperlink the text “submit articles” and have it pointing to the example site. In this context, submit articles would be a keyword that might help drive traffic to the site. I have basically told the search engines that the text “submit articles” is relevant to the site and I want to place a little more emphasis on it. Here’s the key…the text you choose to hyperlink should be keyword related and you should always take advantage of the ability to hyperlink keywords in your author’s bio area.
I have also allowed for the http: version of the URL. Most article sites will automatically hyperlink the http: format of the URL. If by chance the article ends up on a plain text article site, then the link will not be hyperlinked, but the user can still find your article by simply copying and pasting the URL to the browser’s address bar. While the the plain text version will not help your search engine rankings, it can and will allow for direct referrals to your bio information. As you can see I have allowed for both plain text and html rendering of my bio information.
Apply these same principles to all your article bios and you will be effectively working towards driving both organic search results and direct referrals to your work. As you can see, choosing the right link text, and properly hyperlinking it, can add a considerable boost to your search engine rankings. Please remember that most sites will only allow for a couple of links in the bio area so don’t over do it. The http: version will count as a link itself in most cases. Choose your keywords carefully and get them properly optimized to maximize your traffic.
Kerry Thomas is an article writer and owns an Article Directory offering AdSense® revenue sharing here: http://www.myarticle-writer.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kerry_Thomas
Not only does an article resource box build solid links, but it also can drive traffic to your website from highly trafficked sites within your niche. Here’s another article directory you can submit your articles to.
Learn how you can have your articles submitted to 40,000 directories and websites for less than $5.
The 5 Benefits To Article Marketing
There are more benefits to article marketing than you can shake a long stick at. But are you aware of these five most important benefits to article marketing:
- It’s free – Doing article marketing yourself costs nothing. Even if you hire a ghostwriter, you can submit your articles to article directories at no charge.
- Builds permanent links to your website – Aticle marketing is one of the best ways to build permanent links to your website. Those links stay there forever.
- Turns you into a credible expert in your niche – Every time you write an article you show yourself to be the expert that you are. Your customers and potential customers will rely on your expertise more because they have read your articles.
- Articles rank in search engines - It’s all about content and articles are great content. Put them on your website or distribute them across the web. Either way, you’ll get them ranked in the search engines and that helps you market your website.
- Articles drive traffic – When someone reads an article you wrote in their favorite e-zine or on another website then they will visit your website. Aticles drive traffic and without traffic you will not make money online.
Given these five benefits of articles marketing, it makes no sense not to be using this method of online marketing. It’s inexpensive, effective, and makes you money.
